‘Fred: The Show’ Premieres Tonight on Nickelodeon

Fred: The Movie drew 7.6 million viewers during its debut on Nickelodeon in September 2010. That was enough pairs of eyeballs to make it the top TV movie of that year with kids 2 to 11 and 6 to 11 and to encourage the powers that be at the children’s cable network to order a sequel.

Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred premiered on Nickelodeon in October 2011 and drew an audience of 5.7 million viewers. Like the original, the sophomore installment stars Lucas Cruikshank as a hyperactive, high pitched, prepubescent, Judy-crushin’, schoolboy who won’t be denied his object of affection and/or attention (which, in the original is Judy and in the sequel is vampires). And, like the original, Night of the Living Fred did so well, it inspired executives at Nickelodeon to order some more Fred.

A third Fred movie is currently in the works and those Fred fans in need a dose of the now-18-year-old Cruikshank’s alto-tenor and frenetic on-camera persona can very soon get their fix by way of a cable television series. Fred: The Show debuts tonight at 8PM EST on Nickelodeon (in honor of Fredisdent’s Day!) with back-to-back 11-minute episodes. Following the premiere, the 20-episode series will air regularly on Nickelodeon, Fridays at 8PM EST beginning February 24. Here’s a teaser:

In the past five days, the above video has racked up 870,000+ views. That’s a decent amount(!), especially considering Nicekloeon’s YouTube channel only has 6,000+ subscribers. The view count could be a great indicator of the level of online video marketing power Nickelodeon is putting behind the program and/or the kind of quality ratings we can expect from tonight’s premiere.

Of course the number of likes and dislikes on the video above also could be a great indicator of the quality of the ratings we can expect from tonight’s premiere. 25,000+ YouTube users have disliked the teaser, while only 2,300+ have given it a thumbs up.

That’s a bad ratio(!), but we all know sometimes haters just gonna hate. If the viewership numbers of the Fred television movies are any indication, the Fred franchise resonates with the kids watching Nickelodeon these days. Cruickshank’s television show should do just fine.