Screwed By The Network / Nicktoons

Nickelodeon would go on to favor their highest-rated shows at the expense of everything else. In recent years, this has applied less to their live-action programming and more to their animation slate. While Nick still has many live-action shows in production, every Nicktoon not named SpongeBob and (eventually) The Loud House (and formerly The Fairly OddParents! until being replaced by it) would get screwed over without mercy.

• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius was adored throughout its entire run, but was canceled in 2006 following DNA Productions shutting down after The Ant Bully flopped, with the network refusing to switch to another CG animated studio for another season. While season 3 was a ratings success, Nickelodeon aired the entire season Out of Order, airing the Series Finale "The League of Villains" in the middle of the season.
  • Reruns on Nicktoons were handled well until 2019, when it was replaced with Rainbow Butterfly Unicorn Kitty. After that, the show only aired once in a while on either Nicktoons or NickRewind. However in April 2020, the show was added back to Nicktoons' schedule, only to be removed from the network once again in June and replaced with SpongeBob SquarePants reruns. It was later added back to Nicktoons again in January 2021, although reruns have yet again become sparse.
• All Grown Up! is an interesting example that, while wasn't as mistreated as the others, was still pretty mistreated. Episodes would air out of order for some reason, and only one episode aired in 2006 (most likely for the second Tales from the Crib movie). Although the show made a comeback a year later, to add insult to injury, premieres would only air at 6:30 AM, which pretty much meant that people who either didn't have a working DVR or weren't willing enough to wake up early were out of luck. The show then went on another half-year-long hiatus and then aired the final three episodes out of the blue. Reruns continued to air, but only at 7:00 am on the weekends, which wasn't as early when ChalkZone aired, but was still kinda unfair. The show occasionally popped up on NickRewind every now and then.
• The Angry Beavers had a Grand Finale called "Bye Bye Beavers" that leaned on the fourth wall by having Norbert and Daggett discover that they're actors on a TV show and that their adventures have been used as episodes. Because it violated a Nickelodeon rule against meta-references in cartoons (and had a lot of burns against the network), the show was canned and the episode in question never aired. Incomplete audio footage of the episode was later leaked.
• As Told by Ginger ranks among one of the most unfortunate and ridiculous examples. Several episodes from the third season were unaired and took years just to air: Two episodes were moved to Nicktoons,^note the earliest instance of a Nicktoon moving to Nicktoons Network to premier episodes with one of them airing two years after the series ended; The three-part episode was released on home video before airing; The others remained unreleased until iTunes released the entire series, four of which aired years later on NickRewind (although, in terms of fan service, it was a good choice).
• Avatar: The Last Airbender is a unique case. Despite gaining some of the network's highest ratings next to SpongeBob, airing on the main network in its entire run, and remaining a Cash-Cow Franchise to this very day, the show had frequent hiatuses, modest advertising, and schedule switches throughout its run. It didn't help that, due to the show being very continuity heavy, Nickelodeon seldom reran the show, instead encouraging viewers to watch reruns on Nicktoons Network (which fewer people own) and/or buy the show on DVD.
• Back at the Barnyard, despite having a fairly decent run throughout the entirety of the first season and the first half of season 2, got screwed over pretty quickly after September 2010, whereas episodes stopped premiering. By this point, reruns were no longer airing on the main channel. Eventually, this led to being kicked straight to Nicktoons an entire year later in 2011, which of course also led to the remainder of the second season being burned off in one go in just 2 months during a dead zone night. Another thing to add is that the show made a comeback to the main channel shortly after its cancellation around late 2011-early 2012, only to air at 6:30 am in the morning (which meant that people who either didn't have a working DVR or weren't willing enough to stay up late or sleep early were screwed) up until November 2012 where it was completely abandoned from the channel altogether. However, reruns still occasionally pop up on Nicktoons, a rarity for pre-2010 Nickelodeon shows not named SpongeBob SquarePants or The Fairly Oddparents (Jimmy Neutron and Avatar being the only other ones that regularly gets this treatment), and the series even got to air on TeenNick as part of NickRewind for a brief time in 2019.
• Nickelodeon tried various marketing strategies to boost Bunsen Is a Beast's popularity, such as crossing it over with The Fairly OddParents!, but Bunsen didn't receive the acclaim that The Loud House did and only had reruns on Nicktoons, where the final episode aired in a late night slot. Butch Hartman announced the series would end after one season due to his departure from the network.
• The arrivals of The Patrick Star Show, Middlemost Post, and Kamp Koral resulted in The Casagrandes' new Friday night episodes being pushed into later timeslots, and reruns on Nickelodeon became scarcer. The third season turned out to be the show's last, although it still received a Netflix original movie in 2024.
