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 Girls” and “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.” They sang “Camp Rock” songs throughout karaoke and used fake wands to trace an iconic brand of mouse ears within the air.
Even Mickey and Minnie joined in, dressing as East Excessive Wildcats, the signature staff from “Excessive Faculty Musical.”
However regardless of the bubbly vitality on Essential Road, it was clear: Disney Channel Nite was a eulogy for a bygone period.
In fact, Disney Channel isn’t really useless. 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.
Over the past 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 more than 17 million viewers settling in to look at one in every of its premieres, as they did for “Excessive Faculty Musical 2” in 2007, is a pipe dream immediately.
In truth, the final film branded as a Disney Channel Unique Film aired in 2022. The cable community now solely airs occasional “Disney Unique Films,” practically equivalent branding to movies made for Disney+, the place these titles additionally drop. Whatever the platform, most of these current entries have had little fanfare.
On the collection aspect, Disney Channel’s most buzzed about current sitcoms have been “Raven’s Home” and the upcoming “Wizards Beyond 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 “may not be core to Disney.” In July, Disney’s tv division laid off 140 workers.
The gradual demise of Disney Channel isn’t completely its father or mother firm’s fault. Conventional cable TV is dying. Children 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 turned a coast-to-coast phenomenon.
Within the 2000s, by eschewing basic mental property that viewers would immediately determine as a part of the kid-friendly Disney model, Disney Channel pulled off a exceptional 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 top cable network 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 usher in billions of dollars in merchandise revenue.
By utilizing its numerous divisions, Disney made family names out of a secure of actors together with Hilary Duff, Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. A lot of them put out music on Disney’s document 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 strange 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 whole music scene.
“We at the moment are coming into the Hannah Montana Technology of pop stars,” Rolling Stone reporter Brittany Spanos just lately proclaimed, citing the way in which that Gen Z singers akin to Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan have all expressed their early love for the sitcom — and the way they incorporate playful thrives 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 outstanding 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 effectively within the rearview.
For the performers, such delayed success is arguably an excellent factor. Lately, there was a rising reckoning in regards to the immense stress and doubtlessly traumatic results of fame on younger folks — and the ethics and safety issues 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 big loss. And for the present era of viewers who’ve outgrown Elsa and are too younger for “Euphoria,” it’s an leisure void that is still 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 arena concert tour that includes a number of the stars of its “Descendants” and “Zombies” film franchises.
As evidenced by the Disneyland occasions and the addition of a continuous Throwback “playlist” on Disney+, nevertheless, the corporate appears to comprehend their finest wager for maintaining 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 immediately’s Gen Alpha youngsters develop up? What live-action Disney reveals and films will they should 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 said in a speech final month, as she turned the youngest particular person to ever receive the corporate’s Disney Legends honor.
The hunt is at the moment underway to search out Iger’s replacement earlier than his contract runs out (once more) in 2026. A challenge, for sure — however a doable one.
And it’s actually simpler than discovering one other Miley Cyrus with no 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.”