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'SpongeBob SquarePants'
Sniff, git over, 'Rugrats,' you're yesterday's 'toon
By Elizabeth White
The story of kids television this year has been one of small and significant revolutions.
First the Cartoon Network started appealing directly to adults this fall with its nighttime "Adult Swim" programming block.
Then Fox, home of the once mighty "Power Rangers," eliminated its weekday afternoon block and is rumored to be looking to dump its Saturday morning kids time as well.
And more recently NBC announced that it was leasing its Saturday morning space to the cable company Discovery Networks, starting in the fall of 2002.
Those are the small revolutions.
Now for the significant revolution.
Nickelodeon’s "Rugrats" has been unseated as the top kids program on television.
Its successor is fellow Nickelodeon program "SpongeBob SquarePants," which follows "Rugrats" on weekday nights at 8 p.m. and on weekend mornings at 10 a.m.
As one media analyst puts it, the ascendancy of "SpongeBob" over "Rugrats" is as monumental as a new afternoon talk show beating "Oprah."
The 10-year-old "Rugrats" will still finish the year as the top kids program on TV, with a year-to-date average kids 2-11 rating of 7.4 for its regular episodes at 7:30 p.m. on weekday nights and 9 and 9:30 a.m. on weekend mornings.
That rating translates to an average audience of 2.2 million kids ages 2 to 11 per episode.
But since September the three-year-old "SpongeBob SquarePants" has become the No. 1 show among kids 2-11, with an average 6.1 rating and average audience of two million kids 2-11 per episode for the past two months.
Each week, "SpongeBob" pulls in an average of 10 million kids 2-11 and five million adults.
"'SpongeBob’s' success also represents a recent trend in cartoons, away from the toy-driven shows to quirkier, more ironic programs that adults might enjoy as much as kids," says the analyst.
While "SpongeBob" merchandise will certainly fill the shelves this holiday season, the undersea cartoon has more in common with "Rocky and Bullwinkle," "The Tick," and "Rugrats" than "G.I. Joe" or "Pokemon."
Even by cartoon standards, "SpongeBob" is a goofball show to its core, down to its singalong theme song that shouts out "SpongeBob SquarePants!"
The title character is a sweetly innocent yellow sea sponge who wears a tie and lives inside a pineapple in the undersea town of Bikini Bottom. Life for SpongeBob is pretty much the same as it would be if he lived on dry land and wasn’t an invertebrate. He has a job, annoying neighbors, a pet snail named Gary, and favorite junk foods.
SpongeBob’s day job is to flip Krabbie Patties as a fry cook in the Krusty Krab, but he spends most of his time hanging out with his best friends, Patrick, a clueless starfish, and Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel who decided she would prefer to live underwater.
The three concoct ways to amuse themselves, make money and become famous, all while avoiding SpongeBob’s cynical neighbor Squidward and the underwater villain Plankton.
Very rarely do any of SpongeBob’s schemes succeed, but that’s much less the point than the gusto with which SpongeBob makes the attempt. But as far as his TV effort is concerned, "SpongeBob" has been succeeding just fine.
December 19, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Elizabeth White is a staff writer for Media Life.
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