• While CatDog was initially hyped by Nickelodeon to be their next breakout hit, it ended up being hit with this late in its run when they realized it wasn't taking off as well as they'd hoped. After the Grand Finale TV movie "The Great Parent Mystery" aired in November 2000, Nickelodeon unceremoniously canceled the show. A fourth season was produced, but it wouldn't air in North America until 2003, three years after the show's initial cancellation. Two of the fourth season’s episodes remained unreleased until 2010, when they were put onto digital retailers. To add insult to injury, the post-movie episodes aired in various other countries as early as 2001, before airing in the USA.
• Catscratch, despite getting decent ratings, received only one season, which was inexplicably stretched out for two years. During the early stages of its run until October 2006, new episodes would usually air on Friday nights consistently with reruns on late mornings to early afternoons on weekends. From November 2006 to June 2007, its reruns were relegated to Saturday and Sunday mornings at 6:30 AM (with an exception being February 10, 2007, where they aired a 2-hour marathon before the final episode). After that time, the show wouldn't air a single rerun until November of the same year, when the network showed the first episode of every Nicktoon ever, and ever since, that was the last time the show ran on the main network. (It was later moved to and rerun on Nicktoons under a similarly-brief timeframe before that network discarded the show completely. The show then randomly returned 6 years later as part of a Christmas marathon (at a great time too) although just for 2 time slots.
• ChalkZone got some pretty horrific treatment by Nickelodeon throughout its run from the beginning. The first season was planned to air throughout fall 2000. It was delayed all the way to March 2002 (even though the theme song was included in the 2001 CD The Newest Nicktoons). The "official" premiere in 2002 was the highest-rated premiere for Nickelodeon, until The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius premiered later that year. Consequently, Nickelodeon chose to devote its promotion towards the latter show.
  • The second season (which was already finished by the time season one was done airing) would also be screwed over. It didn't air until May 2003, leading to a number of fans believing the show was canceled. It was at this point that Nick moved the show's premiere time slot from Fridays at 8:30 PM (during the first season) to 9:30 PM, where the show's target audience would be going to bed, with very little promotion.
  • By 2005, the show had been canceled and less than half of the fourth season had aired. The remaining episodes (which had already aired outside the US) wouldn't air until summer 2008, and even then at 6:00 in the morning without advertisements. Nick aired repeats in that time slot until November 2009, though Nicktoons continued to air the show until 2013 at an even earlier time, followed by two airings on TeenNick as part of NickRewind: the first being on November 12, 2016 in honor of Nickelodeon Animation Studios’s 25th anniversary, and the second being on February 28, 2021 to promote the Paramount+ streaming service (which includes the show).
• Danny Phantom was treated pretty badly during its (rather divisive) final season, which had an erratic airing schedule. With the show's ratings plummeting, Nickelodeon canceled the series in 2006 and decided to air the mid-season episode "Urban Jungle" several months before any other episodes (most notably after the episode that introduced Frostbite, who in "Urban Jungle" teaches Danny power over ice). Then, when they finally aired the rest of season 3, it was at a random, mid-afternoon slot over the space of about two weeks.
• Before reruns of older shows like Doug, The Ren & Stimpy Show and Rocko's Modern Life in the early 2000s, Nickelodeon would play a bumper featuring the Nickelodeon logo followed by text reading "It's summer... go outside... we'll be here when you get back", superimposed over live-action kids playing outside in some way (such as swimming or playing baseball). While probably a precursor to the network's "Worldwide Day of Play" events, some have taken it as Nick attempting to get kids to play outside when those shows came on during the summer, in an attempt to lower their ratings and justify removing them from their schedule. (Whether or not this was their intention, they were eventually moved to the Nicktoons network by 2002.)
• Nickelodeon managed to screw three shows (The Penguins of Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and Monsters Vs. Aliens) all at once. Their crime? Being based on DreamWorks Animation films. According to Bob Schooley, executive producer of Penguins and Monsters vs. Aliens, Nickelodeon was getting tired of having to pay licensing fees to DreamWorks in order to keep the shows going. DreamWorks owns the characters and other elements in the shows, while Nick retains half the shows' copyrights. Therefore, the shows were canceled so that Nick could focus more on investing in their own original programming. This prompted DreamWorks to jump ship to Netflix, where they found much better success. DreamWorks did (temporarily) give Nickelodeon permission to continue broadcasting the series on sister network Nicktoons, where The Penguins of Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness would finish their run. The sale of DreamWorks to NBCUniversal, with the latter explicitly forbidding Nickelodeon from broadcasting the shows again, led to Nicktoons doing a quick run of the final five episodes of Legends of Awesomeness throughout June of 2016 before all three series disappeared.
