Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television channel launched on December 1, 1977 as the first cable channel for children. It is owned by Viacom through its Viacom Media Networks division's Nickelodeon Group unit and is based in New York City. It is primarily aimed at children and adolescents aged 2–17.

The channel was originally founded as Pinwheel on December 1, 1977. Pinwheel was at the time only available on QUBE,[3] which was the first two-way major market interactive cable television system, owned by Warner Cable. Pinwheel relaunched as Nickelodeon on April 1, 1979, and expanded to other cable providers nationwide. It was initially commercial-free and remained without advertising until 1984. Warner sold Nickelodeon, along with its sister networks MTV and VH1, to Viacom in 1986.

As of January 2016, the channel is available to about 92.056 million households (79.086% of households with TV) in the United States.

History
The channel's name comes from the first five cent movie theaters called nickelodeons. Its history dates back to December 1, 1977, when Warner Cable Communications launched the first two-way interactive cable system, QUBE,[3] in Columbus, Ohio. Under the name Pinwheel Network, the C-3 cable channel carried Pinwheel daily from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time.[3][9] Nickelodeon launched on April 1, 1979, initially distributed to Warner Cable systems via satellite on the RCA Satcom-1 transponder.[10] Originally commercial-free, advertising was introduced in January 1984.

Programing
Nickelodeon's schedule currently consists largely of original series aimed at children, pre-teens and young teenagers, including animated series (such as SpongeBob SquarePants, ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks, The Loud House, Welcome to the Wayne, and The Adventures of Kid Danger), to live-action comedy and action series (such as Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn, Power Rangers Ninja Steel, The Thundermans, Henry Danger, Game Shakers, School of Rock, along with the month-long running show Hunter Street), as well as series aimed at preschoolers (such as Team Umizoomi, PAW Patrol, Bubble Guppies, Blaze and the Monster Machines, Wallykazam!, and Dora and Friends: Into the City!). It also airs reruns of select original series that are no longer in production (such as iCarly, Bella and the Bulldogs, and The Fairly Oddparents), as well as occasional original made-for-TV movies. It also aired bi-monthly special editions of Nick News with Linda Ellerbee,[11] a newsmagazine series aimed at children that debuted in 1992 as a weekly series which ended in 2015.