A major Nickelodeon channel is being shut down in North America soon along with some Disney stations according to some financial pressures revealed in a new report. It’s no secret that the television landscape has been changing over the years thanks to the advent of streaming services. Seen especially through the COVID-19 pandemic, streaming services are becoming increasingly popular as more audiences shift away from linear television programming. And for some television networks, these changes have unfortunately also meant less revenue overall. Which means that not every network has been able to sustain operations in the face of the lack of revenue.
According to a new report from The Canadian Press (as shared by Yahoo!), Corus Entertaintment is planning to shut down five of their childrens’ programming channels in the face of ad revenue changes. As they have announced, Corus Entertainment is planning to stop distributing Nickelodeon, ABC Spark, Disney French (La Chaine Disney), Disney XD and Disney Jr. in the Canada region as of September 1st. This is unfortunately reflective of how children’s programming has changed in the last few years too.
What’s Going On With Nickelodeon?
Nickelodeon has been going through some shifts in the last few years with North America, and that’s just a result of kids’ watching habits changing too. Not only are audiences shifting further away from linear television overall, but that’s even more of the case for children. Not only are there more options online available for the kinds of young audiences that channels like Nickelodeon are hoping to cater to, but it’s the ready availableness of those streaming options that makes it hard for kids to deny either. They could potentially watch a video five different times in a row in the same span of time SpongeBob SquarePants airs its own episodes twice.
The report on the shutdown seems to further emphasize this as well. A spokesperson for Corus Entertainment explained in a statement that the move to stop distributing these channels comes from a “comprehensive review” look at their extended portfolio to address the “evolving needs of our audiences and distribution partners.” Corus Entertainment is still planning to air Disney Channel across its TV and streaming platforms, however, as the company continues to look for ways to save in an uncertain future.
Is Nickelodeon Going to Be Okay?
Although Nickelodeon is one of the channels that’s going to stop its distribution through Corus Entertainment in Canada due to uncertain financial struggles, the channel overall seems to be doing better than ever. There are still brand new projects making their debut recently like Wylde Pak, and SpongeBob SquarePants is doing even better (with SpongeBob himself even making his longtime dream come true) with the fourth film in the franchise officially making its debut in theaters later this year. Directed by Derek Drymon with a script from Pam Brady and Matt Lieberman and story by Marc Ceccarelli and Kaz and Pam Brady, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants will be hitting theaters across the United States on December 19th.
Produced by Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies together with Domain Entertainment and MRC, the new film is teased as such, “SpongeBob and his Bikini Bottom friends set sail in their biggest, all-new, can’t miss cinematic event ever…The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants. Desperate to be a big guy, SpongeBob sets out to prove his bravery to Mr. Krabs by following The Flying Dutchman – a mysterious swashbuckling ghost pirate – on a seafaring comedy-adventure that takes him to the deepest depths of the deep sea, where no Sponge has gone before.”
HT – Yahoo!