  • The Penguins of Madagascar got a surprising case of this despite being adored by the network for 3 years. By late 2012, its premiere schedule would get slower and slower. Eventually reruns stopped on the main Nick channel and an entire year later, the poor cartoon got moved to Nicktoons, where it took an entire year and a half to finish its run. Reruns also returned to the main channel in September 2013, but of course they were buried under early morning time slots on Saturdays.
• El Tigre is another example despite receiving overall decent reviews and winning or being nominated for a number of awards. The next five episodes following "The Good, the Bad, and the Tigre" premiered very early in the morning, completely out of nowhere. After that, the remainder of the series was aired on Nicktoons, with little to no promotion. Even beforehand, the show was very prone to being shown once a week (and at some points around midnight or early in the morning), and even being pre-opted a few times by other shows, most notably SpongeBob SquarePants. However, the show was rerun as late as May 5, 2021 when it aired a couple of episodes on Nicktoons to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. When asked about the cancellation, Gutiérrez and a couple of other staff members explicitly said it happened because the show couldn't beat SpongeBob in ratings. He even painted...quite the interesting picture dedicated to the statement.^noteGutiérrez holds absolutely no ire towards the show itself (and is actually a big fan), just the circumstances.
• The Fairly OddParents!: After years of being Adored by the Network, it seemed that Nickelodeon fell out of love with it.
  • Few new episodes were shown in 2010 and 2011 (when a handful of new episodes aired during the summer and the show was promised a year-long 10th anniversary celebration), at least in the United States. A number of episodes from the seventh season aired two years after premiering in other countries. Aside from "Farm Pit" and a follow-up to the 2011 live-action film, no new episodes of the series premiered in 2012. When Season 9 finally began airing in 2013, the main channel was no longer airing reruns. After what happened to just about every other Nicktoon in recent years, many took it as a sign that the show was now on its last legs.
  • In 2017, the show stopped airing on the main Nickelodeon channel and was moved to the Nicktoons channel, which is usually never a good sign for a Nicktoon. It didn't help that the show had its animation budget slashed during production, resulting in a visual downgrade during the back-half of the tenth and final season. The show ended casually that July with no news of an 11th season, followed up with series creator Butch Hartman leaving Nickelodeon seven months later in 2018. Given the show had already reached Seasonal Rot at this point, many long-time fans see its cancellation was for the better.
  • Unknown to many, the second half of season 10 actually got the chance to air on the main Nickelodeon channel in the spring of 2018. However, much like the My Life as a Teenage Robot and ChalkZone examples, the episodes were buried into a weekday morning time slot (airing right before the Nick Jr. block started), and the series disappeared from the network again as soon as its final 10 episodes were finished airing there (though reruns are still plentiful on Nicktoons).
  • Nelvana produced a Dutch dub of the series in 2002, but for a while failed to find a place to air it due to a lack of a local Disney Channel at the time and FOX Netherlands and the NPO refusing the series. In the end, their only option was Nickelodeon Netherlands, and the series finally went live on September 29, 2003 to major success.
• Fanboy and Chum Chum got a case of this for Nickelodeon's main channel.^note rather than getting the Nicktoons treatment like most other Nickelodeon shows. After nearly 3 years of being adored, the show was moved to 7:00 on weekdays before the Nick Jr block in the morning, while the remaining unaired episode, "Brain Freeze", didn't end up airing until 2 years later on Nicktoons, although the episode was already released on DVD 3 years prior. Unfortunately, reruns were practically non-existent, as the show would air only on Sundays at 7:00 am from somewhere around mid 2013 to early 2015, where it was banished permanently.
  • Around the same time, Nicktoons replaced most of Fanboy's time slots with other stuff. It could be found airing somewhat inconsistently between 4:30am and 6:00am along with Random! Cartoons. These time slots remained until the show entirely ceased to air in April 2016, though it briefly came back to air on Christmas Day in a graveyard slot before being removed for good.
• Glitch Techs was announced in 2016 with a brief series synopsis and single piece of art displaying the show's logo. Cue radio silence for the next few years, with only a piece of art or two getting leaked by way of art portfolios from those working on the show. Then came January 2019, when one of the show's artists announced on Twitter that the entire production crew had come into work to learn that production had been halted before it even got the chance to air due to allegedly high production costs. It's still assumed by everyone involved that the series will air whatever was completed (about a season and a half of content) sometime in 2019. However, it was confirmed by co-creator Dan Milano to be delayed to 2020. On November 26, 2019, a leak by Netflix on their "For Your Consideration" website all but confirmed that the show may debut on said streaming service instead, similar to Pinky Malinky. The show was officially confirmed to premiere on February 21 of that year. However, its future is uncertain as most of the people that worked on the series have either left Nickelodeon or are working on other shows, but the series hasn't been officially canceled.
