The Sad Fate of Harvey Beaks

I had to delay my written review of the latest episodes from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Ajin, and Keijo, after learning Sunday night that Nickelodeon has decided to move the remaining unaired episodes of Harvey Beaks from their main channel, to Nicktoons. Now, for the unintiated, Nicktoons may not seem like the bad idea. While Nicktoons is a sister channel for Nickelodeon, it is however, not part of most basic cable and satellite packages in the United States. So if you want to get Nicktoons, you have to pay extra to subscribe to that channel. And if say, you're on vacation to Florida and stayed at a hotel, don't expect Nicktoons to be among the selection on its Cable TV service, either.

So by moving Harvey Beaks from the main Nickelodeon channel to Nicktoons, it lost a HUGE portion of its viewerbase because of Nicktoons's lack of availability. And creator C.H. Greenblatt is NOT happy. Since the announcement, there have been several posts by Greenblatt on his Tumblr page, expressing his frustration with the network, among other revelations. One in particular was when the news website Cartoon Brew made an article criticizing Nickelodeon, Greenblatt was coerced to reply to Cartoon Brew defending the network.

Now some would say that the reason Harvey Beaks ended up this way is due simply to low ratings, and it's a solid argument. If the show isn't doing so well on a network, then it is cancelled to mitigate loss of revenue. I would argue, however, that the circumstances resulting in Harvey Beaks's fate is nothing to do with the quality of the show, but rather, the way Nickelodeon handled the series as a whole. In fact, we've seen this going on with other cartoons over the last few years, such as Sym-Bionic Titan and Wander Over Yonder - lack of merchandising, little to no promotion of the show, etc. Nickelodeon just has an added, very unreasonable criteria to determine the success or failure of their original programming:

Any show, made by Nickelodeon, must be as good as Spongebob Squarepants. Otherwise, it is canned. The exceptions to this are shows which Nickelodeon has acquired the rights to, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Alvin & The Chipmunks, and Miraculous. Right now, the only other modern Nickelodeon cartoon currently on-air is The Loud House, which is doing well enough to be given a 2nd season order a few months ago. Only time will tell if The Loud House will go beyond Season 2.

To be fair, Disney and Cartoon Network has its own share of atrocities that make its viewer base furious. Disney not only turned down to greenlight "Very Important House" from Invader Zim creator Jhonen Vasquez, but in spite of this, they bought the rights anyway and will not return it back to Vasquez until he pays Disney half a million dollars. Vasquez worked on the pilot for 4 years only for this to happen. Cartoon Network's treatment of their current lineup and what they want on the new shows is very well-documented. But Nickelodeon? What they did to Harvey Beaks and its creator overall is so unreasonable and awful, I cannot help but ask why would anyone want to pitch an animated show on Nickelodeon when the only thing they want is another Spongebob?

This simply is why no one takes Nickelodeon seriously anymore. If they love Spongebob so much, they should just drop the name "Nickelodeon" and go with "Channel Spongebob" instead. I am aware they are bringing back their old IPs, such as Rugrats and Hey! Arnold, as that is the part of the trend lately with all three networks - Disney bringing back Ducktales, and Cartoon Network with Ben 10. Honestly, more power to Nickelodeon's Animation Studio for doing this. But the network itself? I cannot express how unbelievably bad they are.