TeenNick is only airing Henry Danger (I am not exaggerating)
So, this is something I discovered last night that is just blowing my mind: for most of the past year, the channel TeenNick is showing only Henry Danger.
I cannot emphasize how literal I am being with that. Usually "a channel is only showing X" is an exaggeration, but for once, no. As far as I can tell, 99% of TeenNick's programming has been Henry Danger or its spin-off, Danger Force, for the past year. At most, there are brief "respites" where it will have a block with another show. For example, from July 27 to 31, it aired Zoey 101 from 11 PM to 1 AM. Two hours late at night, and then back to Henry Danger. Similar story with some new Nickelodeon show called Erin & Aaron: it showed periodically starting on April 22, and was apparently last aired on July 4.
Otherwise? Most days are JUST Henry Danger. Even Wikipedia lists Henry Danger and Danger Force as the only current shows. (Along with Nick News, which apparently only airs once a month.)
This is just honestly stunning to me. For those unfamiliar with TeenNick, it's a sub-channel of Nickelodeon. As far as I can remember, it pretty much never had original programming, but would air reruns of mostly live-action shows from Nickelodeon (either older finished shows or currently airing), some older Nickelodeon cartoons (Hey Arnold and Rugrats), or shows picked up through syndication (namely Degrassi, and more recently America's Funniest Home Videos and Wipeout for some reason...?).
What I'm saying is there is no reason for them to ONLY air this one, single show. It can't be blamed on any production issues, since it primarily airs reruns. TeenNick SHOULD have access to all the other shows from Nickelodeon's library, so it can't be a licensing issue either. As stated earlier, it aired episodes of a show that premiered this year on Nickelodeon. And Henry Danger is fairly recent, ending in 2020, so I don't know if it's a matter of residuals.
The only reason I can think of is that they want to push people to get Paramount+. Except even with that logic, this channel is currently a waste of money. Henry Danger has a total of 128 half-hour episodes (though I think some are part of a one-hour special, so Wikipedia counts 121 episodes...?), so that's basically 5 days' worth of content before airing the same thing again. That's not enough to justify a dedicated channel—not for viewers or advertisers.
From a cursory internet search, they average 66,000 viewers, with a peak of 99,000 on January 1, 2023. I can't imagine that would appeal to advertisers. I feel like the costs of running the channel outweigh any potential profits. This feels like it's just a money sink.
I just... I can't wrap my head around it. What the heck??
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Or just want to join me in boggling over this weirdness? This feels like it could be a symptom of cable's overall degradation (I've seen people comparing it to Cartoon Network's limited programming in recent years), but... It almost feels like this channel is being sabotaged? Deliberately set up for failure and closure? Just, I can't wrap my head around a year-long nonstop "marathon".
I've been sitting here thinking about this and going back and forth with my wife for the better part of 30 minutes now, and I think I have an explanation (no guarantees that it's the correct one).
Edit: @SeeNipplesAndDo pointed out that actually FCC regulations only apply to channels that are also broadcast (and technically only to the broadcast itself), and TeenNick is cable-only, so my dead air reasoning below doesn’t apply. My new suspicion is that it costs less the keep the automation running without programming than the company would lose if they dropped all of the ad spots, which are also programmed in automatically by the automation software!
The FCC has requirements about "dead air" on cable TV. Specifically, you can get fined or even lose your license for a channel if you have too much (really any) dead air time. I know a little bit about this because I worked as an engineer for my college radio station, which had similar restrictions.
At the radio station (at all radio stations, as far as I know), we used automation software to make sure that there was never any dead air. The automation software was, of course, absolutely terrible, but it allowed for reasonably complex programming (it was just a nightmare to actually program it). Most stations would have a relatively static, large, inoffensive playlist of "standby" content that would play by default if there was no other programming. This was super important; if there was terrible weather or a DJ got suddenly ill or whatever other catastrophe, you wanted to make sure that you were still playing your music (and following other FCC requirements, like stating your frequency at regular intervals).
So here's my hypothesis: at some point, someone set "Henry Danger and Danger Force reruns" as the default playlist for TeenNick on the automation software. It probably played mostly at night, when no one was really watching, or at other odd hours when they didn't bother programming other shows. For a while, there were probably other recurring programs, like "play 2 hours of Drake and Josh every third day for two months", or what have you.
