The debut of High School Musical 2 on the Disney cable channel last Friday night set a new record for a cable show by attracting 17.2 million viewers for its debut showing. The growth of interest in the franchise can be seen in the improvement over the very solid 7.7 million viewers that the original High School Musical drew. How successful was the debut of HSM 2? The previous record holder for a cable broadcast was Monday Night Football on ESPN in 2006, which drew 16 million viewers. In fact HSM 2's audience was the largest for any TV program, broadcast or cable, since the finale of House, the #1 primetime series, which drew 17.26 million viewers for its season-ending episode that aired back on May 29th.
A repeat showing of the original High School Musical on Thursday night drew an audience of 6 million, which was enough for the Disney channel to finish the night in third place behind only Fox and CBS. But that was just the prelude to the enormous debut of HSM 2, which is now the most watched telecast ever for kids 6-11 and the most watched entertainment show for kids 9-14.
The DVD of the original HSM production is the best-selling made for TV movie DVD of all time and the CD soundtrack of the movie was the number one CD release of last year. The High School Musical franchise is a reminder of the enormous potential of the squeaky clean Disney-style family programming if it is packaged in such a way as to appear fresh and attractive. The property has spawned a number of spin-off books including a Cine-Manga adaptation published by Tokyopop, which was released in July.