• Hey Arnold! got hit hard near the end. The original plan was for the last three half-hours to be a TV movie titled "Arnold Saves the Neighborhood", and then for a theatrical film known as "The Jungle Movie" to be the Grand Finale of the series. Sometime in 2000, Nickelodeon decided to release the TV movie theatrically, under the title of Hey Arnold! The Movie, and also ordered an hour-long prequel episode that would lead into The Jungle Movie. Poor advertising and an unfortunate release date caused the first movie to be unsuccessful, killing any interest Nick had in giving the series proper closure.
  • Thankfully, after years of heavy vocal fan support, Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie was finally greenlit for production in 2016, airing in November of the following year. However, while Nick promoted it very well and it was positively reviewed, it nevertheless did poorly in the ratings, convincing them to shelve the much-anticipated Rocko's Modern Life and Invader Zim one-hour specials, before they were ultimately released on Netflix in 2019.
• Invader Zim was canceled quite quickly due to the network executives receiving many complaints that it was too scary for children and it wasn't getting the kid audience it wanted. It did get a sizable teen/college student audience, though. The show was expensive to produce so even a small slip in ratings was enough to justify cancellation. It's been said that the show would have stood a chance if it was marketed toward an older audience and moved to a timeslot intended for older viewers. Indeed, the creators of Invader Zim were asked by the network to make a series that would appeal to older viewers; Nickelodeon got exactly what they wanted and canceled it anyways. It did get a TV movie years later, and according to Word of God, Nickelodeon had been asking him for more Invader Zim content for several years, presumably wanting to cash in on the older cult fanbase that they'd rejected years ago.
• Despite a small hiatus, It's Pony (once ranked as the fourth best-performing show on Nickelodeon, right behind SpongeBob SquarePants, The Casagrandes and The Loud House) was one of Nickelodeon's favorite shows during 2020, but that all changed after "Bramley Holiday" aired: The show disappeared from the network, and reruns only aired on the less popular Nicktoons network. When it was finally about to come back in March 2021, Nickelodeon decided at the last minute to replace the premieres with more reruns of SpongeBob SquarePants. New episodes eventually moved to the Nicktoons channel in October 2021, practically killing the show.
• Nickelodeon barely acknowledged KaBlam!. Its time slot was inconsistent, it received very little promotion throughout all four seasons it aired (with the exception of Henry and June hosting various blocks of Nickelodeon shows), and after its cancellation from low ratings in 2000 Nickelodeon did its best to make viewers forget this show existed. It reran on Nicktoons from 2002 (when the network was launched) to 2005, but with half of the episodes missing due to unknown reasons ^note though the episode "I Just Don't Get It" had an Action League Now short that was considered in bad taste following the 9/11 attacks. Even when TeenNick created their '90s block, they didn't air this show. To add insult to injury, the show is one of the only Nicktoons without any official releases on home video or DVD, with the series never getting an official release period until it was eventually added to Paramount+.
  • Contrary to popular belief, this was not due to Nickelodeon having to pay royalties for the individual shorts—one of the creators of one short on a now-defunct fansite said that Nickelodeon owns all the rights to the individual shorts (even Angela Anaconda, which got a Spin-Off on a different, non-affiliated network). However, post-2000 reruns and episodes available to stream excise the Lava! shorts, which are not owned by Nickelodeon.
• Kappa Mikey, an Affectionate Parody of anime and Japanese culture, was a huge hit on the Nicktoons channel (then known as Nicktoons Network) during its run. But when they decided to air it on the regular Nick channel, it was treated very poorly. It got a ludicrously small amount of promotion (as opposed to Nicktoons Network, which aired commercials for it in every commercial break, even during those of the show itself), only aired on Sunday mornings, and started its run with an episode from the middle of the first season. It didn't take long for it to be removed from regular Nick's lineup.
• Whether it was intentional or not, Nickelodeon dropped the ball with Book 2 of The Legend of Korra. It received less advertising than Book 1 and was also placed firmly in the Friday Night Death Slot. Ratings for the Book 2 premiere were about half of the Book 1 premiere. Then they moved the show to a later time, again with minimal advertising, and the ratings dropped by half again. See the numbers here.
  • It also advertised a "marathon" that would begin a half-hour before its new time slot at 8:30. The "marathon" was only one hour long and consisted of two new episodes, parts 1 and 2 of ''Beginnings''. Immediately after those two episodes aired, the show was changed to yet another timeslot, 8:00 pm. Amazingly, it worked!
  • After Book 2, there was almost no news about the show, except a few teases from the creators. Book 3 didn't take nearly as long as Book 2 to be released... but that was probably because Nick's foreign affiliates kept leaking parts of the show, which were then quickly disseminated online. Finally, Nick's Mexican affiliate, MundoNick, leaked four episodes of the show online. The episodes were quickly taken down, but the huge leak resulted in Nickelodeon releasing the first three episodes of Book 3 (the leaked episodes were 3-6) within a week and with almost no advertising. The premiere had even worse ratings than much of Book 2.
