Nickelodeon Presentation June 17 at Roxbury Library

ROXBURY — The Roxbury Library is pleased to present Dr. Joe Piasek speaking on Tuesday, June 17, from 10:00am to 12:00pm.  All are welcome to attend this free discussion.  Dr.  Piasek, SUNY Delhi communications professor and a member of the founding on-air team that created The First Kids Network, discusses Nickelodeon from its beginnings of caring for others to its unintentional yet subsequent role in the rise of Fox News as a divisive force in American culture in a talk entitled "How Fox Hacked Nick."

Nickelodeon established a structured, media-literate environment on cable television in 1980 in which a child could soak every day; a fantasy comfort zone that embraced a doctrine of diversity and global interdependence.  Nick's structure was the lesson even more than its program. It was a fan-based participatory realm:  "US vs THEM" (kids vs. adults) all in good absurdist fun.  Fox News produced a proximate structured environment on cable television for the same cohort some 30 years later.  Its "US vs THEM" position of was void of fair play where a fearful adult could feel secure, an absurdist realm of a different sort.

The target demographic of Nickelodeon's audience at its peak was 5-15 years old.  The target demographic of the Fox New audience some 30 years later is 35-50.  "How Fox Hacked Nick" is designed to be a provocative exploration of how Nickelodeon, a phenomenonally successful television network, dropped the ball and how Fox kept its eye on the ball to win the long game of cultural dominance in America.