Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon, formerly known as Nick, is an American pay television channel which was launched on December 1, 1977, as the first cable channel for children. It is owned by ViacomCBS through its domestic networks division and is based in New York City. The network's programming is primarily aimed at children and adolescents aged 2–17, while some of its program blocks target a broader family audience.

he channel was originally first tested as Channel C-3, with Pinwheel as its main program on December 1, 1977. Pinwheel was a television series that was, at the time, only available on QUBE, which was the first two-way major market interactive cable television system, owned by Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment. The channel relaunched as Nickelodeon on April 1, 1979, and expanded to other cable providers nationwide. It was initially commercial-free and remained without advertising until 1984. Warner-Amex sold Nickelodeon, along with its sister networks MTV and VH1, to Viacom in 1986.

As of September 2018, the channel is available to about 87.167 million households in the United States.

History
The channel's name comes from the first five-cent movie theaters called nickelodeons. Its history dates back to December 1, 1977, when Warner Cable Communications launched the first two-way interactive cable system, QUBE, in Columbus, Ohio. Under the name Pinwheel Network, the C-3 cable channel carried Pinwheel daily from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Initially scheduled for a February 1979 launch, Nickelodeon launched on April 1, 1979, initially distributed to Warner Cable systems via satellite on the RCA Satcom-1 transponder (the owner of the satellite, RCA Americom, later became GE Americom as a result of General Electric's acquisition of RCA Americom's parent company, RCA Corporation, before merging with Luxembourg based Société Européenne des Satellites to form SES Global, now SES S.A, which one of the descendants of the Satcom series, the SES and AMC satellite constellations, stil operate, Nickelodeon presently broadcasts on AMC-11). Originally commercial-free, advertising was introduced in January 1984.