Lizzie McGuire suffered her way through middle school – would Ethan Craft ever notice her? – before giving rise to a new generation of television shows: “That’s So Raven,” “Drake & Josh” and “High School Musical,” among others.
All hits, both in terms of TV viewers and the money earned for their respective networks.
And all paving the way for “Hannah Montana” (various times, Disney, Channel 29 on Comcast digital). At 14, Miley Cyrus is already a superstar.
“It’s cool,” she says. “It’s fun.” Cyrus, in character as fictional pop star Hannah Montana, recently performed at a rodeo in Houston before a sold-out crowd of 73,295.
“I’m so stoked,” Cyrus said in a telephone interview. “This concert that opened all our eyes.”
She’s been so busy working on the show that she doesn’t always realize what a juggernaut she’s become.
The folks at the Disney Channel know, however.
They’re pros when it comes to shows for tweens, kids between the ages of 8 and 12 who are too old for “The Wiggles” but too young for “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Still, Adam Bonnett, senior vice president of original programming at the Disney Channel, says the network didn’t expect “Hannah Montana” to become a monster hit when filming began early last year.
He and other Disney execs liked the premise – a middle school student who leads a double life as a pop star.
“We knew we had something special once we had Miley come in,” Bonnett said, citing her Southern charm, her “exuberance” and her chemistry with her real-life dad, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who plays her character’s father on the show.
Another clue came from the reaction of kids in the audience when she performed as Hannah Montana, the character’s alter ego, during filming for the pilot.
“They didn’t know who she was. The show wasn’t on the air yet, so that was another sign that we had something really, really special,” he said.
The show ranked No.1 in its time period across all broadcast and basic-cable shows for kids ages 6-14 in February, according to Disney.
Tween shows have things in common, starting with what Bonnett calls the “relate-ability” of the main character.
So what if Miley Stewart lives in a Malibu, Calif., beach house and has a secret life as a pop star? She’s also an eighth-grader who worries about zits and thinks her dad is too strict.
