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00:00Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and the Disney Channel were like the three networks for kids.
00:12That's pretty much all I watched anyway.
00:14Some of my favorites were the famous Jet Jackson, the Jersey, and even Stevens.
00:19I wasn't exactly in the demographic by the time it came on, but Hannah Montana?
00:22I'm not embarrassed to say that. I watched a fair amount of that show.
00:25Oh, and the Disney Channel original movies, the DCOMs. Man, I would get so excited when they played that intro right before they started.
00:32Depending on your age, I'm sure you have your own list of shows and experiences that you associate with Disney Channel,
00:37and that's because they have gone through a lot of changes over the years.
00:40Many people have criticized them at various points, saying that they have declined.
00:43There have been rumors out there saying that the channel may shut down altogether. A lot going on.
00:47So I want to take this opportunity to take a look back and talk about their evolution over the years.
00:53Now, this is a subjective topic, filled with gradual changes, so it can be hard to distinguish exactly when a new era for the channel has started or ended.
01:01Even though it's not perfect, I think the best way to try to separate them is by looking at the logo.
01:06Generally, a logo change has been part of a bigger rebranding or revamping of the channel.
01:11So, to simplify things, every time that they've adopted a new logo, which has been four times over their four decades of history,
01:17I'm going to use that as the cutoff into a new era of the Disney Channel.
01:22And you'll see, it's a system that works a lot better than you would expect,
01:25and their original, first one they ever used, looked like this.
01:29April 18th, 1983 will forever be a significant date because it marks the official launch of the Disney Channel.
01:36Now, this was at a time when Disney was taking risks by spending a lot of money on what actually turned out to be smart investments.
01:42Notably, Epcot Center in Florida. I'm sure you've all heard of it.
01:45Well, it opened about six months earlier and was already raising attendance at Disney World by millions of people.
01:51And Tokyo Disneyland, their first ever theme park outside of the U.S., had opened literally three days earlier.
01:58The Disney Channel was yet another one of these major investments that was seen to have a lot of promise throughout the industry.
02:04I mean, we are talking about Disney here.
02:06It was already a massive, well-established name in entertainment,
02:08and here they were making a big-time commitment to create a new channel,
02:12spending millions of dollars on satellites to broadcast it,
02:15collecting less money from licensing agreements with other stations over the previous three years
02:19because they were reserving that content to be exclusive to their channel,
02:22and they had committed to spend over $100 million on original programming for it over the next three years.
02:27In 1983, Disney's overall net income declined back below $100 million,
02:33and the biggest single reason for that was a $28 million operating loss incurred by the Disney Channel.
02:39But it was a loss that they were willing to accept in the beginning
02:41because they predicted the channel would break even and then start to become profitable in about two and a half years.
02:47Well, in their words, the growth exceeded their expectations.
02:51It was a premium channel, by the way, similar to HBO or Showtime,
02:54where the customer would have to pay an extra $10 a month or so to subscribe to it.
02:58They would get access to the channel, which originally was on air for 16 hours a day,
03:02and they would receive the Disney Channel magazine, with all the program listings, among other stuff.
03:07At the time, it was being called the largest pay television launch in U.S. history.
03:11They even received a personal letter from President Ronald Reagan saluting the channel.
03:16Within six months, it was available to almost 10 million homes across all 50 states,
03:20with over 500,000 of them actually subscribing to it.
03:23By early 1985, they hit that break-even point months ahead of schedule,
03:28when their subscriber count reached 1.75 million people.
03:31Now, during those days, and for well over a decade after,
03:34the Disney Channel was intended for the entire family,
03:37with programming geared toward young children, teens, and adults.
03:40They had shows ranging from Welcome to Pooh Corner, obviously for a younger audience,
03:44to Epcot Magazine for an older audience.
03:47They had even acquired the exclusive pay television rights to 12 Charlie Chaplin films.
03:52Shortly after the launch, an independent survey revealed that one in five Disney Channel subscribers
03:58didn't even have children under the age of 13.
04:01Also, maybe you could tell from those titles,
04:02but the original era of the Disney Channel was very much reliant on existing Disney properties,
04:07which, you know, I guess you would expect.
04:09It was Mickey Mouse who pushed the master switch to light up the new Disney satellite,
04:14then he pulled a switch to officially launch the channel,
04:16while Goofy and the gang were in the back in charge of the control center.
04:19The first show that was ever aired on the Disney Channel was Good Morning Mickey at 7 o'clock in the morning.
04:25You'll have to forgive me, because I was not personally watching the Disney Channel during that time,
04:29nor was I even alive through most of the original era,
04:32but I don't believe they were making much content that stood out or was all that memorable.
04:36I should mention that they brought back an old show called the Mickey Mouse Club,
04:39and that version of it helped spark the career of many young artists.
04:43Oh, and I think this is interesting.
04:44They had a show called Good Morning Miss Bliss that didn't do too well until control of it was handed over to NBC,
04:50where they retooled it into what became a hit show called Saved by the Bell.
04:54At this point, I'm guessing that most of the fans of Disney Channel find this version of it to be very strange and different from what you know.
05:00I mean, you're probably not going to find a Charlie Chaplin movie on it today,
05:03but as we go into the next era, starting in 1997, things are going to start to look much more familiar.
05:10The person believed to be most responsible for these changes is Anne Sweeney,
05:14who had just taken over as president of the Disney Channel.
05:17Obviously, the logo was changed into what I would say is my personal favorite.
05:21It just makes sense, right?
05:22An old square TV set with the Mickey ears on top showing a Disney logo on the screen.
05:27I should also note that their official name went from The Disney Channel simply to Disney Channel.