    • A decision was originally made to only air the episodes on Nickelodeon and have zero digital options during the season. The lack of advertising meant that many fans of the show didn't even know it was back on the air until several episodes had already been broadcast and then had no (legal) options to see the ones they had missed.
  • After the premiere, the schedule for Book 3 became two new episodes a week. Then it looked as though after episode 8, they'd be pulling the series off the air and showing the rest of the series online instead. Word of God explained at a Comic-Con panel that apparently Nickelodeon had always been planning to move Korra to an online-only format, based on the record amount of views their site received when they streamed Book 2, as well as the fact that the show doesn't really fit in with the rest of Nick's programming. Indeed, several episodes contained very adult themes such as revolution and anarchism, a very graphic on-screen death, and a finale that made a popular Les Yay couple 100% canon (backed by Word of God). There are rumors that Nickelodeon moved the show online to avoid having to air that sort of content on TV (though the remaining episodes did air uncut on Nicktoons). Though justifiable, it still doesn't excuse the network for not telling anybody (including the show staff) about the move until the last minute.
  • Most incredibly of all, Book 4 ended up premiering on October 3rd, 2014—less than two months after the conclusion of Book 3. This was because the budget was cut in the middle of production, forcing the creators to make a Recap Episode in order to prevent a large chunk of their staff from being let go early.
• Even their second most popular cartoon, The Loud House, seems to be taking long hiatuses, although they seem to be slightly speeding it up.
• Making Fiends infamously received the absolute worst treatment out of any Nicktoon. Nickelodeon told creator Amy Winfrey that it'd air on their main channel, but at the last moment they put it on sister network Nicktoons, which isn't carried by most cable packages compared to its parent network. While it was Nicktoons' most successful original show, it only lasted for six episodes. Amy Winfrey said that scripts for seven more episodes were made, but nothing came out of them.
• Middlemost Post at first received ratings decent enough to earn a second season renewal. Beginning in 2022, new episodes often aired towards the end of Nick's Friday night premiere block, when kids began to go to sleep. Nick then burned off the shorter second season throughout August (with a Halloween special saved for October). Although the August burn-off scored decent ratings, the show had already wrapped production and Nick began to remove the show from their lineup afterwards. At the very least, Middlemost Post aired its entire run on the main channel and was never moved to Nicktoons.
• The Mighty B! got shunted around the schedule shortly after it premiered in 2008, eventually got kicked across to Nicktoons in 2010, and finally had the remainder of the final season burned off in one go during a dead zone afternoon a year later (though the final episode’s premiers were simulcast on both Nick and Nicktoons). Reruns continued to air on Nicktoons (often in graveyard time slots) until February 14, 2016, but made a surprising return to television when the series gained a semi-regular spot on NickRewind on March 1, 2021 (which was not actually the first time the show aired on TeenNick, as it had a brief syndication run on the channel during its final months as The N in 2008), with the series even getting a special marathon taking up the entire block on June 26, 2021.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot ranks among the worst examples. The first season was produced and completed in 2002 and began airing in foreign countries that year, but didn't premiere in its home country until August 2003.^note Almost a year after production on the season had wrapped. And once the first season actually managed air in the United States, it did have a fairly consistent timeslot, being aired every Friday at 8:30 PM. However, it was often preempted for other shows, although it did at least have a decent amount of promotion and reruns on the network. The second season, on the other hand, is when the series ended up being screwed over the most. The season was delayed for a whole year and when it did air, it frequently switched timeslots, had minimal advertising, and new episodes were often delayed without any warning, although it did get tons of reruns on Saturdays. Due to low ratings, Nick canceled the series in 2005 and later shelved the third season for three years, shunted it to Nicktoons and occasionally on the main Nickelodeon network on Sundays at 6AM when broadcast, despite first being aired in Latin America and Asian territories from 2006 to 2007. Just like with All Grown Up!, reruns occasionally aired on NickRewind.
• NickRewind, when it came to anything besides their most popular Nicktoons. Even The Ren & Stimpy Show was aired on and off, and would usually stay off the schedule for months, while All That and Kenan & Kel were usually reserved for a couple episodes every other weekend, usually as some sort of special event (which is probably why the block's name was changed from The 90's Are All That.) The network's social media posts would even reference shows that the block never aired, not even on TeenNick itself anymore (such as The Amanda Show).
