Look alive Keenan and Kel fans, the TeenNick cable network is bringing back favorites from the 1990s to the airwaves beginning Monday.
TeenNick, one of many networks under the Nickelodeon brand name, will air four-hour blocks of “classic” (by generation Y standards) Nickelodeon original content between the hours of midnight and 4 am.
According to Brian Stelter at the New York Times , the programming block, called “The ’90s Are All That,” was a response to the numerous Facebook groups dedicated to bringing back this classic content.
Nickelodeon History 101
Here’s a refresher for those of you not fully versed in Nickelodeon history:
In 1990, Nickelodeon Studios opened at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. The flagship show at the time,Double Dare, was moved to the Orlando location. It also become the home for a slew of original live-action programs like Clarissa Explains it All and All That. In 1991, the first Nicktoons, Doug, Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show, debuted on the network.
For the next decade or so, many of these programs made up the primary daytime blocks of programming on Nickelodeon. In 1992, a Saturday evening block, called SNICK (or Saturday Night Nickelodeon), debuted. For the next twelve years, that block of programming would air new episodes of its flagship original programming
For many of us who grew up in the early to mid-1990s, these shows represented an iconic part of pop culture. For years, fans have petitioned the network to re-air some of the more popular shows or release programs on DVD.
The Shows
As Nickelodeon fan site Nickutopia shares, this is the lineup of shows that TeenNick will be airing during “The ’90s Are All That”:
- Aaahh!!! Real Monsters
- The Adventures of Pete & Pete
- All That
- The Amanda Show
- Are You Afraid of the Dark?
- Catdog
- Clarissa Explains it All
- Double Dare
- Doug
- Hey Arnold!
- Kenan & Kel
- Legends of the Hidden Temple
- Nickelodeon GUTS
- The Ren & Stimpy Show
- Rocket Power
- Rocko’s Modern Life
- Rugrats
- Salute Your Shorts
- The Secret World Of Alex Mack
In addition to these shows, “The ’90s are All That” will feature special appearances from popular Nickelodeon Stick Stickly. Frankly, I think I’m most excited about the return of Stick Stickly.
A Play on Nostalgia
Generation Y, my generation, is one that is obsessed with nostalgia. Witness our love for all things Betty White (even though most of us discovered The Golden Girls via reruns in the 1990s and not on Saturday nights in the 1980s), our affinity for retro and ironic t-shirts with branding from some time in the past when we probably weren’t even alive, and the fact that shows like Robot Chicken and Family Guy have basically made it their marquee to reference old programs or fads, just so the twenty-somethings in the audience can go, “Dude, I totally remember the MicroMachines guys, he was awesome!”
During the 1990s, Nickelodeon was the perennial kid brand. In a world before the term “tween” was actually used, it was a prime television destination portal aimed squarely at kids in elementary school and junior high.
Thus, it’s no surprise that as soon as we all started using Facebook in college (and if we’re honest, LiveJournal before that), talking about Nickelodeon shows and idealizing those shows as “ahead of their time” became a common activity.
In truth, the shows, for the most part, don’t actually hold up. I know this because this isn’t the first time that Nickelodeon has played on the nostalgia train, this is just its most engaged play. For the last decade, Nickelodeon has actually been recycling some of its ’90s-era content across many of its digital cable properties.
When the Noggin network debuted in 1999, it was dedicated to airing programs that were pulled from PBS and Nick Jr. Late at night, Noggin had a block of programming dedicated to Generation Xers that aired classic episodes of Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Ghost Writer and Square One. Subsequently, when the network transitioned to The N (before The N became its own network), many classic Nick shows from the 1990s would air in the afternoons.
Before being rebranded as TeenNick, The N often aired these programs late at night or in weekend blocks. Moreover, classic Nicktoons aired on the Nicktoons cable network during much of the 2000s, and the now shuttered Nickelodeon Games and Sports network (GAS) was basically dedicated to airing nothing but old episodes of Double Dare, Nick Arcade, GUTS and Legend of the Hidden Temple, with some Wild and Crazy Kids thrown in for good measure.
The difference with this campaign is that Nickeldoen is fuly embracing its audience’s desire for nostalgia. Even more interesting, many of the most vocal 1990s Nickelodeon fans were likely not even old enough to even remember the SNICK couch or when Clarissa was actually on TV. Instead, in true Gen-Y fashion, these fans are simply nostalgic about faint memories in front of the tube.
The fact that TeenNick will be taking programming cues from Facebook is interesting. Also interesting is its usage of AllThat and Keenan and Kel (and Good Burger) star Keenan Thompson, now a regular on Saturday Night Live, in some of its advertising promos.
Our only question is this: when is Hey Dude! going to air? I take that back. That show was horrible. Even my everlasting love of it in 1991 doesn’t change the fact that it was horrible.
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