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August 18, 2007
'High School Musical 2' Is Top-Rated Cable Telecast Ever
By Shirley Brady
WE'RE #1: High School Musical 2 makes cable TV history.
BREAKING: Nielsen's final ratings for Friday night confirm High School Musical 2's all-time cable ratings crown — click here for details and updated numbers.
SATURDAY — Disney Channel’s High School Musical 2 premiere will go down in TV history as the most-watched cable telecast — like, ever.
Based on Nielsen's preliminary overnight ratings, Disney announced that HSM2 attracted 17.2 million total viewers to its premiere on Friday, Aug. 17. As in 17,240,884 total viewers. For cable, that's huge; on broadcast, that's an average episode of CSI.
Not to undercut Disney Channel's freaky Friday night. The Walt Disney Co. also holds cable TV's previous top-rated telecast record of all time — 16 million viewers — for ESPN's Monday Night Football game on Sept. 25 of last year, when the New Orleans Saints beat the Atlanta Falcons 23-3 in the first NFL game held in the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina.
While expected to generate mammoth ratings, High School Musical 2 not only beat the NFL's emotional return to New Orleans by garnering 8% more viewers, it broke a slew of other records according to Nielsen's preliminary national ratings for Friday night:
º HSM2 is the #1 basic cable movie of all time, beating the previous record-holder—15.5 million viewers in 2001 for TNT's Crossfire Trail—by 38%.
º It's the #1 TV telecast (broadcast or cable) of the past five years.
º It's the #1 TV telecast ever for Kids 6-11, drawing 6.1 million viewers in that age bracket.
º It's the most-watched "entertainment" telecast ever for Kids 9-14, scoring 5.9 million tweens, and the 2nd most TV telecast (of any flavor) for that age group of all time. It was beat to #1 by a now-infamous telecast: the 2004 Super Bowl on CBS, whose MTV-produced half-time show featuring Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" became TiVo's most-replayed TV broadcast ever.
º HSM2 lifted Disney Channel's show that followed at 10:05pm on Friday, when a preview episode of upcoming original series Phineas and Ferb attracted 10.8 million total viewers to become the network's 2nd highest-rated telecast ever. It also attracted 4.2 million Kids 6-11 and 4.2 million Tweens 9-14.
º Disney Channel's program that followed Phineas and Ferb, a new episode of Hannah Montana at 10:20pm Friday, attracted 10.7 million total viewers (including 4.2 million Kids 6-11 and 4.1 million Tweens 9-14) to become the #1 basic cable series telecast of all time.
º The network's repeat of the original High School Musical movie on Thursday, the night before its sequel premiered, attracted more than 6 million viewers, the top-rated show on cable and the fifth-rated telecast on all television that evening.
Disney Channel's preliminary ratings for High School Musical 2 Friday night don't include two key groups of viewers: kids with access to Cablevision's iO digital cable or Verizon's FiOS TV service, as each constituency got a 1-week advance premiere of HSM2; or the "out of home" viewers who watched HSM2's premiere on Disney Channel at friends' houses or venues such as a Cleveland shopping mall. Click here for details on HSM2's sneak peek on VOD.
Last year's premiere of the first High School Musical (on Jan. 20, 2006) netted 7.7 million viewers — the channel's highest-rating telecast until HSM2 blew it away — and has since attracted more than 200 million viewers worldwide.
Disney's High School Musical franchise is projected to generate $100 million of profit by the end of this year, thanks to international TV, CD and DVD sales and ancillary revenues through tours, books and licensing.
A story in the Wall Street Journal on Friday noted that there will be a High School Musical 3, but Disney plans to premiere it in movie theaters and not on Disney Channel.
Also in the works: High School Musical on ice; and in-language spin-offs of High School Musical set in India (where it will be a homerun with Bollywood fans), Russia and Latin America, using local performers and tweaked songs and scripts to create new movie versions.
Final Nielsen ratings for Friday's HSM2 premiere will be available this week.
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