• Since mid 2021, the Nicktoons channel seems to be afraid of airing any pre-2019 shows that ended production (other than The Fairly OddParents and the occasional return of the 2012 TMNT series, Sanjay and Craig, and Breadwinners) as the majority of its schedule consists of current running animated Nick shows (and the occasional live-action reruns). By June 27, 2022, the current channel lineup had no ended shows airing on a daily basis, leaving It's Pony the only ended show left (even then, it only aired on Friday nights, counterprogramming the night of premieres on the main channel).
• Nick tried to support Pig Goat Banana Cricket; it was given a second season ahead of the premiere, and was previewed after that year's Kids Choice Sports. But the series only pulled in 1 million viewers— compared to the millions more that SpongeBob received, and had garnered mixed to negative reviews.
  • The second season was booted to Nicktoons, where it aired until September 2017. The last 3 episodes (which already aired in Poland) premiered the following August, at 4:30-5:15 AM, meaning anyone without a working DVR or a willingness to go on illegal streaming sites was out of luck.
  • The show first aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland two and a half years after premiering in the United States and only aired new episodes at 6AM in the morning on weekends. It would eventually be pulled after a few months.
  • Despite Nickelodeon Greece airing the show on weekend nights as of 2019, Season 2 has yet to premiere.
• Pinky Malinky was originally developed at Cartoon Network's European development studio, and was picked up by Nickelodeon in 2015 to be a full series. Other than promotional material and an early second season renewal, it seemed as if Nickelodeon did nothing but sit on the series for three years. As part of parent company Viacom's new strategy of producing content for streaming services, it was announced that the series would instead premiere on Netflix in 2018. Even then, the series was supposed to premiere on August 17, 2018, but was delayed to January 2019.
• Planet Sheen only had one season that took no less than two years to air before it was pulled without any notice. Once the abysmal ratings and reviews for the first three episodes came in, Nickelodeon proceeded to air the episodes Out of Order after it was clear to them the series wasn't performing the way they hoped it would. By the time the final 13 episodes aired (in an erratic manner so that not many people knew the show was still on), the show had been banished to Nicktoons. Like Fanboy, it's speculated Nick killed the show not just because of low ratings, but due to a poor response from its viewers (Jimmy Neutron fans, in particular).
• Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, despite high popularity and fairly decent ratings, was banished to Nicktoons as of October 12th, 2019, at the extremely awkward timeslot of 10:30 pm. The first season wasn't even finished when this happened. It got worse during the second season, where the show was abruptly canceled due to low toy sales. Additionally, this also caused the original 26 planned episodes to be cut down to only 13 episodes, resulting in a much faster pace that forced many of the show's subplots to either be rushed or outright ignored, and the finale itself premiered with no advertisement or any kind of warning whatsoever.
• Robot and Monster was the Network Red-Headed Stepchild of 2012. As per usual for a Nicktoon that isn't SpongeBob SquarePants, it was given little advertising, was aired Out of Order, was denied a second season, and wasn't even fully aired. Nicktoons took over and showed a couple of the remaining episodes, but even they couldn't do them all. Eventually, the unaired episodes were then put on the Noggin streaming service^note Nick's streaming service for preschool programming of all places in 2015.
• Rugrats, which was once Adored by the Network, suffered this as part of Executive Meddling; Nickelodeon insisted the show would continue after The Rugrats Movie and even its sequel. This resulted in Dil and Kimi being brought into the show after those films were released. Longtime viewers were annoyed by them and tuned out. Then when new management came into Nickelodeon and their contract was about to expire, Nickelodeon and Klasky-Csupo couldn't agree on a price to produce Rugrats and their other Nicktoons. After this, Nickelodeon had effectively canceled Rugrats and most of Klasky-Csupo's other shows.
  • After being pulled from the schedule after it's massive rebrand in 2016, Nicktoons Global put the show back on their schedule in March 2018 without any prior announcement, but they only aired the post-Kimi episodes and aired the series at 5 AM in the morning, right after a SpongeBob SquarePants Season 6 or 7 rerun (they didn't show the pre-movie era of SpongeBob at that time), and it was pulled off the schedule again after less than a month.
  • Like the Hey Arnold! and Invader Zim examples above, this became rectified. Nick was in talks with Klasky-Csupo to revive the series in 2016. This was later followed in 2018 with the official announcement of a 26-episode revival series, and a live-action/CGI film from Paramount Players before that film was pulled from their release schedule.
  • The 2021 reboot wasn't safe from this either. It was meant to go on Nickelodeon before becoming a Paramount+ original, the release date was pushed back from 2020 to 2021. While it would air on Nickelodeon linearly in August 2021, the first season wouldn't finish airing until May 2023. The second season released the first 13 episodes in April 2023 with barely any advertisements. In February 2024, it was announced Season 2 would make its cable debut on Nicktoons, including the second half that was originally meant for Paramount+ before being changed at the last minute.
