I The Behrend Beacon
Do you plan on seeing the film Brokeback Mountain?
I am. I think it will he a
good movie
Katie Sweeny
Nickelodeon Studios closes
Nickelodeon Studios, home to the network and television shows that defined the childhood of many
current college-age students, was closed down and destroyed in 2005.
After being left to languish in disrepair by parent company MTV networks, the building was closed
down in April of 2005. The infamous Slime Geyser was razed to the ground and removed in May.
As of December, the property had been repossessed by Universal Studios and the building is in the
process of being converted to more offices and usable space. These moves have been made with min
imum publicity and have mostly flown in under the radar of the general public. Most people and Penn
State students react with surprise upon hearing the news.
"You're kidding. It saddens me to see such a huge part of my youth being removed by the bane of
y high school years MTV)," said Penn State student Zach Tylwalk, who was taken aback by the
news. "It's news to me.-
Executives from MTV Networks declined to comment regarding policies leading up to its closing.
As the premier recording facility for the Nickelodeon channel, the studios produced many highly
popular television programs, including "Clarissa Explains it All," the "Double Dare" series, "Wild &
Crazy Kids," "GUTS," "Legends of the Hidden Temple," "Eureeka's Castle," and many more. In the
end, over 2,000 live-action situational comedies and game shows were taped in the studios.
The fan website nickelodeonstudios.net interviewed an employee that preferred to remain unidenti
fied. was recently there, and the Nick building is all but abandoned for now. Obviously they're
going to phase out any sort of merchandise that had to do with the studios, but most of it was gone
anyway, and yeah I'lll pretty sure that the building will just be converted to offices. The time capsule
was still there, if that's any consolation."
The studios, which until recently hosted guided tours and opened the taping of several shows to live
audiences, are hest known as a Mecca for kids and for people in their late teens and early twenties
across America. The popularity and marketability of the product produced by Nickelodeon Studios
made it a common and inseparable part of modem American culture. There are very few people who
have not seen a show that it produced at some time in their lives. Events such as the Kids Choice
Awards and annual New Years specials garnered high viewership ratings and critical acclaim, as well
as the numerous educational and news programs that helped keep a generation of children informed
of the world around them and entertained with clean (or slimy) fun.
While most of the live action production capability has been eliminated, many of the current cartoon
shows, such as "Spongebob Squarepants" and "Fairly Oddparents," will still be able to be produced at
the West Coast Nickelodeon production facility in California. In the end, the move will likely be
regarded as the end of an era by millions of children and children at heart across the country.
,
r
NICKELODEONSTUDIOS.NET/CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Nickelodeon Studios was heartily dedicated to television programming geared toward children and young adults.
Do you have any story ideas or suggestions for question of the week?
Feel free to e-mail them to us: SLeditor@psu.edu.
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sir
No. it just doesn't
interest me...
Paul Carmichael
By Patrick Webster
assistant managing editor
pipN I 75(" psu edu
"I have no desire to see it
I'm too busy. -
Tiffany Mitchell
:. .
.. .
- r - i - ni
ri IL
"I might check it out
when it comes on video
I don't know -- sounds
like an interesting
0v annv Reimer
Listening Legally
By Logan Stack
technology columnist
Iv 111 (0 rmi cdu
Dear ASCII,
I don't run Windows, so I
can't use the Penn State
Napster service. Is there any
alternative free source of
music (besides pirating it)?
-Macie
Dear Macie,
Absolutely! There are many
Internet radio stations out there,
and most of them are free.
Shoutcast.com has a nearly com
prehensive list of them.
You're more likely to find eso
teric music on these Internet
radio stations than on the radio
in your car. You're bound to find
something you'll like; there were
13,170 stations as of this writ
ing. And every time I checked
back, the count had gone up by a
few stations. Over the couple of
hours I spent writing this, the
number of stations listed at
shoutcast.com increased by
more than XM radio's total of
160 stations.
Shoutcast is a protocol for
broadcasting music online. It
was developed by Nullsoft, the
same people who make
Winamp. The audio can actually
be in many formats but is almost
always encoded as an MP3.
Any good media player can
tune in to these stations. Linux's
XMMS, Mac's iTunes and
Winamp for Windows all work
well. If you don't like that music
player, the VLC Media Player is
a nice alternative for any operat
ing system.
Your computer is receiving
this music from the Internet, but
none of those players will let
you save the audio - only the file
pointing to the station. To save
the music, you need a different
program. I use Streamripper. It
was originally made for Linux,
but there are now versions of it
available for Windows and
Macintosh too. It connects to the
stream and saves the music as
MP3s. It creates a new MP3 file
every time the title of the song in
the stream switches. Most sta
tions are nice enough to label
their commercials, so you can
Friday, January 27, 2006
`No, I don't like gay
cowboy movies.
Brenton Kemp
delete them afterwards by just
dragging "commercial.mp3" to
the trash - no audio editing
involved. What you save is a
bunch of individually labeled
songs, not just a continuous
stream of music. It's nothing
like recording a cassette off of
FM radio. Streamripper can be
set to re-broadcast the stream to
your computer, so that you can
listen in while it rips MP3s with
out using up all the extra band
width of connecting to the sew
er twice.
Legally speaking, recording
off of these Internet broadcasts
should work just like recording
off of TV using your VCR. It's
legal to record it and watch later,
but you can't sell it or redistrib
ute it (like on Kazaa) or anything
else you couldn't do with a
recorded episode of South Park.
You don't own the copyright, so
your rights are pretty limited.
Unfortunately, the people
broadcasting must have a good
enough Internet connection to let
lots of people listen (sometimes
tens of thousands of people at
once!), so many of the stations
have commercials to support the
cost of that connection. Most of
the stations I've listened to don't
have them or have only one
commercial every ten or fifteen
minutes. It's nowhere near as
annoying as traditional radio.
Keep in mind that you're using
bandwidth too. The higher the
bitrate of the station, the better
the audio quality and the more
bandwidth it will take up. You
only get 1.5 gigabits per week in
the dorms, so any station over 20
KBps will give you a bandwidth
violation if you leave it on 24/7.
You can check how much band
width you've used at Rescom's
web site; it updates three times a
day.
Do you have a computer ques
tion? Then ask ASCII! Send an
e-mail to ASCll@psu.edu and
you may see your question
answered in next week's column.
Writ* for the BehrerKl
Beticcstil
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