It’s unpopular to say so, but I honestly don’t know how parents got anything done before the advent of not one, but two, little-kid oriented channels on cable TV (not to mention to glory that is PBS). Before I had kids, they were not going to watch TV at all. Then, well, there was the unfortunate confluence of a big deadline with a sick babysitter and yeah, out came the Elmo and it’s been a slippery slope ever since.
What we may not realize, though, is there is a cutthroat business behind those cuddly animated characters and exuberant singing movers. Disney Channel and Nickelodeon have been in a pitched battle for years, stealing executives, ideas, and inspiration from each other and battling it out for the eyeballs of our kids.
This NYT article outlines some of that fierce rivalry, although the shows they mention skew a little older than the Babble dynamic for the most part (I am sorry, but a five year old should not be watching High School Musical or Hanah Montana –and seriously, George Lopez outperformed almost anything else? Really?). But a little look at the cutthroat competition is really interesting., not to mention how they try to keep tweens and teens interested in the channels once they graduate from Dora and Mickey.
