Yuna Park

Recently Nickelodeon has been running music videos during commercial breaks on the N.  The music videos are of adolescents rocking out in the studio and performing on a stage.  Think High School Musical with less childish flashiness and a wee bit more glamour.

It is the cast of the upcoming Nickelodeon movie Spectacular!, coming to TV on February 16th.

Actually, I’m not too sure about that because the website has been slow on the updates.  The Wikipedia page provides more info than the Nick site.

Nickelodeon is obviously taking a page from Disney’s book here after the success of High School Musical.  Nick has tried to incorporate music into their business with The Naked Brothers Band, Drake & Josh and iCarly.  The Naked Brothers Band was a mockumentary about a rock band of young brothers.  This was Nick’s biggest success, as there have been two seasons of the show and the eigth movie is planned for this year.  Unfortunately, the brand doesn’t enjoy the recognition HSM has.

Drake Bell of Drake & Josh is part of a band and Nick has been helping him by playing up his musical abilities in the show.  It is not centered about him as an artist, however, like Hannah Montana.  The same pretty much goes for Miranda Cosgrove of Drake & Josh and iCarly.  She performed her Nickelodeons-produced song at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in 2008.

Nick is now going the Disney route.  Things they are copying:

• Playing teasers for the film in music video form
• Release of the soundtrack prior to the film debut (Feb. 3, about 2 weeks beforehand)
• Not tongue-in-cheek humor per The Naked Brothers Band
• A large cast of beautiful, beautiful tweens (Nick had never really gone for looks in their young stars, until NOW)

One thing you also may notice from the Nick website is that the graphics are very Rock-Band-esque.

This is such a copycat move that I wonder if their audience will go for it.  I’m curious to see how well it will do, and what other promotional moves they may steal from Disney.

Tags: Disney, High School Musical, HSM, Nickelodeon, Spectacular!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.