\nSix months after its premiere, "High School Musical" rolls on, a singing and dancing juggernaut. Almost 37 million viewers have watched the $4.2 million production at least once since its first airing, and the musical–a pop confection that makes "Grease" look like "Rebel Without a Cause"–surged back into the spotlight this month, grabbing six Emmy nominations. The soundtrack, a top-10 hit since its January release, is the year’s biggest-selling CD, at 2.7 million copies. After five weeks, the DVD has sold an eye-popping 2.1 million copies.
And even as American parents and media execs scratch their heads over the rabid response to the raunch-free teenfest, "HSM" is spreading across the globe. Disney is exporting it to 100 nations. It premiered in the Asia-Pacific region last month, snaring record ratings in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. The Edinburgh International Television Festival will show it in the city’s Conference Square in August. It returns to American television this week, and the sequel is heading into production this fall. "HSM" ‘s hegemonic grip on high-school theater productions is assured for the next school year: when Disney posted word of the coming theatrical licenses, the Web site was flooded with 15,000 inquiries on the first day. A Broadway play is probable. Meanwhile, there are now two DVDs to watch over and over, two CDs to listen to repeatedly, ringtones to download, novels to read and stationery that’s ideal for breathless fan mail to "HSM" cast members. Can you spell F-R-A-N-C-H-I-S-E? Analyst William Drewry of Credit Suisse estimates the fledging business already totals $100 million in CD and DVD sales. "It’s unclear how big it can get," he says. "It deserves franchise status."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
American Idol<\/em> is credited, as is the crudity-free content and tone. It’s all that, but more: HSM is simple and iconic and moves kids where they are, in all of their struggles to belong and be accepted.<\/p>\nA big of good news in a sea of usually depressing adolescent pop-culture headlines, eh? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you have a tween or young teen daughter (or son, for all I know), you’ve probably heard of it. It’s a Disney film – made-for-tv, now on DVD – that has busted all kinds of charts. This Newsweek article explores why: Six months after its premiere, "High School Musical" rolls on, a singing and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
High School Musical - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/high-school-musical.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"High School Musical - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you have a tween or young teen daughter (or son, for all I know), you’ve probably heard of it. It’s a Disney film – made-for-tv, now on DVD – that has busted all kinds of charts. This Newsweek article explores why: Six months after its premiere, "High School Musical" rolls on, a singing and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/high-school-musical.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-07-21T01:03:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"High School Musical - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/high-school-musical.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"High School Musical - Via Media","og_description":"If you have a tween or young teen daughter (or son, for all I know), you’ve probably heard of it. It’s a Disney film – made-for-tv, now on DVD – that has busted all kinds of charts. This Newsweek article explores why: Six months after its premiere, "High School Musical" rolls on, a singing and…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/high-school-musical.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-07-21T01:03:07+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/high-school-musical.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/high-school-musical.html","name":"High School Musical - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-07-21T01:03:07+00:00","dateModified":"2006-07-21T01:03:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/high-school-musical.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/high-school-musical.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/high-school-musical.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"High School Musical"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}