Why High School Musical 2's not on ABC, Mad Men's literary bent, fallout from the Lost spoiler and more!
Zac Effron and Vanessa Hudgens, High School Musical 2
Question: As a parent of a tween, I want to thank you for the
nice words about
High School Musical 2. My daughter has postponed her birthday party almost four weeks so she can have a
High School Musical 2 premiere party. It is a huge deal in our house. It is so neat for someone of your stature — I really respect your reviews and commentaries — to give this show a positive review. I have a hard time understanding why the networks shy away from such programming. Why didn't Disney broadcast
High School Musical 2 on ABC? I know that programming is all about demographics, but consider how much money
High School Musical has made for the Disney parent company. Tweens like to spend money — my daughter is a great example of that! Disney Channel is basically commercial-free, except for the network's own programming, and while I like that, I just wonder why the lure of advertising dollars from outside Disney did not prompt a network broadcast. Our family and others we know love to watch shows like
Hannah Montana and
The Suite Life of Zack & Cody on the Disney Channel together, and we just can't do that with network television. Do the networks even care? Has ABC abandoned all efforts to produce family shows and left that task completely to the Disney Channel?
— Colleen
Matt Roush: From Disney's corporate point of view, keeping the High School Musical franchise exclusive to the Disney Channel enhances the value of that brand immeasurably, and that's of huge importance to the company at large. Giving it away for free on ABC (albeit with plenty of lucrative commercials, it's true) would undercut the mission of the channel and its importance within the Disney empire. Does that mean HSM 1 and 2 will never show up on ABC? Probably not. But for now, the marketing strategy is working just fine on this one. You would think, though, given the strides the Disney Channel has made with its movies and original series, that ABC itself would take a hint, especially given how anemic its more "adult" comedy programming has been in recent years. The traditional "family" sitcom is pretty much dead across the board on network TV, but all it will take is another Bill Cosby or Tim Allen to come along and it will probably seem like it never went away. But are the networks even trying to find that next mainstream family-friendly hit? It sure doesn't look like it.
