Nick’s Saturday Night: Something New

Nickelodeon’s Saturday night lineup for 2002 gets off to a rambunctious start tonight with a slew of new and retooled shows.

First, some clarification is in order: Yes, this is Nick, and yes, we’re talking about evening programming. But fans of the channel’s Nick at Night roster, home to such classic comedies as “All in the Family” and “Cheers,” may be in for a crude awakening if they tune in too early on Saturday nights. That’s crude as in food fights and zit jokes, not the Farrelly brothers.

But one of the new offerings, “The Nick Cannon Show” (9:30 p.m.), is a pleasant surprise for, as the saying goes, kids of all ages.

The 21-year-old comedian has been a familiar figure on Nick in spot roles, but he’s calling all the shots here. Cannon is the star and executive producer of this imaginatively amusing effort in which he plops down in a suburban household and wreaks amiable havoc with the real-life people within his orbit. Hip-hop stars Lil’ Romeo and Master P perform in a fun backyard-barbecue finale, and Eddie Murphy, Britney Spears and other guests will be on hand later in the season.

The other anchor of the evening’s programming is “All That,” which has assembled a new cast of energetic adolescents for its seventh season (8 p.m.). As always, the players come from the “When in Doubt, Shout” school of comedy, but I’m pretty sure I’m well off the chart of the target demographic.

The show, Nickelodeon’s longest-running live-action series, has a celebrity-host format this season, with Frankie Muniz (“Malcolm in the Middle”) drawing the first slot. Recording star Aaron Carter, the younger brother of the Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter, provides a musical boost.