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Wall Street is paying attention: This week, one analyst downgraded his rating on Viacom stock from buy to neutral and the other lowered his target price slightly. Both cited Nickelodeon ratings declines. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman calls the slide "inexplicable" and an "aberration" -- but so far, a coordinated effort by the network and Nielsen to find some glitch that might explain it has come up empty. At least one Nick rival doesn't buy the idea that there's anything wrong with the way Nielsen tracks childrens' ratings -- and poked fun at Dauman's choice of words. "We don't think there's a glitch in kids ratings," the Disney Channel said in a statement to TheWrap. "The ratings strength of Disney Channel and Disney XD is 'inexplicable' to some but we are very clear on what's happening -- it's the popularity of our programming." Could SpongeBob -- gulp -- just be getting old? It's definitely not a case of kids spending more time on their homework: Preteen viewership is up overall.

Through Nov. 20 of this TV season, an average of 5.8 million children between age 2 and 11 are watching television at any given minute, an increase of 1.7 percent over last season, Nielsen says. Nick's slide comes at a particularly bad time: The last three months of the year are especially important to the network because of ads for holiday films and toys. The stakes are also high because no cable network earns higher total-day ratings than Nick, whose closest rival is The Disney Channel. ​

Both benefit from young audiences with plenty of spare time during the day -- and parents who use it as a plug-in babysitter. Though it trails them in total-day viewing, the Cartoon Network is the third-most-watched kids' network after Nick and the Disney Channel, and has shared some of Nick's ratings woes. But in the latest monthly ratings it seems to be digging itself out, while Nickelodeon's latest numbers have only gotten worse. Nick believes the problem could lie with Nielsen's sampling of its audience, and has worked with the company behind the scenes to examine several possibilities. ​

"We've been doing this for 30 years, and we've been No. 1 for 16, going on 17 years, with 2-to-11 year-olds. This is a short-term problem," Nickelodeon spokesman Dan Martinsen told TheWrap. "The bottom line is whatever has happened with the sample, this is what we're working with now." He said the network still expects to finish the year as the top network among viewers age 2 to 11, and that the network plans 500 new episodes in the next few months to increase ratings. Its new shows include "Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness." "We're moving more aggressively," he said. Dauman said in a Nov. 10 earnings call that Nick's ratings are usually very predictable, and that set-top box data shows "meaningfully different viewership trends" than those Nielsen has recorded. ​

But Nielsen stands by its numbers. In a statement, it said it has worked with the network and the Media Rating Council, the industry's independent auditing organization, on an "exhaustive assessment" of its ratings. "To date, the review process confirms that our measurement methodology, operations and related reporting processes are working as expected," it said. Nick first noticed the drop in September. According to the latest numbers, Nick fell to an average 0.75 rating over each entire day in November, down from 0.91 in November of 2010. It reached about 1.4 million households this November, down from roughly 1.7 million in November of last year. ​

The Disney Channel posted a 4 percent year-over-year ratings increase in November, from 0.67 to 0.7. (Nick doesn't consider it a direct competitor since it isn't ad-supported.) The Cartoon Network was flat year-over-year in November, recovering somewhat from its own recent losses. In October, Nick dropped 13 percent in the ratings while Disney gained 5 percent and the Cartoon Network dropped 12 percent. In September, Nick dropped 8 percent while Disney dropped 2 percent and Cartoon Network fell 5 percent. The slide isn't a case of other networks eating Nick's lunch -- not all of it, anyway. Disney's small gains don't begin to account for Nick's losses. ​

Neither does the fast growth of The Hub, which grew 40 percent year-over-year in November. (That isn't as impressive as it sounds when you consider that the growth reflects a ratings increase from 0.05 to 0.07, as the number of daily households grew from 56,000 to 76,000.) Disney's XD, meanwhile, has posted ratings gains of 8 percent in October and 15 percent in November after a flat September. It climed to 223,000 households in November, up from 205,000 year-over-year.​

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Watch this montage of old Nickelodeon bumpers and promos from the late '80s and early '90s. These little clips are funny, strange, inventive, colorful, sometimes messy, sometimes just plain weird. But they are always fun and creative. They are always offbeat and interesting. They always manage to capture what it means to be a kid. And they were pretty much unlike anything else on television at the time. No other channel had promos like these (except Nick at Nite, 'natch).

You watch these promos and you "get" what Nickelodeon is: A wacky, weird, messy, unpredictable, strange, funny, silly, imaginative place. It's not just a TV channel for kids to call their own, it's like the very mind of a child come to life. There's nothing "cool" or glamorous or slick about it; this is a channel that embraces the geekier, weirder side of life and it works because most kids aren't the popular, good-looking kings and queens of their school and playground -- most kids are the dorks and the geeks, awkward and strange and average, just trying to have fun and be silly and be... kids. No little mini rock stars or glamor girls here.

