Nickelodeon (commonly shortened to Nick) is a British pay television network aimed at children and young aged 5 to 14. On 1 September 1993, a localised version of the US channel launched in the United Kingdom and launched at a later date in Ireland. In the United Kingdom, the channel is available on Sky, Virgin Media, and TalkTalk Plus TV. In Ireland, the channel is available on Virgin Media Ireland, Eir TV and Sky Ireland. It is the first Nickelodeon feed launched overseas. History Nickelodeon was launched in the UK on 1 September 1993 exclusively on Sky as part of the Sky Multichannels package, originally airing for 12 hours from 7am to 7pm. and showing both cartoons and live action series. The first cartoon was James the Cat. Nick@Nite was also planned from early 1994 but never implemented; off-air Nickelodeon would air static logos, schedule information and teletext. From November 1995, it started to timeshare with Paramount Channel. The British version of Nick Jr. also launched on the channel's first day, broadcasting during school hours. Live presentation followed in 1994, branded as Nick Alive!. In 1996, Nickelodeon reached an agreement with CBBC to show a block of CBBC programmes for one hour before and one hour after Nick Jr., called CBBC on Nickelodeon. This block lasted until 1998. Nick Jr. was taken off the main channel in July 2000, after launching its own channel the year before, and the increase of subscribers to Sky Digital and cable. By August 1997, Nickelodeon started signing on at 6am. When Sky Digital was launched in 1998, it was in the original channel line-up on Astra 2A, now broadcasting from 6am until 10pm. However, analogue satellite and analogue cable services continued to shutdown the channel at 7pm each day until Nickelodeon closed on analogue satellite on 30 April 2001. Nicktoons was launched in the UK and Ireland in July 2002. During the end of 2004, Telewest failed to reach an agreement to broadcast Nickelodeon, Nicktoons and Nick Jr. on their services after 2005 and the channels were removed from Telewest on 17 December, leading to many Telewest customers leaving for Sky and NTL, while Telewest offered either a free upgrade to Disney Channel or to Sky Cinema to prevent loss of customers. By the next year, however, Nickelodeon successfully renegotiated with Telewest and the channels were restored. In February 2010, Nickelodeon adopted the worldwide