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Noggin / The N

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Revision as of 16:42, 20 September 2020 by 96.237.232.55 (talk) (Noggin still exists, just as a streaming service instead of a channel. The N block was discontinued in 2008, not 2009.)

Noggin is an entertainment brand owned by Nickelodeon. It first launched as a cable television network, which was divided into two programming blocks: a daytime block for young children and a nighttime block for tweens and teens, called The N (standing for "The Noggin"). Daria was seen in reruns on The N from July 2, 2002 through June 2006. Viacom, who owns MTV, discontinued the block in 2008. It was eventually merged with Nickelodeon's own teen block, TEENick, into a separate channel called TeenNick.

In the beginning, when The N was looking for ways to appeal to its "tween" audience, Daria was deemed too "adult" and was therefore censored. Censorship was usually restricted to cutting out "bad" words (such as Jake's numerous "dammits" and the word "ass"), but many times The N went further and cut humorous lines with innuendo or even whole plotlines. This editing became known as Nogginization, and the affected episodes were said to be Nogginized to distinguish them from the original, full-length versions. Episodes were skipped over, such as "My Night at Daria's".

At best, the deeper cuts led to jokes being ruined, such as the scene in "Lane Miserables" where Jake opens the door to Monique, thinking she's Quinn's date, and spouts, "Wow! I really don't know my kids!" The revised version on The N makes it appear as though Jake always knew that Quinn's "date" would be a female. At worst, the deeper cuts led to a reshaping of episodes that either removed a dimension or destroyed their clarity. In Is It Fall Yet?, all mention of Alison's come-ons to Jane Lane were cut out, which meant that viewers never got to see Jane ponder her sexuality. In "Lucky Strike," the entire subplot in which Quinn's substitute teacher hits on Tiffany is also cut. Without this scene, and the following scene in which Helen calls and threatens Ms. Li with a lawsuit, viewers have no basis for understanding why Ms. Li would force Daria to be a substitute teacher.

The numerous cuts created a backlash amongst long-time viewers of the series, while at the same time repeated airings brought new fans to the fandom. Over time, The N's censorship of Daria would prove cruelly ironic, as it began to show much more adult fare (such as Degrassi: The Next Generation), to the point where Daria became one of the tamer programs. It is possible that The N liked their animated shows to be pure in spirit and not so cynical or adult, but also that as The N began to rely less on subsidies from Viacom and more on ad revenue, its executives chose to make their channel less geared toward education than escapism.

In 2016, Glenn Eichler compared the lack of original music in the DVDs to The N (and Logo), which did use the original music, and said he prefered the former: "on those networks the show is jarringly, destructively edited to squeeze in even more ads, or to meet standards and practices guidelines. And the audio is compressed so brutally that the whole episode sounds like it was recorded in a tin can."

A Daria website existed for a time as part of the general websites for the above networks, but it has since been discontinued.

After the re-branding of The N as TeenNick, several Daria episodes were aired on the channel in 2010 as part of the promotional push for Daria: The Complete Animated Series.

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