Nickelodeon’s The Substitute Is A Winner And We Know Why

Nickelodeon’s The Substitute is a winner by the numbers seen below, but they did a lot of things right to make sure that they really hit it out of the ballpark. We think that there are a few reasons that the show did such great numbers and want to know if you agree.

First they started on the perfect day with the premiere of the show being on April 1st (April Fools’) as pulling pranks is on everyone’s mind. This lends itself to being more inclined to watching a new prank show. Then they knew their demographic as it is a prank show that is geared towards kids, who consume a lot of online prank shows currently. Nickelodeon was able to take the prank show concept but throw funding, marketing and infrastructure at The Substitute, which many online venues could not. This means that the makeup people that they use to hide the celebrities true nature are top-notch. They also kept the pranks G rated so that parents would feel comfortable letting their younger children watch.

If your prank show is going to have celebrity guest stars, it only makes sense to start out with one of the biggest stars on your network, and having The Substitute premiere guest star be Jace Norman, from Henry Danger, was genius. Top all that off with a $25,000 donation that will be made to each school and you have a feel good prank show.

Looking forward to the rest of the guest stars and the pranks on The Substitute on Nickelodeon.

Nickelodeon celebrated its 40th birthday on April 1st with the premiere of its new prank show, The Substitute. The first series to air from the network’s recently announced content slate, The Substitute reached 4MM total viewers cumulatively across all four of its airings for the day.

The Substitute ranked as the top show with Kids 6-11 in its time period across all TV, and it scored year-over-year double and triple-digit increases with Kids 2-11 and Kids 6-11, respectively. It averaged a 1.9/454K with Kids 2-11–up +36% over last year; a 1.4/212K with Kids 6-11–up +100%; and 866K total viewers, up+14%. Additional airings also ranked as the top telecasts with Kids 6-11 in their respective time periods (4 p.m., 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. [ET/PT]).

The inaugural episode of Nick’s new hidden-camera prank show guest-starred Jace Norman (Henry Danger) as an eccentric substitute taking over a class of unsuspecting kids.

From the producers of Undercover Boss, The Substitute is a hidden-camera show featuring celebrities who are transformed by a team of special effects artists to go undercover as substitute teachers, surprising classes of unsuspecting students.