Saturday, June 13, 2020

Nickelodeon Is NOT Perfect

Nickelodeon Is Not Perfect

I’m sorry for my excessive Nickelodeon bootlicking the past few weeks on Twitter. Even as a huge apologist of the network, I have to admit some of its flaws:

-Spongebob as a franchise nowadays. People claim that it’s keeping the network alive but I have to disagree. If you’ve been seeing my many rants on it lately, I do not approve of how much they’ve been milking it lately, like the spin-offs (I have a different reason than the others). SmartyPants challenge (it’s pointless cause everyone already knows about the show), as well as various of specials on its success. I has grew tired of the show in general because all I see is memes and seasons 1-3 references. FIND SOMETHING ORIGINAL! Face it, people, I don’t care how it improved the past 5 years, it has become a show existing for money and not for how well-written it is. More details later when I do my unpopular opinion on post-sequel era.

-The unfair treatment of shows that aren’t popular (AKA the SpongeBob). This has been an ongoing problem for Nick since the 2000s. I do scold them for such actions and it’s something that need to stop although so far they’ve been improving. It’s Pony and Ollie’s Pack has been treated well. Anyway, we are no longer in the 2010s, that was when Cyma Zarghami and her team were favoring live-action over Nicktoons.

-Their preschool content nowadays mostly exist for toys. No surprise I went to the mall one day and saw a plethora of Nick Jr merch. I wonder to myself “these shows get all ther love in merchandise, but not modern Nicktoons?” Also, Paw Patrol is getting some heat right now and frankly I don’t give a crap.

-I need to watch more shows, but their most of their live-action content last decade was suffering in quality due to obnoxious characters and phoned in writing. With a certain producer gone, maybe they’ll shake things up.Sadly Young Dylan isn’t winning people over despite having a POC cast. Maybe Tyler Perry isn’t the best writer for African Americans. Just make the kid characters less pandering and punchable and maybe kidcoms can be watchable again.

-Their sudden interest in unscripted content. I don’t mind stuff like The Crystal Maze and Group Chat, but stuff like AMMF and Top Elf just doesn’t fit the network. They should just stick to what they like best: game shows.

-Nick at Nite’s existence is slowly dying off as streaming wars has become more prominent lately. They only promote one show now and the branding is so bland as dirt. I make fun of people who still watches it.

-Hiring social media stars. People like Fred, JoJo Siwa and RyansToyReview are only hired for money, while the others (such as Annie and Hayley LeBlanc, Hayley LeBlanc, David Dobrik, Liza Koshy) are hired because they’re fans of the network growing up. We need more of the latter and less of the former.

All in all, Nickelodeon is not perfect nor my best friend. I think Brian Robbins’ tenure is an improvement over Cyma tenure, but it is still not without its flaws. The SpongeBob spin-offs are the least of my worries and I think we should ignore them instead of bringing it up 24/7…also, I know you guys keep bringing the Dan Schneider stuff, but can we all be glad he’s gone? His works got stale and that way Nick can make fresh sitcoms again.