  • Rugrats Pre-School Daze was basically screwed over directly from the beginning. It spent a lengthy period in Development Hell and was ultimately capped at four episodes (Nick called them specials). Slated to air between 2003 and 2004, they wound up never making it to Nick's schedule and were buried as "bonus features" onto the equally short-lived Rugrats: Tales from the Crib direct-to-video series. Eventually, Nick finally aired the show's episodes towards the end of 2008... at 6:00 AM, where no kid would be awake to see it, without any sort of promotion (or sometimes, even TV listings) whatsoever.
• In 2015, Sanjay and Craig, Breadwinners, Harvey Beaks and gradually more and more shows suffered this treatment. To start, Nick placed all three shows on a Sunday evening premiere block, when not a lot of children would be watching television. Ratings did not fare well; Nick wisely stopped airing new episodes a few months later and placed them on hiatus. While there wasn't any word on when Breadwinners would come back, it was announced instead that Sanjay and Craig and Harvey Beaks would be returning for new episodes on Saturday, July 18, 2015, yet the network didn't even bother to promote them. Both shows were suddenly yanked off from Nick's schedule after two weeks of disastrous ratings. As expected, Harvey fans were not pleased by this and even C. H. Greenblatt wasn't too happy about the horrible treatment his show has gotten.
  • In September 2015, the network made a Friday night block with Sanjay, Harvey, Pig Goat Banana Cricket, SpongeBob^note from September to October; repeats of aired episodes lasted the rest of that block, and in January, the tenth season of The Fairly OddParents!. Unfortunately, it had very little advertising, as it wasn't advertised until the Friday of the airing and low ratings kicked in. The network pulled the block in March, canceled Sanjay and Craig not long after, and screwed around with The Fairly OddParents for a little while before moving it and Pig Goat Banana Cricket to Nicktoons. At least Sanjay and Craig returned to Nick to burn off the remaining episodes.
  • Meanwhile, Breadwinners avoided the Friday night block and was paired on Sunday mornings with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles starting in October. Unlike the Turtles, Breadwinners had absolutely no advertising, and would be shunted to Nicktoons by April 2016 and was later canceled in September of that year.
  • In June, after The Loud House became a hit, Harvey Beaks was brought back to the lineup to air the last five episodes of Season 1, then started airing Season 2 immediately afterwards. Three weeks of new episodes, including the two-part "Steampunks" special, were aired before it was taken off the lineup. Then another week of new episodes was shown in late September, followed by the Halloween special on a Saturday morning paired with a Halloween episode of The Loud House, all with zero reruns on the main network. Inevitably, Harvey was banished to Nicktoons. To add insult to injury, Greenblatt himself wasn't informed of the move until one of his coworkers posted about it on Twitter.
• SpongeBob SquarePants, the network's most adored show, is also prone to this. New episodes now take a longer than normal time to hit the airwaves, while episodes from previous seasons are held over. Consequently, premieres of new episodes from recent seasons of the show have been spread over the course of a year or two. For example, it took almost 5 years for the network to finish airing all of Season 9. It seems the show has become so Adored by the Network that Nick isn't patient to have at least 5 episodes to wrapped production before exporting them, as reruns often perform better in the ratings than premiers at certain points.
  • Another infamous example of the show being neglected is that certain episodes have had a year-long wait apart from their sister episodes. For example, "Gary Takes A Bath" premiered in July 2003 on Nickelodeon, while its sister episode, "Shanghaied", premiered two years earlier.
  • Ironically, this trope was played straight on the Nicktoons Network. Reruns of SpongeBob SquarePants were handled decently on the channel until 2009, when it was banished to only weekends at 10:00 PM and 8:00 AM, when the target audience would likely be off to bed and barely getting out of it respectively (though the main channel was airing reruns ad nauseam by this point, so this treatment was somewhat justified). Although, the 8:00 AM time slot was fairly reasonable, considering the only other time slots would be at midnight. It would eventually get re-added to weekdays a few years later as well... at midnight. As of 2018, the show is still stuck working the late night shift, but the entire watershed period is filled with nothing but the show.
    • Nicktoons also only aired episodes from the first five seasons for some odd reason ^note This also happened with The Fairly OddParents! until 2014, where they would air the first 6 seasons, sometimes 7. Since 2014, this practice has stopped. Although, "It's A SpongeBob Christmas" aired on the channel sometime during December 2012, where Nicktoons was doing a Christmas marathon with various shows.
  • In India, it gets even weirder. Despite being one of the most iconic cartoons everywhere else in the world, the main Nickelodeon network in India only airs the show very early in the morning, with an occasional extra rerun.
