This week on the Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin show, Jeff is joined by Mathew Klickstein, the author of the book Slimed!: An Oral History Of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age. They talk about how he defined Nickelodeons golden age, Shel Silverstein, what made Nickelodeon great, Spongebob, the slime itself and why the golden age ended.
“Nickelodeon is the second or third cable channel ever invented. It was a true experiment, they used it as something called narrowcasting instead of broadcasting. Suddenly they said “what about a channel just for kids?†and later “what about a channel just for music?†No one thought to do that, and Nickelodeon was an experiment in that.†- Mathew Klickstein on the birth of Nickelodeon.
“A lot of this stuff we take for granted, because that is just how it’s done today, but before this was such a wild idea because this was people coming from radio and magazines going into TV. They had this wild and revolutionizing idea that instead of promoting the shows only, lets promote the whole network. Let’s create a destination. You will watch this show because it is on Nickelodeon. So let’s actually talk about Nickelodeon in the promos. It was because they were coming from radio, and radio had done that forever.†- Mathew Klickstein on how Nickelodeon became a popular channel.
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