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`Nick' of the times

Menka Shivdasani

Now that the summer vacations have ended, and parents across the country are heaving huge sighs of relief, there is at least one schoolgirl who is going back with an experience of a lifetime behind her. This summer, on May 31, when 13-year-o ld Anshu Awasthi from New Delhi won a children's sweepstake contest, she became Boss for the Day at Nickelodeon, being escorted to the office in a limousine and deciding what programmes ought to be run on her special day.

Consequently, on June 24, between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., your children are going be watching Hey Arnold, Global Guts, Clarissa, Real Monsters, Kenan and Kel, Figure it Out, Legends of the Hidden Temple and Rugrats, in the order that Anshu wants. The Boss for the Day decided the timings because that was when she would be home to watch her favourite shows!

#It was a great experience, says Anshu. ``I learned how to adjust to and work with different types of people. Considering it was a long and tiring day, I learned how to cope with the hard work.''

``The experience has not really changed my life,'' she adds. ``But it has turned me into an optimist and given me more confidence. I also learned how shooting takes place and recordings take place in the electronic media.''

You can be sure of one thing, though. With Nickelodeon having touched her life directly, it's a good bet that it will be one of Anshu's favourite channels!

When you think of children's television in India, it is still Cartoon Network that is top of mind. The newest kid on the block, however, Nickelodeon or `Nick' as they affectionately call it, has been steadily making inroads since its launch as an encrypt ed channel on October 16, 1999. The channel, which is a programming service of MTV Networks, has a strategic alliance with Zee Network, and is currently seen -- or so they say -- in 4.5 million homes. It is also available in 300 million households in 149 territories worldwide.

When Dan S. Acuff, author of `What Kids Buy and Why The Psychology of Marketing to Kids' was here a few months ago, I remember he referred to Nickelodeon as being popular because it was gross. Children between the ages of eight and 12, he had said, like giggling about sex and bad smells, and Nickelodeon provided them with the opportunity to do so. (Though, of course, this could hardly be true of all its programming!)

In fact, in the early years, soon after its birth in 1979 in Buffalo, New York and Columbus, Nickelodeon was seen as a baby network and children wanted nothing to do with it. The first show that viewers saw was Pinwheel, a magazine programme for pre-scho olers, which had already run for several months on QUBE, an experimental system created by Warner Amex Cable in Columbus.

The channel was designed as a marketing tool to showcase the value that cable TV could bring to communities -- a children's channel as part of a cable package made for a great addition and, apparently, parents liked the gentle, carefully chosen education al programmes.

The children were not so thrilled, it seems. With such wholesome fare as Vegetable Soup, Studio See and Spread Your Wings, `Nick' was just a little too hard to stomach -- it was too good. So `Nick' discovered another green substance -- slime -- just in t he Nick of time. It was gloppy and lumpy like spinach, but with a rebellious attitude children innately understood. As a result, `Green Slime Green Slime' was introduced on `You Can't Do That on Television', a sketch comedy show where grown-ups were as l ikely to get slimed as children. (Nickelodeon believed that getting slimed was not a punishment; it was a celebration of mess -- the sort of thing that children love and adults can't stand.)

Nickelodeon may have tilted towards the seamier side of life in some of its programming, but it wanted nothing to do with violence, it seems, not even in the early days when money was still a problem. Once, when its total ad sales business was only gener ating $4 millions in revenue, Nickelodeon turned down a $1 million ad buy because the product in question was a toy gun with a target that children were supposed to wear on their hearts.

In India, it is still an ad-free channel, according to Balinder Singh, who is responsible for Nickelodeon's marketing in India. Since no channel is in the business for charity, however, this is bound to change fairly soon.

When Nickelodeon came into the Indian market, it was with the view that with over 20 million cable and satellite homes, India was the world's third-largest market, and Nickelodeon expected to reach 40 per cent of it by the fourth quarter of 2000. Thanks to a separate feed, it would also have customised packaging and content produced in India. After all, as a Nickelodeon/ Just Kid Inc. Global Kids Study discovered, 56 per cent of Indian children listed watching TV as their favourite pastime, ahead of pla ying outside (44 per cent), going on vacation (41 per cent) and playing video games (39 per cent).

After talking to several children, especially when some of their programming initiatives overseas failed, Nickelodeon discovered that children are not little adults, and they are not all the same.

Any mother could tell you that one, but then Nickelodeon is using the knowledge to good advantage. Cartoon Network has competition it might need to be concerned about.

The author can be contacted at menkashivdasani@hotmail.com

Pic.:Anshu Awasthi, the child who became "Boss for the Day" at Nickelodeon.