Nickelodeon Orders New 'SpongeBob' Animation

As if an entire summer-long love fest for cable television's most widely-viewed undersea sponge wasn't a large enough hint, Nickelodeon made it official this week announcing that after ten years at the top of the charts SpongeBob SquarePants has been acquired for another season. SpongeBob's 10th anniversary this year was met with oodles of limited edition consumer product lines, highly rated television specials, new home video releases, a documentary, and much more. And to little surprise, SpongeBob SquarePants looks all too eager to embark yet another ten years.

A splendiferous amalgam of slapstick, Saturday-morning humor and well-written social parody, SpongeBob SquarePants is the tale of one little sponge and how he somehow manages to treat everyday as if it were the greatest day ever. Whether playing with a cardboard box or a stray piece of paper, SpongeBob knows how to have a good time. The animated television series is Nickelodeon's longstanding pride and joys over the past decade, and is likely to remain so given the cartoon's staying power among all viewer demographics.

"After a decade on our air, SpongeBob has emerged as one of the most beloved and popular characters in television history," Brown Johnson, President of Animation, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids & Family Group, commented. "Audiences of all ages have fallen in love with this show and we're delighted to be serving up additional original episodes to our viewers for many years."

Nickelodeon has announced a greenlight of an additional twenty-six episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants. In 2009, SpongeBob SquarePants drew more than 75 million viewers monthly and currently ranks as the number-one animated series with Kids 2-11 as it has for more than seven consecutive years.

The animated television series pulled in a respectable 7.7 million Total Viewers (P2+) during the primetime airing of the anniversary special episode "Truth or Square."

Produced at Nickelodeon's Burbank, CA animation hub, the new order of SpongeBob SquarePants episodes will bring the series' episode total to 178 episodes. The cartoon will remain executive produced by creator Stephen Hillenburg. While SpongeBob and his friends at the restaurant take a bit of a break during the Holidays, Nickelodeon remains busy with the release of the season song "Don't Be a Jerk (It's Christmas!)" -- a SpongeBob song "symbolic of the optimism and kindness he has represented for the past 10 years." The track is available on Nick Records' SpongeBob's Greatest Hits , performed by Tom Kenny.

on Nickelodeon: Nickelodeon (www.Nick.com), now in its 30th year, is the number-one entertainment brand for kids. It has built a diverse, global business by putting kids first in everything it does. The company includes television programming and production in the United States and around the world, plus consumer products, online, recreation, books, magazines and feature films.

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