Nickelodeon in General

If you really want a bad cartoon, try that new Henry Danger spin-off. It's just being stupid for the sake of being stupid with chunky animation.

Is Henry Danger really popular enough to warrant a spin-off? Just trying to understand.

The John Kricfalusi scandal just keeps getting worse and worse...

edited 12th May '18 1:34:59 PM by Prinzenick

If the statues of limitations are not up, then these women are in their rights to press charges against this waste of space.

John. Nobody believes you're sorry. You don't need to pretend you respect women now.

But I saw it. Never mind that it was more like a creepy love letter than an apology. Never mind the drawing of Yogi Bear and Boo Boo having sex in it. What really got my dander up was that he mentions that the other artists on the show shouldn't have been judged by what he did - which I agree with, but coming from him it's hypocritical as fuck. You're praising Bob Camp and Billy West after you called them traitors? Really?

As for the abortion, I should mention she says that it was a mutual decision; had she had the baby it would have had adverse effects on her. But she also mentions John didn't even come to get her from the free clinic - Stephen Worth did. And he barely understood why she had post-partum depression afterwards.)

(Worth, if you didn't know, was one of John K.'s sycophants. Along with Eddie Fitzgerald and Mike Fontanelli he was everywhere defending John K. Gee, I wonder where they've gone lately?... Especially considering Byrd says they were "weirdly involved in his perversions"...)

Was she underage when this happened? I am just angry at this man, and want him to own up to his horrible actions. And that not apology shows he's just doing to save face, since he's finally been outed.

Oh wow....

No, it was when she was 18, which is still extremely skeevy.

Read the tweet. This happened in 1999 when she was 18, and now she has 2 other children with someone else.

edited 12th May '18 9:28:57 AM by kyun

Yikes is about all I have say

John K didn't even pick her up after the procedure .... he had Steve Worth do that instead, who she states is "the last person you would ever want to come pick you up from such a life event.." He had a "beat-up pick-up truck". So not only did John K KNOW she had to be picked up and decided not to do it himself, but he sent a friend to do it and she wound up in a place she never been and this started an entire summer of trauma and depression for her!

edited 12th May '18 9:42:54 AM by kyun

You know I'm itching to Falcon punching this guy to kingdom come.

Guess what, guys!?

Zarghami (who is Nickelodeon's president) has left the network. Before her departure, she had been with Nick for a really long time.

edited 4th Jun '18 12:49:55 PM by Buzzinator

Oh, huh. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Most believe this is a good thing.

Hope schedule and decisions will improved with Levy taking over. I don't want to see any more Nicktoons Death Treatment.

Yes, let's bring it back to the way it was in my day - where Nick often let shows' final episodes go unaired for years.

(I really don't see the policy for canceled shows improving.)

Interesting development.

I wonder if this means they'll dial back on the SpongeBob reruns.

(Assuming that's still a thing, it's been ages since I seen Nickelodeon, but I know for sure they were overreliant on reruns of SpongeBob...)

Those were the dayssssssssssss!

Apparently, Cyma was the reason why most of the non-popular shows or any shows that wasn't a comedy or have an unique premise were getting Screwed by the Network. This is what Micah Wright have to say about her departure: https://www.facebook.com/micahwright/posts/10155220074511619

Could you quote their response for people who dont use facebook?

Ooh, yikes. If that's true, then it's probably for the best Cyma left.

Ok this is lengthy but here's what Wright wrote about this years long problem on Nickelodeon:

"Cyma was the executive who (a) killed my Nickelodeon action show in a fit of post-9/11 panic, claiming that "action shows turn children into terrorists," and (b) signed off on anti-union attacks on the 35 animation writers who had just signed their WGA cards and asked for pay equitable to our far-less-profitable live-action writer peers (viewer for viewer, we were paid 1/6th to 1/10th what the live action writers were getting paid on much lower-rated shows). Under Cyma's leadership, Nickelodeon illegally harassed the pro-union writers, then illegally fired or laid off 30 of the troublemakers, lied in federal court to obtain the names of the unionizing ringleaders, then blacklisted 4 of us (including me) by calling every animation house in Los Angeles and telling them not to hire us, then signed a deal with the IATSE Local 839 Animation Union, locking the Writers Guild out of Nickelodeon forever... and only then did Nickelodeon eventually hire back many of the unionist writers & writer/board artists once they had made sure they'd never have to pay any animation writer a single dollar in residuals on cartoons (never mind the fact that the composers of our cartoons and the actors in our cartoons get paid residuals).