Then, for whatever reason, Nickelodeon dramatically pulled back resources for TeenNick. To the point where they're letting it run purely to keep their channel rights and for no other reason. Eventually the recurring programs ran until their stop date and stopped recurring. And since they're not paying anyone to come up with any new programming for it, the automation software is just looping the default playlist endlessly, and the execs are just fine with that because for whatever reason they considered it a lost cause anyway.
This is the most... Logical answer? I imagine it is an Exec decision to run content just to keep the channel rights. We see that with so many other industries.
Such a weird show, but I imagine it's because it'd the cheapest one to air.
Huh, I hadn’t really thought about that, but I guess it makes sense that if a channel was never broadcasting, they wouldn’t be regulated by the FCC.
Maybe rather than “they need to keep the channel”, the reason turns into “it’s cheaper to run the automation with no programming than they would lose if they stopped running ad spots?”
In addition to any regulatory requirements, there may be also contractual obligations, such that it is less costly to run the loop than stop the feed altogether.
You're not wrong. I don't watch much cable anymore, only have it because my parents have some shows and channels they like to watch. The degradation in quality has definitely been noticeable over the years, though some channels seem to be trying to diversify their programming again. This is definitely the most egregious example I've seen though.
You mention jumping ship to go streaming only, but that has its own difficulties. A lot of streaming services... Well, fail. There's just too many these days, so people don't want to bother subscribing for each individual channel or network. Most networks' best hopes, if they're not already part of a massive distribution company like Paramount or Disney, would be to partner with some existing service—which obviously cuts into their profits. And pretty sure the current strikes are heavily rooted in issues with streaming residuals, so streaming may not be as lucrative in the future anyway.
Whatever happens, the days of thousands of channels is coming to an end. I think some are holding out hope that the streaming bubble will burst, while the rest are just in a state of limbo waiting to see what will happen next.
I think this is a leftover of people who had cable to a very long time and the mindset of cable bundles.
You simply don't need to subscribe to them all at once. Before my SO stumbled into a bunch of ridiculous deals on our streaming services we would often rotate services out every 2-3 months. We would often ping-pong introductory offers between her and me to save a ton of money. She'd get the introductory offer to HBOMax for 3 months and we'd binge shows there. We'd cancel in the 3rd month and pick up another streaming service (Say Disney+). Then a month or two later I'd use the HBOMax "3 Months for $5" type offer and we'd watch for another 3 months. Shortly after that was up and I had unsubbed she would get "Please come back to us" offers for another 3 months for $5. Usually we were never subscribed to more than 2 services.
Now they're giving away yearly subscriptions to these services left, right and center. She recently signed up for some Walmart home delivery service for $50 a year. That $50 gets us free delivery for orders over $40 or $50, a year of Paramount+, $5 a month at Panera1 and a few other freebies. We haven't even used the delivery service yet, lol.
1Our local Panera had just started an "unlimited" drink subscription for $5/month where every two hours you can go there and get a free drink (soda, lemonaid, tea, etc) which is what we use that $5 on.
I don't think those days will end, I think that the channels will shift focus into specialized channels like what TeenNick is doing with Harvey Danger. Pluto.tv has tons of "channels" that only show 1 thing. I've been binging/watching/background noising their Godzilla channel for a bit now and, as the name implies, it is just Godzilla movies 24h a day. They have tons of dedicated channels like that for different series/IPs. Their ads are shockingly low (2, maybe 3, short ads every 20 minutes?)--nothing at all like SlingTV where I swear they injected their own ads into the ad segments and I swear I was watching more ads per hour than actual show.
The issue is that a lot of networks are trying to make their own streaming services, with varying degrees of success. A lot just don't have enough content beyond a couple specific shows to get people to sign up. Juggling subscriptions the way you described is honestly a hassle not many would bother with, especially for only a couple shows. It ultimately doesn't pan out well for the consumer OR the network.
I fully agree dedicated channels work when there's a lot of material and/or interest. Plenty of people would tune into a Godzilla channel randomly just to see what's on or to pass time, and I remember Pluto.tv also has a Rifftrax channel which was awesome. Though I don't think TeenNick wants to make an official Henry Danger channel, I doubt it was ever popular enough for that. If Nick was going to make any dedicated channel, Spongebob would be a more obvious choice.
