Nickelodeon Upfront 2009

For its thirtieth year, Nickelodeon and its associated on-air and online partners are eagerly priming its related brands for perhaps another three decades of creative ventures in children's entertainment. Announced at this year's annual Upfront press event, Nickelodeon appears to have quite a bit up its sleeves in the coming months: including plans to merge and strengthen its cable programming networks, further integrate teen-targeted initiatives, and reestablish its investment in both animated and live-action film entertainment.

Nickelodeon appears to be striking the delicate balance in consolidating its number of brands available with the larger goal of finer-tuning its viewers' needs; be those needs for preschool programming, television animation, live-action teen comedies, or other forms of original content. Still devoted to all sorts of action and comedy through animation and live-action elements, Nickelodeon's reorganization will come with the re-launching of established TV channels, which in turn will reportedly ease the transition kids/teens make between brand and properties as they age.

Beginning with Q4 2009, for example, all television (NOGGIN, The N, Nicktoons Network) and online (Nick.com, NeoPets.com, others…) efforts will be shuffled under the single brand name "Nickelodeon" proper.

This unified-brand approach hopes to streamline any platform jumping that children, teens, or adults currently encounter when switching between content on multiple distribution networks.

NOGGIN will be renamed Nick Jr. (content and format will not change), The N will be renamed TEENick (focusing exclusively on "the depth of teen-dom"), and the Nicktoons Network, chiefly unfazed, will soon serve as a secondary outlet for Nicktoons, with an emphasis on appeasing the increasingly valuable Boys 6-11 demographic.

Online, Nick.com is looking to expand into an even larger multimedia network, containing a digital portfolio of programming and related entertainment for children as well as their parents and/or caretakers. Although not specified at the Upfront presentation, Nickelodeon is likely to subsequently transition more of its television titles online for viewers to grasp with greater convenience.

"We're bringing innovation to every audience segment with bold new content for all ages," Cyma Zarghami, President of Nickelodeon, commented on the evolution of Nickelodeon this year. "Nickelodeon just keeps getting bigger and bolder, moving into spaces we've never been before. With a proven thirty-year track record, we're more qualified than ever to wrap our arms around this current generation of kids and the first generation of Nick families to better serve our audience and partners."

Additional announcements from Nickelodeon concerning their 2009 Upfront present include a formal announcement of acquiring Michael Eisner's stop-motion series Glenn Martin, DDS and more 10th anniversary news for SpongeBob SquarePants. A breakdown of Nickelodeon's portfolio re-branding efforts is available on the following pages of this AnimationInsider.net feature article.