Haven’t posted anything for a while so I thought I’d post this email that I wrote about five years ago as a response to a member of my yahoo group. From reading over it I think I may have been encouraging the members to start some conversations by talking about the different shows that we all remembered and as you will read this member wasn’t very happy about that.
You’re probably wondering why I am posting this right? Well, I’m posting it in hopes that you will see that no matter who you are or where you live you DO have a voice, you DO make a difference. Never forget that! And to remind you that no matter how old these shows are that they will be given new life again if we will only bring them out of the closets, dust them off and start talking about them again. Let’s breath some life back into the old classics like Matt & Jenny, Kids’ Writes, Studio See, Spread Your Wings, Pinwheel and so forth.
Read through these emails then go to my program list page and look over the old shows. Which ones were your favorites? Which ones do you wish you could find on video somewhere?
E-Mail From - Justin D
What is there left to say? We already got that everyone here misses old Nick, then comes the petitions, sharing of a few files, and that’s a wrap. Unless someone new comes along and feels the need to share memories, there's a file request, or Nick is going to air a certain show, there’s really no need for convo...
My Answer To Him
No that’s not it. It’s not just we miss Classic Nick, sign the petition, get the t-shirt and move on. It goes much deeper than that for some of us. We’re on this list b/c we remember and love the old shows but no one ever talks about them. Or if we do it’s divided b/c most of you are just kids (no offence mid 20s is still a kid to me) and have NO CLUE what our Nickelodeon was like in the 1980s.
Everyday I would “rush home from school” to watch The (real) Tomorrow People with my friend Christine. Then in the summer I would baby sit, I was about 14 so toddlers, and we’d watch Pinwheel and Today’s Special then go to the garage and play, have lunch, take a little nap then their mother’s would come and get them. When we’d sit down to watch Nickelodeon my Grandmother would watch with us. She died when I was 16 so the times I spent with her were and are very special memories to me.
My best friend I mentioned moved to Germany when we were about 14 and we would always watch Nickelodeon together. After she moved we kept in touch for a little while but then lost track of each other. The Tomorrow People was our favorite show. She was in love with Tyso and I was in love with Stephen.
When I first got my tapes I stayed up all night watching them, got about four hours of sleep then got up and picked up where I’d left off the night before. I started crying when the first show started. It brought back so many wonderful memories of happy times and good friends.
No it’s not just we miss Classic Nick, sign the petition, get the t-shirt and move on. I want, with all my heart, to have a Classic Nickelodeon channel and I believe that we, all of us together, can put a demand on Viacom to give us what we want. One person CAN make a difference and thousands of us do have a voice, our job is to make them listen to us. Respectfully and with honor make them listen to us. There IS a market for this type of programming, if there wasn’t hundreds of thousands of people would not have signed the online petitions.
And if the baby boomers can have their channel why can’t my generation have one? What would be so wrong in that? I’m a 37-year-old woman with no children who lives in a growing community in Oklahoma AND I HAVE A VOICE. If you think that you don’t then you’re wrong, and if you don’t want a Classic Nickelodeon channel then you don’t, I can respect that; but don’t put us down and tell us that if we don’t like what they show now to just don’t watch it b/c trust me, we don’t.
Don’t tell us to just run out and buy the stuff on video b/c programming from the 1970s is not so easy to find; if it were I’d have copies of Kids’ Writes, Livewire, Standby!…Lights! Camera! Action! and many other shows they aired back then. You all think it’s easy b/c your idea of “classic” is the 1990s and that stuff is out of video for the most part, but we, the 80’s kids, don’t have it that easy. We have to rely on individuals who might just happen to have a copy of something we want, and even then the quality isn’t always the best but we pay for it b/c we want to relive those times.