That said, I am on board with the idea of more specialized channels as long as it's either not just one single show, or is a show with a LOT of variety like Monty Python. Even Godzilla films have more variety than a single TV show, I remember at least one involves going to space.
I started noticing this trend about 12 years ago when the channels I loved to watch (Food Network, HGTV, Cooking Channel) all started showing the same 4 shows on repeat, including the same episodes. it's almost like 24-hour TV was never a good idea lol.
That is fascinatingly weird! I'm sure it's some bizarre capitalism- spawned logic like you mentioned, trying to get people onto Paramount+ or something, but I'm very curious about why exactly this is happening.
Same. I stumbled on it by pure chance when channel surfing for the first time in ages, and looked up if there was a marathon or something. Instead first result was a 10-month-old reddit post complaining about it airing only Henry Danger for the past two months at that point. It got people replying within the past month to vent about it still going on.
It's just weirdly fascinating. It seems to be part of a chain of deliberately bad decisions, since I also saw people complaining about them closing down the NickRewind block in 2022, which showed older shows. A full rerun channel airing stuff from the 90s and 2000's would probably get a pretty steady audience compared to 24/7 Henry Danger.
It might just be that that one show has the highest amount of viewers, so they only show it. Cable as a business is slowly dying so the company is probably just waiting until a certain $ amount isn't reached.
Here's a good video on this phenomenon, using MTV's obsession with "Ridiculousness" as the basis.
Huh, I guess that explains why that one radio station I loved suddenly played nothing but Christmas music for months. Day after Halloween, nothing but Christmas music, and then one day it's a completely different channel, different hosts, no acknowledgement whatsoever. Seemed like that channel had a completely different format every year.
Thanks for solving that mystery!
If you want to learn more about this technique, it's known in the broadcast industry as "stunting."
I feel like this could be the answer, because airing the same show 24/7 is ratings garbage and this channel has to be costing them more money than it makes right now. Like I said in my post, it feels almost like self-sabotage. It definitely feels like they're airing the show as a placeholder purely to keep the channel rights.
The issue is, I'm not sure how much that would apply to TeenNick. To my knowledge that channel has always been cable-only. Radio and analog TV channels have unique frequencies in limited supply, so that process makes sense for them, but I don't think that limitation applies to cable channels.
If that is what they're doing, it's an internal rebranding scheme. Just wonder how long much longer they're going to wait to decide what to replace it with. Maybe they're waiting to see how Paramount+ does so they can have the channel as a fallback option.
All broadcast TV these days is ratings garbage. Bob Hearts Abishola gets like 6 million viewers on average, and that's a highly successful primetime sitcom. The first season of Seinfeld was getting like 19 million viewers and that was considered "cancel" territory. The Simpsons got an average of 2.25 million viewers last season, this season its 1.83 million.
TeenNick's 24 hours of Henry Danger, or MTV's 24 hours of Ridiculousness, probably isn't going to get ratings even as good as those above, but it's probably not much worse than what those channels would get otherwise, and all they have to pay for is the rights to the show, and the minuscule cost of delivering the content.
The most-played channel on my TV is an IPTV channel that just plays episodes of Star Trek all day, I'm more likely to turn that on than any of the major networks. It costs nothing to make since the shows were already shot, its ad-supported, it catches anyone's eye that wants to watch Star Trek (replace this with any other single show), and they're likely to sit there and watch for hours once they tune in.
Streaming and other media delivery methods have decimated the ratings landscape, and this is the world we live in now.
Your dedication to this oddity is delightful. I have no answer, but @cloud_loud is great about that stuff ;)
I don't have an answer, I don't even know what Henry Danger is. But someone linked to the video about MTV filling up on Ridiculousness. So I assume with the fall of cable, programming has become wildly lazy and not particularly necessary, especially for highly specialized channels like Teen Nick. Not a lot of people are watching anyway and doing these insane marathons are probably cheaper and result in similar results to stronger efforts.
Hey, you subscribed for 10,000 channels and they've gotta make that package sound appealing somehow.