Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick, and originally called Pinwheel) is an American basic cable and satellite television network that is owned by the Viacom Media Networks division of Viacom.

Most of its programming is aimed at children and adolescents ages 8–16, while its weekday morning edutainment programs are targeted at younger children ages 2–8. The channel's programming consists of original first-run television series, along with occasional broadcasts of theatrically-released and original made-for-cable movies and select other third-party programming. Its programming runs from Sunday through Wednesdays from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. (Eastern and Pacific Time).

Since July 1985, it has shared its channel space with Nick at Nite, a nighttime service that airs during the interim hours, and is treated as a separate channel from Nickelodeon by Nielsen for ratings purposes; it features reruns of older primetime sitcoms, along with some original series and feature films. Both services are sometimes collectively referred to as "Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite", due to their common association as two individual channels sharing a single channel space.

, Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite is available to approximately 91.7 million pay television households (81.4% of households with at least one television set) in the United States.

History
Nickelodeon's history dates back to December 1, 1977, when Warner Cable Communications launched the first two-way interactive cable system, QUBE, in Columbus, Ohio. Its C-3 cable channel carried Pinwheel daily from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Nickelodeon launched on April 1, 1979, initially distributed to Warner Cable systems via satellite on the RCA Satcom-1 transponder.