The long-running hit "Adventure Time". Developed by Nickelodeon, but this IP was allowed to slip away to rival Cartoon Network. So are we surprised Nick's reach and standing have ... uh ... slipped?
The Los Angeles Times asks the question: "Can Nickelodeon [Viacom's Kid Cable Network] make a comeback?"
... Back in the 1990s, Nickelodeon’s competition was Cartoon Network, PBS and Disney Channel. Now, the network is struggling to fend off incursions from Netflix, Amazon.com, Hulu and Disney+, the just-launched streaming service that secured 10 million customers in its first day. ...
It's really easy to answer the Times' query: "No." And the reason the answer is effortless? Count the ways ...
1) Viacom has become a weak sister among entertainment conglomerates called the Walt Disney Company, Universal-NBC-Comcast, and Warner-A.T. & T.
2) The company sat on its corporate hands while Disney gobbled up IP makers Pixar, Marvel, and Lucas Film.
3) Bad decisions inside the division At one point Nick was eating Disney's lunch on the home cartoon front, prevailing in the contest to attract kids' eyeballs. But then Nick made a series of dubious choices, everything from letting Adventure Time slip away to Cartoon Network [see above], to deciding that CG cartoons were the future of TV animation (they weren't), to leasing its IP to Netflix (a mistake that helped drive its ratingsz down).
So now Nick struggles against Disney and Cartoon Network on the shrinking platforms known as cable networks, and has no presence at all in the streaming department. So will Nick do some kind of miracle rebound?
Don't think so.
Do know that Viacom will be merging (or re-merging, since they’ve been split since 2006) with CBS Corporation this December, making the combined entity (ViacomCBS) at least the same size as the other conglomerates.
ReplyDeleteI think the merger will make them larger than now, but not as large as Disney, Warner-AT&T, and Universal-NBC-Comcast.
ReplyDeleteThe smallest player, of course, is Sony.