Screw sports. Biggest Broadcast in Basic Cable History? HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 2

The Disney Channel's debut of the insanely successful pre-teen franchise broke a shitload of records in its debut on Friday night. IT WAS THE HIGHEST RATED TELECAST ON BASIC CABLE TELEVISION. EVER. That's right. Whatever b-ball game, espn broadcast, Sopranos episode, Nip/Tuck Finale... more people watched this movie than any of those: 17.2 million viewers to be exact. To put this in perspective, The Sopranos drew about 11 million viewers weekly at its peak... and that's when it was considered a monumental acheivement of its kind; so the magnitude of this low-budget, but high profile tv-movie might be shown through that. This many viewers, in the middle of a week of November sweeps, would no doubt land it in the top ten, if that helps.

In fact, as a little pre-cursor, according to Hits Daily Double, the High School Musical 2 soundtrack, the sequel to the original soundtrack, the quadruple platinum best-selling CD of last year, should debut at #1 on the Billboard album sales charts with sales of at least 550,000 copies. But even with all of the massive publicity, encouraging press, and unbelievable hype from the pre-teen set, could they have imagined they would shatter the record for most-watched broadcast in such a huge way. Last month, a re-broadcast of the original episode, the 500th repeat broadcast, alone brought in 5.8 million viewers, making it one of the top draws on basic cable that week.

For fuck sakes, wow. That's great for them, but its even greater for the cast. You know they're planning on making this whole thing into a feature film - which is obviously a great idea... but they haven't signed any of the actors to contracts?? You know how many millions of dollars these guys will get? Not to mention cuts in merchandising, t.v. broadcast revenue.. the list goes on and on. And all they had to do was film two crappy t.v. movies in two years, for a total of maybe 10 weeks of actual filming. Combined.

Good for them. Fuck the lottery. I'll dress in bi-sexual clothing and sing and dance like Elmo any day of the week if you promise me to keep sending me those Disney checks. Hell, I'll pole dance instead if you want me to. Naked. I'll own that shit.
DISNEY, ARE YOU FUCKING PAYING ATTENTION?!