A Front-Row Seat (Just About) At Nickelodeon’s

2007 Kids’ Choice Awards

By Shannon Hicks

Nickelodeon’s 20th Annual Kids’ Choice Awards (KCAs) were held a few weeks ago in Los Angeles, and one Sandy Hook resident was right there in the middle of all the Orange Blimp award-presenting and slime-slinging.

Cleo Conk’s uncle, Scott Fellows, is a co-writer for the network that has been presenting programming for young audiences for nearly 30 years. Mr Fellows is also the creator of Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide (usually shortened to simply Ned’s Declassified), and as such was able to offer his niece the opportunity to visit him during the weekend of Nick-related activities at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. Cleo joined three of her cousins — Paris, Charlie, and Nicky Fellows, all who live in L.A. — for the event.

Cleo and her mother, Mary Fellows, flew out to California on Thursday, March 29, in order to catch the awards ceremony.

“They do the show on Saturday, which is good because kids have school on Monday so if they did this on Sunday like the Oscars, kids wouldn’t be able to stay up to see the whole thing,” Cleo said last week.

Cleo and her cousins had Crew credentials for the weekend, so they were allowed to go just about anywhere they wanted to during the rehearsal and awards ceremony. They were granted a closeup view to Gwen Stefani’s rehearsal, and then watched the polished performance a few hours later during the ceremony. Maroon 5 also performed during this year’s KCAs.

They also had time to catch a filming of the Nick program Slime Across America. Cleo, who is 11 and in fifth grade at Reed Intermediate School, said she was “happy, but kind of overwhelmed” to be able to watch that. “Pick Boy [the star of Slime Across America] was just about ten feet away from me!”

The awards ceremony was hosted by singer and actor Justin Timberlake, which was another thrill for Cleo (see her write-up, below). She and her cousins, along with the other folks lucky enough to be in the audience, found themselves just yards away from celebrities of TV, movies, music, and sports, such as Jack Black (last year’s KCA host), Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Hilary Duff, Jessica Alba, Toby Maguire, Zac Efron, George Lopez, Ice Cube, Hayden Panettiere, Ciara, Chris Evans, Chris Brown, Queen Latifah, Mandy Moore, Ty Pennington, Jamie Lynn Spears, Nelly, Jon Heder, Emma Roberts, Jesse McCartney, Ryan Seacrest, Bindi Irwin, Tom Kenny, Nat and Alex Wolff, and Devon Werkheiser (the star of Cleo’s uncle’s show Ned Declassified).

“It was a quick show,” Cleo said, “only about a 30-minute ceremony. Other awards were presented and filmed earlier, and they were edited into the broadcast.” Nickelodeon presented a two-hour broadcast of the awards ceremony on Saturday, March 31, beginning at 8 pm EST, and then offered Kids’ Choice Awards: Best of the Mess, a 30-minute program of highlights, on April 3, 5, 7, and 8.

An after party was held in “a huge tent,” said Cleo, that had been set up just outside Pauley Pavilion. Cleo and her mom flew back home late Sunday night, arriving on the East Coast at 2 am Monday.