During Cyma's regime, the methodology of paying show creators also quietly changed; creators used to get 2% of "Adjusted Gross" of toys, bedsheets, plush animals, etc. based on their shows. That meant Nickelodeon could deduct the cost of toy manufacture and shipping to the stores and NOTHING ELSE. Then, perhaps upset about having to pay millions of dollars to Steven Hillenburg, creator of Sponge Bob, Cyma's Nickelodeon quietly changed their creator deals to "Adjusted Net" of toy revenue, meaning they could deduct the cost of anything they wanted from the earnings of their creators. Cyma mentioned your show during dinner for 6 at the French Laundry? That's $3,000 deducted from your creator payments! They've also held the line on what they pay artists & creators on a per-episode basis... from what I hear, it's not unusual for a show creator at Nickelodeon to work 60-80 hour weeks for LESS money per week than they would have earned 15 years ago, even as the cost of living has dramatically gone up. And why? All to disguise the falling ratings. Because if the ratings are low, the earnings from ad sales are low, so to provide profits you have to slash your employees' paychecks, healthcare, retirement funds, etc. All so more, more, more money can be funneled upward to the executives in charge, to the shareholders, to anyone but the artists who create the work.

Perhaps not coincidentally, during the 17 years since I left Nickelodeon, they haven't had a single hit approaching the success of Sponge Bob. After all, if you're a creator with a great show and you have another option which would pay you a real percentage of the toy money, why wouldn't you take it? Nickelodeon have spent the last decade treating creators terribly, like when Carl Greenblatt and his staff on Harvey Beaks learned their show and jobs had been canceled via a tweet. Recently Cyma's Nickelodeon had their biggest recent animation success taken out at the knees by a #Me Too! firing that every single person at the studio saw building for years. Worse, she recently had to terminate Nickelodeon's relationship with Dan Schneider, the live-action series creator who singlehandedly kept Nickelodeon on the air for 10 years, terminating him because of swirling rumors of sexual predation of their minor actresses... rumors which the Me Too! movement made far more likely to emerge into public view and make Viacom's cash cow network synonymous with child molestation.

And all of this as Cyma watched haplessly while Nickelodeon's ratings slid off a cliff, routinely getting 1/3rd of what their shows used to get. She's spent years blaming Netflix, the Internet, Videogames, Voodoo... anything than take a serious look at how they chose shows and ran their house.

When I started at Nickelodeon, the executives there loved animation and loved creativity and didn't want to make anything that looked like something someone else would make. That network thrived and grew from #87 in the ratings to become the #1 channel on cable television. Then the executive leadership changed and the channel became about cutting corners, doing everything on the cheap, chiseling away at artist pay, and most especially about selling toys to kids, and aping whatever cartoons everyone else was already doing. Cyma turned away Adventure Time, for just one example. They turned down Phineas & Ferb, for another example. The channel which nurtured weird shows like Real Monsters, Invader Zim, Sponge Bob Square Pants, The Angry Beavers, and Hey Arnold became the channel which bought and rebooted stale old intellectual properties like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and spent millions trying to develop ancient nonsense like Mighty Mouse. Once upon a time we challenged #1 network The Disney Channel and their lazy culture of using money and acquisitions to compensate for a lack of creativity... under Cyma's leadership Nickelodeon BECAME The Disney Channel, with their hidebound development process, fear of the unknown, and over-reliance on being the second person with a good idea, and The Disney Channel hired away many of the old school Nick execs and reinvented itself (not completely, it's still Disney, after all, but they're far more experimental than Nick at this point).

It's never a fun thing to see someone be fired, but I can't bring myself to feel sorry for her because I'm sure she's walking out the door with millions of dollars weaseled out of the pockets of series creators and animation artists. And I can't help suspect that she did much of the same with the live action creators and crews (although less so because they're protected by much stronger unions than animators). The freefall ratings alone should have gotten her fired a decade ago, and the failure of their development department to produce anything my kids want to watch should have been the final nail in her coffin... but this is America where the little guy gets fired and blacklisted and the wealthy elite can only ever fail upward.

It'll be interesting to see what happens next. They've got an opportunity here to completely reinvent the network and re-embrace creativity and originality. Anyone want to lay odds that they'll do that? CAN they even do it at this point?"

Oh, so she hates unions.

Good riddance then.

Ironically Nick just recently unionized. Good riddance indeed.

("Under her leadership"... wasn't this all when Herb Scannell was in charge of the network?)