Pinwheel

[Hawkee]

"Pinwheel Pinwheel Spinning Around"
"Look At My Pinwheel See What I Found"
So began the theme song of Nickelodeon's very first kids show when Nickelodeon was launched worldwide in 1979. Pinwheel was a wonderful kids show that had puppets in a fun setting and was really well done for a children's show and would soon make Nickelodeon a hit channel today. Though some people claimed that Pinwheel was the original name for Nickelodeon Pinwheel was actually Nickelodeon's first lone show that aired on their lineup. It's a surprise that few people remember Pinwheel and thanks to Pinwheel Nickelodeon would add more kids shows that would make Nickelodeon successful in the years ahead
Bestie

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by LaBestia

Though some people claimed that Pinwheel was the original name for Nickelodeon Pinwheel was actually Nickelodeon's first lone show that aired on their lineup.

The name Pinwheel was used for both the program and the channel: from Meehan, The Political Economy of Information, 1988: "Warner Amex's decision to distribute Pinwheel via its satellite transponders to cable companies involved both the renaming of the service (as Nickelodeon or NIK) and an agreement for time sharing with [A&E]. [...] Pinwheel could be used to sell QUBE to households with children, especially in a university community. These supports for Pinwheel's pro-social programming disappeared with satellite distribution [...]"

And from Sarah Banet-Wiser, Kids Rule!: Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship, 2007: "Nickelodeon technically began in 1979 as part of an interactive cable network endeavor of Warner Communications. Part of the QUBE cable network, the channel was then calledPinwheel and was designed to offer children's programming that was pro-social, nonstereotypical, and commercial free [...] in April 1979, Pinwheel changed its name to Nickelodeon, and its children's programming expanded to thirteen hours a day."

I'm old enough to remember Nickelodeon in its earliest days; we didn't get the channel when I was very little, but soon after, I was watching the rebranded Nickelodeon, and our friends were still calling the channel Pinwheel.

It's a surprise that few people remember Pinwheel and thanks to Pinwheel Nickelodeon would add more kids shows that would make Nickelodeon successful in the years ahead
Bestie

Nickelodeon was definitely successful because of several shows including Pinwheel, You Can't Do That on Television, The Tomorrow People, and The Adventures of Black Beauty.

I still remember Pinwheel fondly!

[AMackII]

Pinwheel was still airing on Nick at the time when i was born

[TMC]

This is a Nickelodeon schedule from 1985.

nickschedules.blogspot.com/2010/01/june-1985.html

Notable for 5 straight hours of Pinwheel!

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by TMC

This is a Nickelodeon schedule from 1985.

nickschedules.blogspot.com/2010/01/june-1985.html

Notable for 5 straight hours of Pinwheel!

Yep! In the early days of national cable TV, it was common to see long blocks of the same program. Many cable channels just didn't have the budget to air anything other than a few low-budget in-house shows and/or reuse low-budget foreign TV programs.

Pinwheel was the only show on the channel for a number of years. Even as late as 1988, Pinwheel was on for three hours every weekday.

[Schmo]

Those foreign cartoons “Pinwheel” broadcast (some of which were from the then-Communist bloc) were quite surreal compared to American fare.
Nickelodeon was one of the first cable channels we got, in 1979. Our local cable company was Warner Cable.

[TMC]

Before the slime, before Double Dare, before SpongeBob — Nickelodeon was a boarding house with a giant pinwheel on the roof. And almost nobody remembers it.

In this episode of Fever Dream Nostalgia, we go back to 1977 and the strangest experiment in children's television history. A green goblin named Ebenezer T. Squint. A Black musician named Jake who stored sounds in little wooden boxes. A silent mime who fixed things without speaking. A newspaper called The Daily Noodle. (Yes, really.) And the secret architecture of the entire Nickelodeon network, hidden inside what most people thought was just a forgotten preschool show.

We're talking about Pinwheel — the show that aired on QUBE, the experimental Columbus cable system, before launching as the flagship program of a brand-new children's channel that would later be renamed Nickelodeon. We dig into how Vivian Horner, Sandy Kavanaugh, George James, Brad Williams, and a young Jim Jinkins (yes — that Jim Jinkins, the future creator of Doug) built something gentler, weirder, and more radical than anyone gave it credit for.

Plus: the missing Pinwheel Songbook, the Clock Man lost-media mystery, and why the network that started as “video spinach” had to demolish its own gentle little origin in order to become the slime-covered empire we all remember.

If you grew up on Nickelodeon, this is the show that made it possible. And it might be the show your brain has half-remembered without ever knowing the name.

Drop your weirdest Pinwheel memory in the comments — even if it's just a feeling. We're collecting them.