This is very different from old school Nick, which often had SEVERAL 30 second bits that just promoted the channel itself and not any specific show. For current-day Nick, all I could find is this one promo.

This is evidence in my mind that Nickelodeon as a brand and a unique identity is no more. The channel can't do a variety of little 30 second promos to promote the network identity because the network no longer has a unique identity. They tried to make this new promo seem old school with the slime, but really, even the slime is now slick and bland. It's all a pale comparison to the vibrant promotionals that Nickelodeon used to run.

I know I'm late to the party in noticing it, but Nickelodeon is now just "Disney Channel, Part 2" -- a channel filled with tween sitcoms starring glammed-out, gorgeous teen idols whom the network executives hope to turn into the next Hannah Montanas (complete with merchandising, record albums, music videos, and concerts).

All of these shows are heavy on the romance/relationship stuff as well as issues of popularity and status within the shows' settings (i.e.: high school, the fashion industry, the music industry, etc.). Implicitly they suggest that girls must dress in the latest fashion trends, style themselves with lots of makeup, and be overly concerned with fame and celebrity (i.e.: the characters on iCARLY have a web show; VICTORIOUS revolves around a young woman who wants to become a famous singer; TRUE JACKSON VP is focused on the fashion industry and clothing as image; BIG TIME RUSH is about a boy band that wants to make it big).

From watching these shows, one would think the life of a kid today should revolve around Internet celebrity, fashion, and the music industry (specifically the "teen idol" industry). These shows are often funny and entertaining but they don't reflect what it's like to be an ordinary kid. They give kids a superficial and image-obsessed fantasy version of adolescence that is probably very intoxicating for the kids watching these shows, but at what cost?

Now, speaking to my fellow twentysomething nostalgics, let's not kid ourselves: Old School Nick had some terrible, vapid shows too (FIFTEEN, WELCOME FRESHMAN, and ROUNDHOUSE come most quickly to mind). I'm not arguing that everything on Nick was perfect in the early '90s and everything on Nick now is crap. There have always been crappy shows on Nickelodeon, there will always be crappy shows on Nickelodeon.

What I am saying, though, is that Nick as a channel used to have an identity that was more free spirited and fun. The channel itself had an overall spirit of weirdness and messiness and creativity that was stronger than its individual shows. Nickelodeon the channel was as varied and unpredictable as the kids who watched it. There was something for everyone. And it was a place where nerds and ordinary kids could come for television that spoke to them. THE ADVENTURES OF PETE AND PETE, REN AND STIMPY, SALUTE YOUR SHORTS, CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL, ROCKO'S MODERN LIFE, ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?, DOUBLE DARE, LEGENDS OF THE HIDDEN TEMPLE, GUTS -- the list goes on and on.

Once upon a time, Nickelodeon was for real, ordinary kids. Now it's for glamor girls and high-gloss celebrities. Compare and contrast the Nickelodeon kids of the golden age versus the "stars" of today:

Unfortunately, in chasing those Hannah Montana/Disney Channel dollars, Nick has ceded its unique identity for the love of the filthy lucre. In a way, Nick's success as a television channel has been its own undoing. As the channel has become more successful, more money is at stake, and with more money at stake, executives want to take fewer chances. Seeing the success of the teen idol formula on Disney, the Nick execs counter with their own teenybopper stars and soon all of the inventive, unusual, and offbeat stuff that Nickelodeon was known for falls by the wayside in favor of safe, bland, marketable teenage commodities.

Now without an unique brand identity of its own to carry the channel forward, the success of Nickelodeon the channel depends entirely on the success of its tween/teen stars. The channel doesn't have brand loyalty anymore; it has only star loyalty. Kids don't love Nickelodeon, they love Miranda Cosgrove or Victoria Justice. Nickelodeon doesn't mean anything as a brand or as a channel except as the channel that shows iCARLY and SPONGEBOB. Nick doesn't even have The Splat anymore, that iconic, shapeshifting logo that symbolized everything it meant to be a kid to a generation who grew up in the '80s and '90s. Now Nickelodeon is as generic as all the other kids channels out there, one in a sea of many, no different than the rest.

Nick may be trying to hang on to the slime and the faint sense that they are the messier, more rebellious channel, but one need only look at the promos airing on the channel today and compare them to the promos from the '80s and '90s to see how far the channel has fallen. Nick might still have the slime, but it's lost the spirit of messiness and fun that made the slime great.

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