For those not in the know:
"
Cyma was the executive who (a) killed my Nickelodeon action show in a fit of post-9/11 panic, claiming that "action shows turn children into terrorists," and (b) signed off on anti-union attacks on the 35 animation writers who had just signed their WGA cards and asked for pay equitable to our far-less-profitable live-action writer peers (viewer for viewer, we were paid 1/6th to 1/10th what the live action writers were getting paid on much lower-rated shows). Under Cyma's leadership, Nickelodeon illegally harassed the pro-union writers, then illegally fired or laid off 30 of the troublemakers, lied in federal court to obtain the names of the unionizing ringleaders, then blacklisted 4 of us (including me) by calling every animation house in Los Angeles and telling them not to hire us, then signed a deal with the IATSE Local 839 Animation Union, locking the Writers Guild out of Nickelodeon forever... and only then did Nickelodeon eventually hire back many of the unionist writers & writer/board artists once they had made sure they'd never have to pay any animation writer a single dollar in residuals on cartoons (never mind the fact that the composers of our cartoons and the actors in our cartoons get paid residuals).
During Cyma's regime, the methodology of paying show creators also quietly changed; creators used to get 2% of "Adjusted Gross" of toys, bedsheets, plush animals, etc. based on their shows. That meant Nickelodeon could deduct the cost of toy manufacture and shipping to the stores and NOTHING ELSE. Then, perhaps upset about having to pay millions of dollars to Steven Hillenburg, creator of
Sponge Bob, Cyma's Nickelodeon quietly changed their creator deals to "Adjusted Net" of toy revenue, meaning they could deduct the cost of anything they wanted from the earnings of their creators. Cyma mentioned your show during dinner for 6 at the French Laundry? That's $3,000 deducted from your creator payments! They've also held the line on what they pay artists & creators on a per-episode basis... from what I hear, it's not unusual for a show creator at Nickelodeon to work 60-80 hour weeks for LESS money per week than they would have earned 15 years ago, even as the cost of living has dramatically gone up. And why? All to disguise the falling ratings. Because if the ratings are low, the earnings from ad sales are low, so to provide profits you have to slash your employees' paychecks, healthcare, retirement funds, etc. All so more, more, more money can be funneled upward to the executives in charge, to the shareholders, to anyone but the artists who create the work.
Perhaps not coincidentally, during the 17 years since I left Nickelodeon, they haven't had a single hit approaching the success of
Sponge Bob. After all, if you're a creator with a great show and you have another option which would pay you a real percentage of the toy money, why wouldn't you take it? Nickelodeon have spent the last decade treating creators terribly, like when Carl Greenblatt and his staff on Harvey Beaks learned their show and jobs had been canceled via a tweet. Recently Cyma's Nickelodeon had their biggest recent animation success taken out at the knees by a #
Me Too firing that every single person at the studio saw building for years. Worse, she recently had to terminate Nickelodeon's relationship with Dan Schneider, the live-action series creator who singlehandedly kept Nickelodeon on the air for 10 years, terminating him because of swirling rumors of sexual predation of their minor actresses... rumors which the
Me Too movement made far more likely to emerge into public view and make Viacom's cash cow network synonymous with child molestation.
And all of this as Cyma watched haplessly while Nickelodeon's ratings slid off a cliff, routinely getting 1/3rd of what their shows used to get. She's spent years blaming Netflix, the Internet, Videogames, Voodoo... anything than take a serious look at how they chose shows and ran their house.
When I started at Nickelodeon, the executives there loved animation and loved creativity and didn't want to make anything that looked like something someone else would make. That network thrived and grew from #87 in the ratings to become the #1 channel on cable television. Then the executive leadership changed and the channel became about cutting corners, doing everything on the cheap, chiseling away at artist pay, and most especially about selling toys to kids, and aping whatever cartoons everyone else was already doing. Cyma turned away Adventure Time, for just one example. They turned down Phineas & Ferb, for another example. The channel which nurtured weird shows like Real Monsters, Invader Zim,
Sponge Bob Square Pants, The Angry Beavers, and Hey Arnold became the channel which bought and rebooted stale old intellectual properties like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and spent millions trying to develop ancient nonsense like Mighty Mouse. Once upon a time we challenged #1 network The Disney Channel and their lazy culture of using money and acquisitions to compensate for a lack of creativity... under Cyma's leadership Nickelodeon BECAME The Disney Channel, with their hidebound development process, fear of the unknown, and over-reliance on being the second person with a good idea, and The Disney Channel hired away many of the old school Nick execs and reinvented itself (not completely, it's still Disney, after all, but they're far more experimental than Nick at this point).
It's never a fun thing to see someone be fired, but I can't bring myself to feel sorry for her because I'm sure she's walking out the door with millions of dollars weaseled out of the pockets of series creators and animation artists. And I can't help suspect that she did much of the same with the live action creators and crews (although less so because they're protected by much stronger unions than animators). The freefall ratings alone should have gotten her fired a decade ago, and the failure of their development department to produce anything my kids want to watch should have been the final nail in her coffin... but this is America where the little guy gets fired and blacklisted and the wealthy elite can only ever fail upward.
It'll be interesting to see what happens next. They've got an opportunity here to completely reinvent the network and re-embrace creativity and originality. Anyone want to lay odds that they'll do that? CAN they even do it at this point?"
