Nickelodeon(often shortened toNick) is an American pay television channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through Nickelodeon Group. The channel is primarily aimed at children and adolescents aged 2 to 17, along with a broader family audience through its program blocks.
The channel began life as a test broadcast on December 1, 1977, as part of QUBE, an early cable television system broadcast locally in Columbus, Ohio. The channel, now named Nickelodeon, launched to a new nationwide audience on April 1, 1979, with Pinwheel as its inaugural program. The network was initially commercial-free and remained without advertising until 1984.
Throughout history, Nickelodeon has introduced several sister channels and programming blocks. Nick Jr. is a preschool morning block launched on January 4, 1988. Nicktoons, based on the flagship brand, launched as a separate sister channel in 2002. In 1999, Nickelodeon partnered with Sesame Workshop to create Noggin, an educational brand consisting of a cable channel and an interactive website. Two blocks aimed at a teenage audience, TEENick (previously on Nickelodeon) and The N (previously on Noggin), were merged into a standalone channel, TeenNick, in 2009.
As of September 2018, the channel is available to about 87.167 million households in the United States.
