On two nights in March, a raucous crowd of 20- and 30-somethings poured into Disneyland. They got here as characters from “Hannah Montana,” “Brink!,” “The Cheetah Women” and “The Suite Lifetime of Zack & Cody.” They sang “Camp Rock” songs throughout karaoke and used faux wands to hint an iconic emblem of mouse ears within the air.
Even Mickey and Minnie joined in, dressing as East Excessive Wildcats, the signature staff from “Excessive College Musical.”
However regardless of the bubbly vitality on Essential Road, it was clear: Disney Channel Nite was a eulogy for a bygone period.
After all, Disney Channel isn’t really lifeless. It nonetheless exists as a cable community. However the place it as soon as roared with billion-dollar hits that seemingly infiltrated each front room in America, it now barely whispers.
During the last decade, Disney Channel’s viewership has plummeted from an viewers of two million in 2014 to a mere 132,000 in 2023, solely barely greater than the gang at a single Taylor Swift live performance. The shared expertise of greater than 17 million viewers settling in to observe one in all its premieres, as they did for “Excessive College Musical 2” in 2007, is a pipe dream at this time.
In truth, the final film branded as a Disney Channel Authentic Film aired in 2022. The cable community now solely airs occasional “Disney Authentic Motion pictures,” almost an identical branding to movies made for Disney+, the place these titles additionally drop. Whatever the platform, most of these latest entries have had little fanfare.
On the collection facet, Disney Channel’s most buzzed about latest sitcoms have been “Raven’s House” and the upcoming “Wizards Past Waverly Place.” Each are spinoffs of reveals from the 2000s and have a few of their predecessors’ unique actors, banking on nostalgia for franchises and stars the corporate minted many years prior.
Final yr, Disney Chief Government Bob Iger asserted that the corporate’s linear TV networks “is probably not core to Disney.” In July, Disney’s tv division laid off 140 workers.
The gradual demise of Disney Channel isn’t solely its mum or dad firm’s fault. Conventional cable TV is dying. Youngsters can watch short-form movies on their telephones each time they need, and TikTok and different social platforms launch younger celebrities greater than sitcoms do.
When the Disney Channel was launched in 1983, cable TV was booming. The community initially existed as a premium providing, unique to a small group of subscribers. However because it transitioned to fundamental cable within the late Nineteen Nineties it grew to become a coast-to-coast phenomenon.
Within the 2000s, by eschewing basic mental property that viewers would immediately establish as a part of the kid-friendly Disney model, Disney Channel pulled off a outstanding string of wholly unique live-action reveals and films. With hit after hit aimed on the underserved tween demographic, its perky content material imprinted on a era of viewers and their households.
At its peak recognition in 2007, Disney Channel was the highest cable community in prime time. Its viewers wolfed up not simply on-air content material, however the tangential albums, video video games, live performance tickets and attire, serving to herald billions of {dollars} in merchandise income.
Through the use of its numerous divisions, Disney made family names out of a steady of actors together with Hilary Duff, Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. Lots of them put out music on Disney’s report labels that climbed Billboard’s charts whereas they acted on their breakout collection.
So nice was Cyrus’ affect throughout her time on “Hannah Montana” — a sitcom about an unusual lady who moonlights as a wig-wearing popstar — that, at 16, her live performance tour brought on Ticketmaster to attempt its first foray into solely paperless tickets, shifting the complete music scene.
“We at the moment are coming into the Hannah Montana Era of pop stars,” Rolling Stone reporter Brittany Spanos not too long ago proclaimed, citing the best way that Gen Z singers comparable to Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan have all expressed their early love for the sitcom — and the way they incorporate playful prospers much like these of the title character into their music and on-stage personas.
Stars like Rodrigo, Carpenter and the actor Jenna Ortega additionally all had distinguished early roles on Disney Channel sitcoms, simply as Cyrus did, however none of them ascended to mainstream fame till their time on the community was properly within the rearview.
For the performers, such delayed success is arguably a superb factor. Lately, there was a rising reckoning concerning the immense strain and probably traumatic results of fame on younger individuals — and the ethics and questions of safety of minors working professionally within the leisure business in any respect.
For Disney, the top of Disney Channel’s recognition and cultural affect is a large loss. And for the present era of viewers who’ve outgrown Elsa and are too younger for “Euphoria,” it’s an leisure void that continues to be to be stuffed.
The Mouse Home remains to be making an attempt to recreate its profitable tween technique of yore. At this yr’s D23 showcase, they introduced an enviornment live performance tour that includes among the stars of its “Descendants” and “Zombies” film franchises.
As evidenced by the Disneyland occasions and the addition of a steady Throwback “playlist” on Disney+, nevertheless, the corporate appears to appreciate their finest guess for protecting the Disney Channel magic alive isn’t by creating new hits, however by capitalizing on the nostalgia of former viewers who at the moment are adults.
However what occurs when at this time’s Gen Alpha children develop up? What live-action Disney reveals and films will they must be collectively nostalgic about?
“In 2005, Disney was on a mission to rebuild and reimagine the corporate. That’s why they employed Bob Iger and me,” Cyrus stated in a speech final month, as she grew to become the youngest individual to ever obtain the corporate’s Disney Legends honor.
The hunt is at the moment underway to search out Iger’s alternative earlier than his contract runs out (once more) in 2026. A problem, for certain — however a doable one.
And it’s actually simpler than discovering one other Miley Cyrus with out a Disney Channel.
Ashley Spencer is a journalist and the creator of “Disney Excessive: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire.”
