Nickelodeon announces The Splat’s night one lineup

If you haven’t been following the saga of The Splat, Nickelodeon first teased the programming block in early September by quietly releasing a new website and a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #TheSplatIsComing. The following day, a teaser trailer made its debut on YouTube.

One Kenan and Kel Good Burger reunion later, Nickelodeon finally confirmed The Splat would be a new programming block on its TeenNick channel featuring fan favorite shows from the 90s. Nickelodeon tried this once before with its The ’90s Are All That two-hour programming block, but The Splat will be expanded to a full eight hours every night from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Eastern. Yesterday afternoon, Nickelodeon announced its lineup for The Splat’s debut on October 5:

• The Adventures of Pete & Pete
• You Can’t Do That On Television
• Kenan & Kel
• Doug
• The Ren & Stimpy Show

We should note the specificity in their associated tweet: this is The Splat’s night one lineup. In a reply to another user, The Splat’s official Twitter account states Are You Afraid of the Dark? will air later in the programming block’s opening week. This suggests The Splat’s programming block will change on a daily basis, at least until the network has pinpointed which shows their audience really wants. They’ve taken a position of agility by design, prepared to tailor their programming to viewer demands. As reported by Time, the full list of shows that made the cut for The Splat are as follows:

• All That
• The Angry Beavers
• Are You Afraid of the Dark?
• CatDog
• Clarissa Explains It All
• Hey Arnold!
• Hey Dude
• Kenan & Kel
• The Ren & Stimpy Show
• Legends of the Hidden Temple
• Rocko’s Modern Life
• Rugrats
• Salute Your Shorts
• The Wild Thornberrys

This list, however, can’t be comprehensive: note Doug on The Splat’s debut lineup and its absence on Time’s list. Doug‘s inclusion comes as something of a surprise — Disney acquired the show in 1996, its final seasons created for ABC. The Splat’s first teaser also included clips from Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, also absent from Time’s list. At this point, anything and everything 90s Nick should be considered fair game. The Splat is going a step further in recreating the 90s experience and will run Nickelodeon bumpers, commercials, and interstitial from the appropriate era — not to mention week-long programming events such as Halloween’s Nick or Treat.

As a “90s kid” myself, I’m feeling the hype. On the other hand, as a 90s kid, I know our generation is watching less and less cable television, instead turning to Netflix and other streaming services. While The Splat will offer a streaming service for its programming, we can assume a cable subscription will be required to tune in even online — much like other networks, such as Cartoon Network, which offer online on-demand only if you log in with your cable subscription credentials. Nostalgia might just be enough to fuel The Splat’s success, but we might find ourselves wishing these old favorites were on Netflix instead so we could watch at our leisure.

While The Splat’s initial teaser video sits at just shy of a million views on YouTube, subsequent teasers flounder — its most recent teaser, posted five days ago, has barely over 4,000 views at the time of writing. Is that a sign the hype train has already derailed, or merely viewers deciding they get the point — #TheSplatIsComing — and they just want it in front of their eyeballs already? Certainly, it’ll be interesting to see if The Splat can carve out a place of its own in late night up against the demographically dominant Adult Swim.