05:32See, throughout the 1990s, they had been slowly transitioning from a premium channel into a basic cable channel,
05:38meaning instead of the separate $10 a month or so, depending on the cable provider,
05:42more and more people were able to get it as part of their cable package,
05:46making it much more accessible and allowing them to raise their subscribers.
05:49By 1997, it was mostly offered as a basic cable channel that had tens of millions of subscribers.
05:56But perhaps the biggest changes were with the programming.
05:58They did a thing where they split the time slots into three different sections,
06:02Playhouse Disney was for young children,
06:04Vault Disney is where they aired the older stuff, that was for older people,
06:07and Zoog Disney was for pre-teens and teenagers.
06:11And let me tell you, Zoog Disney was a unique creation.
06:14It was hosted by these robot-type characters,
06:16sort of like their attempt to integrate the channel with their website.
06:19Like, on the channel, these robots would display results from a poll that was conducted on their website,
06:23or high scores to the games that people were playing on there.
06:26It was truly something that you would only see in that time period.
06:29But oddly enough, this is what the channel was like when I started watching it.
06:34Meaning, all of my favorite shows that I named in the beginning there were created in the Zoog Disney era.
06:39It's hard to say that.
06:40Zoog Disney.
06:41Even the movies were changed.
06:43They used to be called Disney Channel Premiere Films,
06:45but starting in 1997, they took on the more familiar, childish characteristics,
06:50and were renamed Disney Channel Original Movies.
06:52Their very first one being Under Wraps, about a hidden mummy, get it, Under Wraps.
06:58It came out that October, and by the next October, they had an even bigger hit with the classic Halloween Town.
07:03Do you see how it all came together here?
07:05To grow into something that became culturally significant.
07:08The switch to basic cable made them more accessible,
07:10while at the same time, Anne Sweeney and her management team were busy giving the channel its own identity,
07:16that the next era mostly leaned into and developed even further.
07:20That next era, starting around 2002, is characterized by a switch in focus away from family programming
07:26that they had been airing since the beginning in favor of attracting a younger audience.
07:31I think it was clear what was working on the channel.
07:33It was these goofy original shows and movies more than anything else.
07:37So they switched everything up by getting rid of the Disney Vault block of programming
07:40and dedicated that time to the Zoog Disney shows,
07:43but they didn't call them that anymore, which I think is a good thing,
07:46because I don't want to have to keep saying those words.
07:49But also, because it made way for a more uniform brand,
07:52and what I would guess to be their most familiar logo.
07:55I'm talking about the more rounded one in the corner that everyone would trace over with that glow stick
07:59after telling us what channel we're watching.
08:01And of course, they continued creating hit shows, some of them becoming more popular than ever.
08:05Going into this era, they had an unofficial rule, where shows would be cancelled after 65 episodes,
08:10because that's the point where they had enough shows to re-show them once every weekday for three months.
08:14And that's why popular early shows like Even Stevens or Lizzie McGuire ended after exactly 65 episodes.
08:20But a few years into this, they broke that rule for That's So Raven and Kim Possible,
08:24and have since stopped following it altogether.
08:27I would also characterize this era by an emphasis on music,
08:30and repetitive attempts to create teen pop stars.
08:33Obvious examples would be Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, among others.
08:37The movie, High School Musical 2, released in 2007,
08:41is still their most successful movie ever, with 17 million viewers during its first broadcast.
08:47Their final era, starting around 2014, is where my logo system may or may not break down a little bit.
08:53The new logo pretty much isolates the part that was inside the Mickey ears before,
08:57and makes the dot on the eye into the Mickey shape.
09:00Unlike the other times, it wasn't part of a major change in strategy,
09:03but there are a couple of changes around that time that may justify it as a new era.
09:07For one, they decided to make a big shift away from animation,
09:10moving shows like Gravity Falls over to Disney XD,
09:13and they ended Phineas and Ferb all together,
09:15but they did shift back to animation not long after.
09:18Maybe the biggest change would be Anne Sweeney stepping down.
09:21By this point, she had risen to become the president of their entire television group,
09:25which includes ABC,
09:26considered to be among the most powerful women in entertainment,
09:29and the biggest single reason behind the success of Disney Channel.
09:32Today, there are opposing viewpoints about the quality of the shows on Disney Channel,
09:36about the directions they've taken,
09:38and those arguments become even more passionate if you expand the scope to look at the entire Disney company.
09:43In the modern day, the biggest threat to the channel is Disney+.
09:47Launched in late 2019, it logically includes many of the shows and movies from Disney Channel.
09:52Because of that, Disney Channel was shut down in the UK the following year,
09:56and then it was shut down in Southeast Asia the year after that.
09:59In 2022, for the first time ever, they released a Disney Channel original movie on Disney+,
10:05a month before it was aired on the channel.
10:08All things leading the public to believe that Disney is willing to sacrifice the channel
10:11to get more attention to the streaming service,
10:14and ending the channel entirely might be the ultimate way to do that.
10:18I don't believe there's any solid evidence to suggest that's the plan,
10:21but streaming services are extremely competitive,
10:24so I don't know, after 40 years, it could cause some major changes.
10:28Let me know in the comments, what do you see for the future of Disney Channel?
10:32I wish I could give more of a prediction here,
10:34but the industry has been changing so fast, and it's all just so speculative.
10:38On the other end, what do you think of the history of the channel?
10:41Which one would you say is the best era,
10:43and what are your favorite shows or movies to come out of it?
10:46Keep in mind that sticking with the nature of the channel,
10:48this video took a much more business approach to the topic rather than creative.
10:52So let me know if you have something to say about them creatively,
10:54and any other thoughts you have about Disney Channel,
10:57or anything else I talked about in this video,
10:59leave them in the comments.
11:00I'd like to hear what you have to say.
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