Nickelodeon
As we head into what is known as the May Sweeps, where the TV networks pull out all the stops with their season finales to draw as many viewers as possible to help set ad rates for the coming Fall season, there aren’t a lot of new shows being launched. In fact, everything from this particular week came from cable channels and was exclusively aimed at children. There is one show, however, that had — and still has — a wider appeal, making its way from TV to the big screen to the Broadway stage, and is still going strong on TV.
1959
- No new series premiered this week in 1959.
1969
- No new series premiered this week in 1969.
1979
- No new series premiered this week in 1979.
1989
- May 1 — Game show Think Fast premieres on Nickelodeon. The show featured two teams of two, a Blue team and a Gold team, that would compete in various events for the mind and the body, including memory games, puzzle solving and physical stunts to win a cash prize. After each event, the winner had a chance to play for more money by solving the ‘Brain Bender’ puzzle. The show ran for two seasons and produced 106 episodes. The host for Season 1 was Michael Carrington, but when the show moved from Philadelphia to the new Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, Carrington was replaced by Skip Lackey.
1999
- May 1 — Animated series Mickey Mouse Works premieres on ABC, the first Disney animated series to air on ABC’s ‘Disney’s One Staurday Morning’ block. Mickey, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, Pluto and Ludwig Von Drake starred in their own segments with various other characters appearing. The segments were meant to recreate the classic short films from Disney’s ‘golden age’ using basic colors and original sound effects to capture the look and feel of classic Disney. The show was designed to look like one spontaneous flow with opening credits that ended differently each week. The series ended after 25 episodes and two seasons, and was replaced by Disney’s House of Mouse where many of the shorts were rerun. The format of Mickey Mouse Works, however, was never repeated. Three of the shorts were also released theatrically to play before Disney feature films.
- May 1 — Animated series SpongeBob SquarePants premieres on Nickelodeon. The series was created by marine science educator and animatore Stephen Hillenburg, and chronicles the adventures of the title character and his various friends in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Many of the ideas for the series came from an unpublished educational comic book, ‘The Intertidal Zone’, created by Hillenburg in 1989. He began developing the series in 1996 after the cancellation of Rocko’s Modern Life and recruited Tom Kenny, whom he had worked with on that series, to voice SpongeBob. SpongeBob was originally going to be named SpongeBoy and the series was titled ‘SpongeBoy Ahoy!’ but the name was already trademarked. Nickelodeon previewed the series on May 1 after the 1999 Kids’ Choice Awards and officially launched the series on July 17. The series garnered critical acclaim, won several awards (including six Annies, four Emmys, sixteen Kids’ Choice Awards, and two BAFTA Children’s Awards), spun-off two feature films, and became a Broadway musical in 2017. The show did endure controversy in 2005 when speculation began to center on the sexual orientation of the character (Hillenburg had said three years earlier that he considered the character ‘asexual’.). In 2011, a new species of fungus was named Spongiforma squarepantsii after the character. In 2009 to celebrate the show’s tenth anniversary, Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in New York City unveiled a wax sculpture of SpongeBob, the first animated character to receive the honor. The series is currently in its 12th season, with Nickelodeon announcing on February 14, 2019 that a spin-off series in development. To date, 244 episodes have aired.
2009
- May 2 — Live-action series JONAS premieres on the Disney Channel, the first Disney Channel Original Series to not be filmed before a live studio audience since Phil of the Future, and the first original series to premiere on Saturday night, a strategy the network hoped would open up the night to more original programming. The series and TV movie Camp Rock were developed after the Jonas Brothers made a guest appearance on Hannah Montana. The original concept had the brothers playing live concerts while working undercover as government secret agents, hiding their double lives from their family and friends. A pilot was filmed in 2007 but was impeded by the writers strike so Disney filmed a mini-reality show following the brothers on a concert tour that premiered on May 16. That was followed by the June 20, 2008 debut of Camp Rock, and the theatrical 3D concert film Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience. The rush of releases skyrocketed the brothers’ popularity which made the concept of them playing fictional versions of themselves unrealistic, so the spy concept for the series was scrapped in favor of a more real version of what the brothers would be doing in their normal lives. The series original title was formatted as J.O.N.A.S. which was an acronym for ‘Junior Operatives Networking as Spies’, but once that concept was scrapped it changed to just JONAS, retaining the all caps format. On November 9, 2009, Disney Channel announced the series would be renewed for a second season, and on May 5, 2010 it was revealed the show’s title would change to Jonas L.A. as the series setting changed from New Jersey to Los Angeles, the first Disney show to have a location change during the course of the series. In November 2010, Disney announced the series was cancelled after two seasons and 34 episodes.
Do you remember any of these shows? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!
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