Anyone remember Don't Look Now? Basically, it was You Can't Do That on Television for PBS (from the same creators, Roger Price and Geoffrey Darby), with a few tweaks - it was made in Boston (WGBH) instead of Ottawa (CJOH), it had "Yellow Yuck" instead of green slime, walking the plank instead of a firing squad, a summer camp with bad food instead of a greasy spoon with bad food, and so on. Like the early locally aired episodes of YCDTOTV, it also aired rock videos and hosted phone-in contests (where kids had to answer questions from the week's news, hence the show's "educational" component).
It aired a trial run of about a half-dozen episodes in the fall of 1983 but ultimately wasn't picked up as a series despite very good ratings. The envelope-pushing content of a lot of the comedy likely had a lot to do with that - one skit has a kid dumping a bucket of water over a girl's head because he thought "she'd look better in a wet T-shirt," then, after examining her, decides she doesn't and walks away. I would imagine there were a ton of complaints from parents, despite the disclaimer at the beginning of each show warning that it wasn't intended for very young children. Judging by TV listings I've seen, the PBS member station in Grand Rapids, MI didn't air it, although Detroit, East Lansing, Toledo, Central Michigan and Bowling Green did.
I assume Price and Darby, who often poked fun at PBS with YCDTOTV skits, took a chance with PBS at a time when they weren't sure Nickelodeon would make it, as YCDTOTV was one of the few Nickelodeon shows with any kind of ratings at that time. But PBS didn't pick up the show, Nick survived, and YCDTOTV continued until 1990.