About TeenNick (Israel)

TeenNick (Israel)

TeenNick (Israel) is the Israeli version of Viacom's TeenNick brand, a Hebrew-language pay television channel aimed at viewers between the ages of nine and fourteen. It was launched on 20 March 2017 on yes, Israel's direct broadcast satellite platform, and was presented at launch as the first channel in Israel created specifically for that in-between audience — children who had outgrown preschool and younger children's programming but were not yet the audience for adult drama and entertainment. The channel broadcasts around the clock, twenty-four hours a day, and its schedule is built around live-action drama, sitcoms and comedy rather than animation. In Israel the channel is represented and operated by Ananey Communications Group, the Tel Aviv-based multichannel producer that has long handled Viacom's brands in the country. Its arrival completed a family of Viacom children's services in Israel alongside Nickelodeon and Nick Jr., giving Ananey a continuous offer running from preschool viewers through young children and up to the early teenage years.

Launch on the yes platform in March 2017

The Israeli TeenNick began broadcasting on 20 March 2017, carried by yes DBS, the satellite service that has historically been the home of Nickelodeon Israel's original productions. Trade coverage of the launch by World Screen and other industry outlets stressed the novelty of the proposition: no Israeli channel had previously been programmed exclusively for the nine-to-fourteen age group. The new service was a twenty-four-hour channel from the outset, rather than a programming block on an existing service, and its identity was deliberately distinct from the main Nickelodeon channel. Where Nickelodeon Israel mixed animation with live action for a younger-skewing audience, TeenNick was positioned around live-action series in which the central characters were themselves tweens and teenagers, dealing with school, friendship, family and first independence. The launch was handled locally by Ananey Communications, which operated more than eleven channels at the time and reached, by its own account, around seventy-six percent of Israeli households through its portfolio of owned and represented services.

Ananey Communications and the Viacom partnership

TeenNick's Israeli operator, Ananey Communications Group, is one of the defining companies of Israeli pay television. Ananey owned and operated local pay-TV channels of its own and, under licence, managed and operated Israeli versions of Viacom's flagship brands, including Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., MTV and Comedy Central, while also representing additional Viacom channels for affiliate sales in Israel. That structure meant TeenNick was not simply an imported feed retransmitted into Israel. It was scheduled, promoted and supplied with original programming by a local operator with its own production arm, Nutz Productions, founded in 2010 as Ananey's high-end concept and production unit. Nutz produced the original series for the Viacom brands in Israel, including the programmes made for TeenNick, and also developed content with foreign partners. In April 2020 ViacomCBS Networks International moved to acquire Ananey outright, a transaction reported by Kidscreen and trade press as a recognition of Ananey's role as Viacom's long-standing commercial partner in Israel and of the international value of the teen drama catalogue it had built.

A schedule built on live-action drama and sitcoms

From launch, TeenNick's programming promise was live action around the clock. The imported core of the schedule drew on Nickelodeon's international live-action catalogue, with series announced at launch including iCarly, Victorious, Make It Pop and Bella and the Bulldogs. These were comedies and dramas performed by young casts, dubbed or subtitled for Israeli viewers, and they set the tone for the channel: stories set in schools, homes and performance academies, told at the pace of a daily or weekly serial. Around that imported spine, however, the Israeli channel was distinguished by a large volume of original Hebrew-language production — the element that separated it from a simple international feed. Ananey's model for Nickelodeon Israel had already shown that locally made daily dramas could outperform imports with Israeli tweens, and TeenNick was created in large part as a dedicated home for that kind of production, with long-running serials stripped across the week in runs far longer than a typical American season.

The Greenhouse and the launch reunion special

No programme explains TeenNick's creation better than The Greenhouse. The Hebrew-language daily drama, produced by Nutz Productions, had run for four seasons on Nickelodeon Israel exclusively for yes subscribers, following a brother and sister who arrive at an elite boarding school for gifted future leaders after losing their mother, join its two competing houses, and are drawn into a secret investigation. The series broke ratings records on its Israeli debut and became Ananey's signature property. To mark TeenNick's launch, the channel aired an original television reunion special reuniting the cast of The Greenhouse — a direct bridge between the audience the series had built on Nickelodeon and the new channel aimed at the same viewers as they grew older. The property's afterlife underlined the strategy: Nutz remade the series in English as Greenhouse Academy for Netflix, which was widely reported as the first original Israeli series acquired by the global streaming service, and the remake was renewed through a fourth global season.