  • The British feed has the same problem as the Indian one, but worse: The show only airs at a time when the target demographic is asleep. The rest of the day is devoted to kidcoms and Winx Club reruns. The show does have more prominence on the country's Nicktoons channel, which itself is horrible at screwing over its own shows.
  • An "Every SpongeBob Ever" marathon was held to celebrate the show's 20th anniversary on Nicktoons. However, during the Season 8 portion of the marathon, it stopped for regular programming without notice. Thankfully, this was averted when the marathon aired for a second time in February 2021, including the absolute final broadcast of "Mid-Life Crustacean" before Nickelodeon officially banned the episode that March due to its infamous "panty raid" scene.
  • In October 2020, Nickelodeon ended the Nick Jr. block early (at 1PM) to show reruns of this show, with a likely reasoning being that some online classes end earlier than those in-person. However, they did not account for the fact that some districts were still teaching in-person and ending at their usual times. It got even worse during Christmas week of 2020, when these reruns began at 11 AM, when some children weren't even finished with their schoolwork. Nickelodeon eventually took notice of this issue and moved the start time of the main channel's line-up back to the original 2 PM timeslot in February 2021, giving the 1 PM hour to PAW Patrol.
  • In 2022, November was going to be a huge month for the franchise, airing episodes of the main show and The Patrick Star Show throughout the month. However, all of the airings were canned in favor of the new Monster High TV series and movie showcases.
  • Nickelodeon Greece last aired a new episode in 2021. Episodes 264 and on were never even dubbed in Greek.
• Tak and the Power of Juju suffered from this in a similar way that El Tigre did. It got canned after a season, due to horrific ratings. But if that wasn't bad enough, it was treated very poorly on Nicktoons Network. Reruns were handled decently until late 2009, where the show would often be seen hanging out in a graveyard time slot. The show would sometimes air outside of that time slot, however. But to make matters weirder, it is the only 2000's Nicktoon that didn't make it to the 2014 rebrand. But it at least got a somewhat proper DVD release that includes 10 episodes and a variety of bonus features.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) (the first Nick-produced Turtles series since Viacom acquired the franchise) was a weird example. Despite starting off as a success for Nickelodeon, it was shafted to Nicktoons to premiere six of its nine remaining episodes in 2017^note  The other three debuted on DVD . Fans assumed this was to make room for the years-away Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which would also be moved to Nicktoons, but within its first season).
• T.U.F.F. Puppy was unceremoniously dropped not long into its second season. New episodes were either aired or promoted sporadically, and, if they were, often got preempted with SpongeBob reruns. It was banished to Nicktoons where it aired its final episode on April 4th, 2015 and after that was usually only seen in the same early morning slots as Fanboy & Chum Chum, until it was taken off the air in July 2016, but made a surprising comeback to Nicktoons on November 1, 2020, when it would gain a semi-regular spot along with Back at the Barnyard until February 5 of 2021.
• After only nine episodes, Welcome to the Wayne went on hiatus. It did get renewed for a second season, but the announcement was made half a year later, with the rest of the first season still not slated to return. Meanwhile, the rest of the first season premiered internationally, ahead of the U.S. broadcast. The second season premiered in fall 2018 in countries such as Turkey, and eventually in the U.S. during spring 2019 on Nicktoons. Since then, the series has disappeared without a trace.
  • The second season itself was at least advertised slightly, however, it was clearly indicated that it was Cut Short, as season 2 had 10 episodes compared to the first season's 20, explaining a bit of the slightly rushed pacing on some storylines.
  • In the U.K, after airing all 20 episodes of the first season on Nicktoons, there were no repeats.
• Unlike Nickelodeon UK, which aired the show twice daily up through 2020, Nickelodeon US had many hiatuses for Winx Club (which was a Nickelodeon production from 2011-2023). America was among the last to finish airing Season 5. Season 6 took over a year after most of the international Nick feeds had already finished it. Season 7 was aired much more consistently, but the show was moved to the Nick Jr. channel, which was understandable as the show itself had become more preschool-targeted by then.
• The X's was one of the most mistreated Nicktoons that ever aired on the main network. Not only did the series suffer from Invisible Advertising and was constantly preempted by other shows, but reruns were almost nonexistent. The network dropped the show a year later and reruns were dumped on Nicktoons Network, who would often preempt it to air another show in its place. One episode never aired on either network, and the series is considered one of the most obscure Nicktoons, with very few places to watch it nowadays, you cannot find it on iTunes or Google Play.
• Zevo-3 got treated pretty poorly even before the FCC went after it apparently violating the guidelines on distinctions between children's advertising and children's programming (which Nicktoons Network might have seen coming and resulted in the show's treatment). The show started with its second episode instead of its first and viewers had to wait weeks to get said first episode to be able to understand the characters and setting, barely aired in the early morning timeslot it got stuck with, and stopped getting advertising after a certain point.