I remember when that show Live Wire ended Nickelodeon for the night. Before Nick @Nite. came along the ARTS channel came on to replace Nick for the night (and this was when Arts was when ARTS wasn't when they'd show reality programming. ARTS was seriously ballet, opera , etc. ) Then early the next morning Nickelodeon was back on.
Ah yes, I remember Nick back in its ancient days, too. I remember there was some kind of a sign-off used at one point featuring some old school Nickelodeon characters...mostly from Pinwheel I think. (Ebenezer Squint, Coco the Mime and Plus and Minus were in there somewhere). Then the ARTS channel came on rather abruptly. I wish I had taped the time there was a glitch during the sign off. Ebenezer was (I think) yawning, then the channel blipped to ARTS and there was some opera singer in the middle of a long note. Hehehe.
Yes, ancient Nick had shows like Pinwheel (the channel was actually called "Pinwheel" once), Today's Special and awesome shows later in the day like Mr. Wizard's World, Count Duckula and Danger Mouse. There were some neat interstitials, too. There were ones called "Sports Cartoon" that featured a cat and a hippo, Picture Pages with Bill Cosby, Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings (no not the SNL sketch) and a neat cartoon short called "Bananaman" that came on almost at the end of Nick's day.
Those interstitials and cartoons were fun because you never knew what you were going to get...kind of like Old School Sesame Street. I always liked this one, since it gets away with cartoony stuff and mimics real cat behavior.