Spell Keepers and the fantasy drama strand

TeenNick became the Israeli home of Spell Keepers, known in Hebrew as Kadabra, one of Ananey and Nutz Productions' most successful original dramas. Created by Michal Cooper-Keren, from an original idea by Sivan Shiknagy and Einat Shahak, the series is a fantastical suspense drama built around two determined heroines, Kirki and Laila, and a secret group of good witches — the Kadabras — whose role is to protect humanity from supernatural creatures. Across three seasons totalling one hundred and fifty episodes of about twenty-two minutes, the Spell Keepers control the four elements of nature — wind, earth, fire and water — and perform feats such as raising storms and floods. The series won the award for Best Drama for Kids and Teens at the Israeli Television Academy Awards, with Nutz announcing the honour in March 2018, and it was among the Ananey titles that Keshet International took out to the international market under the two companies' distribution partnership, evidence that a channel made for Israeli nine-to-fourteen-year-olds was producing drama with genuine export value.

The Hood, Rising, Sky and the original slate

Spell Keepers was one element of a broader original slate through which TeenNick defined itself. The Hood, another daily live-action teen drama from the Ananey stable, ran to one hundred and fifty episodes of about twenty-two minutes and aired on TeenNick alongside Spell Keepers. The tween drama Rising, at fifty episodes of twenty-two minutes, debuted on TeenNick Israel as the slate continued to grow at the end of the decade. The channel was also the launch home for Sky, a forty-episode tween drama created by Giora Chamizer, the creator of The Greenhouse, about an alien who crash-lands on Earth and must avoid detection while pretending to be the most popular — and meanest — girl in school. Nutz Productions' wider output surrounded these titles: Spyders, developed with Nickelodeon International for global rollout, and series such as Bed & Biscuit, the tween sitcom about a family-run dog kennel that had launched on Nickelodeon Israel for yes. Together these productions gave the channel a depth of first-run Hebrew drama unusual for a pay channel of its size.

Position within Israel's children's television market

TeenNick entered a crowded but clearly segmented Israeli children's market. The Children's Channel, Arutz HaYeladim, had served viewers aged roughly seven to fourteen since the earliest days of Israeli cable; Hop! served preschoolers; Nickelodeon Israel and Nick Jr. covered the younger and middle ranges under the same Ananey operation as TeenNick itself. By carving out the nine-to-fourteen band as a channel in its own right, TeenNick acknowledged that this audience's tastes — daily serial drama, school-set comedy, fantasy and suspense — no longer fitted comfortably inside a general children's schedule. Its exclusive early association with the yes platform also mattered commercially: Nickelodeon's original Israeli dramas had historically premiered for yes subscribers, and TeenNick continued that pattern, making the channel part of the satellite platform's effort to differentiate its family offering from cable rival HOT through exclusive, locally produced youth content rather than imported animation alone.

The global TeenNick brand and the Israeli adaptation

Internationally, TeenNick began in the United States as Viacom's channel for teenagers and pre-teens, evolving from earlier programming blocks into a standalone network whose schedule centred on live-action Nickelodeon series. Israel's launch on 20 March 2017 formed part of a period of international expansion for the brand: a Middle East and North Africa version followed in April 2017, and other territories converted or launched TeenNick services in later years. The Israeli version nevertheless remained a local adaptation rather than a relay of the American channel. Its operator was Israeli, its flagship content was Israeli, its language was Hebrew, and its most successful programmes were daily dramas produced in Israel in episode volumes shaped by Israeli broadcasting habits. That combination — a global brand framework filled with domestic production — is the model Ananey had already proven with Nickelodeon Israel, and TeenNick extended it to an older audience.

From Ananey independence to Paramount ownership

The acquisition of Ananey by ViacomCBS Networks International, announced in April 2020, changed the ownership context in which TeenNick operates without changing its local character. Ananey had been Viacom's partner rather than its subsidiary: it held licences to operate the brands, produced the local content through Nutz Productions, and represented further Viacom channels for affiliate sales. Bringing the company inside the group made the Israeli operation a fully owned part of what became Paramount's international networks business, aligning TeenNick Israel with its sister services under a single owner. Reporting on the deal emphasised the strategic value of Ananey's production capability as much as its channels: a studio that had delivered a Netflix-commissioned remake of an Israeli school drama, an award-winning fantasy serial and a pipeline of tween dramas was an asset for a global company competing for young audiences across platforms. TeenNick, as the dedicated home of that tween output in Israel, sat at the centre of the acquired portfolio's youth business.

Legacy and continuing role

TeenNick's significance in Israeli television is out of proportion to the size of its niche. It formalised a stage of childhood that Israeli broadcasters had previously treated as the upper end of children's television or the lower end of general entertainment, and it gave that audience a channel whose heroes were its own age and whose biggest stories were made in its own language and country. The channel demonstrated, following The Greenhouse, that Hebrew-language daily drama for tweens could anchor a pay channel, win national television academy honours, sell internationally through partners such as Keshet International and generate formats strong enough for Netflix to remake for the world. Operated from Tel Aviv by the team that built Nickelodeon Israel, and later absorbed into Paramount's international business along with the rest of Ananey, TeenNick remains the clearest Israeli example of a global youth brand rebuilt from the ground up around local production.