Citing creative differences, Spike TV president Albie Hecht yesterday announced his resignation from the post. The former president of film and television entertainment for Nickelodeon was instrumental of rebranding floundering cable outlet TNN into Spike, "the first network for men" and home to such high-profile animated series as Stan Lee’s Stripperella and John Kricfaluci’s Ren and Stimpy’s Adult Party Cartoon.
Herb Scannell, MTV Networks Group president, says Hecht will be missed and notes that he and other execs are beginning discussions about how Hecht might continue working with the company in a creative capacity.
In a released statement, Hecht said, “I feel immensely satisfied in the job that I have done and I’ve told Herb and the company that I will do everything to make this transition as smooth as possible.”
At Spike TV, Hecht oversaw the production of the fake reality show, The Joe Schmo Show, which spawned a number of copycats on other networks. He also launched Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC) and The Video Game Awards. In 2004, he introduced "Check Up or Check Out," a PSA campaign designed to encourage men to get annual physical check ups.
At Nickelodeon, Hecht developed the SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly Odd Parents, and Blue’s Clues, as well as live-action programming. He also created and exe produced The Kids Choice Awards. During his tenure at cable entity, he also supervised the creation of Nickelodeon’s first television animation studio in Los Angeles and its first digital animation studio in New York. On the feature film side, he developed and exec produced The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which together raked in more than $200 million at the box office. In addition, he served as the exec producer of Rugrats: The Movie, Rugrats in Paris and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron.
Spike TV has not named a likely successor to the position vacated by Hecht.
