The channel was originally founded as Pinwheel on December 1, 1977. Pinwheel was at the time only available on QUBE, which was the first two-way major market interactive cable television system, owned by Warner Cable. Pinwheel relaunched as Nickelodeon on April 1, 1979, and expanded to other cable providers nationwide. The channel was initially commercial-free and remained without advertising until 1984. Warner sold Nickelodeon, along with its sister networks MTV and VH1, to Viacom in 1986.
As of January 2016, the channel is available to about 92.056 million households (79.086% of households with TV) in the United States.
