Country South Korea Broadcast area National Website www.nick.co.kr Founded 2001 | Language Korean Sister channel(s) SBS MTV Headquarters Seoul | |
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Owned by SBS Viacom
(joint venture of SBS and Viacom) | ||
Nickelodeon (a.k.a. Nick) is a South Korean cable TV channel aimed at children and teens. It is the South Korean version of American Nickelodeon. The channel is currently owned by SBS Viacom LLC, a joint venture of SBS Medianet and Viacom International Media Networks.
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Nickelodeon's original programmes in South Korea before the dedicated channel
In South Korea, some original programmes from Nickelodeon, like Rugrats, Rocket Power, The Wild Thornberrys, SpongeBob SquarePants, LazyTown and Dora the Explorer, were shown on EBS (a public broadcaster), except The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius that made début on MBC. A localisation of Nick Jr.'s Blue's Clues was shown on KBS2 (of public broadcaster KBS). The Korean version of those programmes were produced by the broadcasters themselves.
JEI TV (a cable and satellite TV channel owned by JEI Corporation), after making agreement with Viacom, ran a Nickelodeon programming block for years. It started with TV programmes that were not shown on the generalist terrestrial channels. But later, they aired their own Korean dub of what were shown on EBS. Those another dubs were produced by Arirang TV. This caused a nationwide criticisms in South Korea, as it wasted dollars and made viewers confused with different dubs and localisations.
With the launch of SkyLife satellite TV platform, the Southeast Asian version of Nickelodeon made available exclusively to the platform's subscribers. However, the channel was pulled out of SkyLife's line up around the time of South Korean version's launch.
The dedicated channel launches
After an agreement between On-Media (Then owned by Orion Group) and MTV Networks Asia, a dedicated South Korean version of Nickelodeon, initially branded as Nick, with experimental broadcasts began in August 1, 2005, was officially launched exclusively on cable TV providers on late 2005, along with a Nickelodeon block on Tooniverse.
In around November 2008, the channel became a subsidiary of C&M Communication, along with MTV Korea, when On-Media sold its share of On Music Network (which later became MTV Networks Korea). But a Nickelodeon block on Tooniverse continued to go. The channel officially became Nickelodeon in 2010, using the new logo that unveiled months ago in the U.S..
In September 2011, SBS, a commercial broadcaster, became the official South Korean partner of Viacom. With this, Nickelodeon became a part of SBS.