The Untold Story of Disney Channel’s Rise and Fall

When I was eight years old, I thrust my hands in the air at a Hilary Duff concert, belting along to “So Yesterday.” At 10, I huddled near the TV at a sleepover celebrating the premiere of High School Musical 2, which bled into the episode of Hannah Montana featuring the Jonas brothers. Like most, I phased out of the viewing demographic around middle school, but not before memorizing every episode of That’s So Raven or making Halloweentown mandatory annual viewing.

Ashley Spencer’s new book, Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire, invites us all to reminisce this way. It also served as a nostalgic opportunity for Spencer, an entertainment journalist who has written on topics like Lizzie McGuire for outlets including Vice, Vanity Fair, and—perhaps most importantly, given the book’s subject—teen magazine J-14. While writing her debut, “I would watch the pilots, the finales, any bigger episodes, D-Coms [Disney Channel Original Movies] as well,” she tells VF over Zoom. “My Disney+ thinks I’m probably 13.”

‘Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire’ by Ashley Spencer

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In addition to revisiting the Disney Channel catalog, Spencer spoke to more than 150 people who were involved with the company during the 1990s and 2000s—tracing from the Mickey Mouse Club days of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera through the “It’s Totally Raining Teens!” era of Hilary Duff and Raven-Symoné, concluding with the holy 2010s trifecta of Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato. With the proliferation of digital platforms like YouTube and TikTok, gone are the days when a sequel to High School Musical could outperform the Sopranos series finale. (Yep, that happened.) “Jessie, Good Luck Charlie, Austin & Ally, and even, later, Andi Mack—all critically acclaimed shows that did well. But those kids weren’t on the cover of major magazines,” says Spencer. “They weren’t having chart-topping albums. The influence and the audience just wasn’t there anymore.”

Below, Spencer takes VF back to the heyday of Disney Channel mania, a time when Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens were a one-word concept (long live Zanessa) and the wildest thing Miley Cyrus had ever done was pose on this magazine’s cover.

Vanity Fair: Reading the book, I had so many vivid, nostalgic memories of watching Disney Channel. What were the touchstones that made you want to delve into this topic?

Ashley Spencer: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century and Johnny Tsunami were really foundational to me as a young viewer. I grew up in Orlando and central Florida, one of the last markets to get Disney Channel on basic cable in the late ‘90s. Disney Channel would do these Sneak-a-Peek weekends—let you have it for free for the weekend so you saw the content and needed more. I got hooked and begged my parents. I obviously also grew up with Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, but Disney Channel had this allure. In the late ‘90s, they were attempting to become this arbiter of taste by adding in music videos and concerts. I loved NSYNC and Britney and Christina, and so all of that just made it aspirational and elevated beyond what kids TV was viewed as being before that time.

A lot of my work has been nostalgia-filtered. I love looking at how the sausage gets made. I had just done another story about a TV show and had done incredible interviews, had so much information, and then had to cut it down to 2000 words. I just thought, how great would it be to dive into something beyond what I can normally do? So that’s really what Disney High became—being able to look at both the stories of these individual people, shows, and movies, but also how the network moved beyond a kid’s cable channel into these multiple avenues that dominated pop culture and imprinted on a generation.

Your book arrives after the release of Quiet on Set. Nickelodeon, and Brian Peck’s brief time at Disney, are covered in your book. What was your reaction to that series, and do you think revelations of misconduct could emerge from Disney around the same era?

Quiet on Set was really groundbreaking for viewers because it packaged things in such a visceral way. Some of the allegations and court cases had been talked about for years. The Brian Peck case was public knowledge; we just didn’t know who the victim was. [Peck, a dialogue coach, pleaded no contest to two charges of sexually abusing minors in 2004. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison and made to register as a sex offender.] When Quiet On Set came out, my book was basically done. Because they unsealed those court documents, I was able to add in Drake Bell’s name. Peck worked briefly on Disney Channel’s The Suite Life of Zack and Cody as a voice actor. By all accounts, everyone that I spoke to had never met him. He was off-set in a booth and they replaced him when they found out [about the assault].

When Quiet On Set came out, on social media and TikTok, a lot of people were saying, “Do Disney next.” It almost felt like this strange hunger from people to have everyone experience trauma. To either have been an evil perpetrator of something or to be a victim. Doing that almost takes away the agency from these kids who had a good experience. People like the Sprouses [Cole and Dylan], who have talked about, “The set was really a safety for us and helped our childhood.” Whether that’s an exception to the rule or not, I don’t know. I think the only people that can really speak to that are them, if they want to.

There’s a lot of discussion to be had about the ethics of children working in general. It’s not normal in the 21st century for a young teenager to be put in that position and the pressures that come with that. Disney had extreme pressures baked in beyond what Nickelodeon had even, because the Disney brand is so unique in the legacy and the lore and the expectations. What it entails to be a role model on Disney Channel is just beyond. I don’t even know of another company you can compare to Disney. My book was not an investigative take-down of an individual. There’s no existing public allegations of that level against anyone at Disney Channel.

In many ways, Disney Channel was made as a reaction to the success of Nickelodeon, but the two channels feel really distinct from one another. Disney had far stricter standards-and-practices reviews for content.

And unlike Nickelodeon, which held on to Dan Schneider, Disney was known to remove talent. Why did Disney operate from this standpoint?

When I would talk to people working on the shows, there were grievances of, “Oh, they were so micromanaging. They wouldn’t let us be funny. They were just so scared of everything.” After seeing Quiet on Set, it did put a new light on how you view that micromanagement. I don’t necessarily think that was Disney’s direct intent; it was probably a lot more boring and business and financial than any pious looking out for people. But it really did stand out to me, rereading my book after seeing some of the things that Nickelodeon was putting on air. That didn’t happen to a large degree at Disney Channel because they were so anxious.

Why were they so willing to part with creatives—showrunners on That’s So Raven and Wizards of Waverly Place and stars like Kimberly J. Brown on Halloweentown, or Demi Lovato on Sonny With a Chance?

They wanted the trains to run on time, and if anyone was a hiccup in that system, well, they’re disposable. Because no one could be bigger than the brand. I don’t think you could have had a Dan Schneider at Disney Channel. Even these people that were running very successful sitcoms that stayed through to the end, very often, that was the last sitcom they did [at Disney Channel]. They weren’t brought back.

The only person that I think got bigger than the brand was Miley Cyrus. She became so famous and so powerful within the company that she was able to get her way on the type of music she wanted to do and push the limit. A lot of people don’t realize that the “Can’t Be Tamed” era was on Hollywood Records. People were like, “Oh, that was her rebelling and breaking out of Disney.” No, she was still at Disney. But they allowed that to happen because she had that power.

There were so many “controversies” at Disney Channel that land differently with me as an adult—the leaking of Vanessa Hudgens’s intimate photos, the many double standards Raven-Symoné had to face. Which piece of Disney lore did you feel most differently about when digging into it for the book?

We’ve never really seen behind the curtain on any of those instances. They obviously were putting out PR statements at the time. I found it really interesting with the [2008] Vanity Fair photo shoot of Miley that maybe internally they were supportive: “Oh, she’s just a kid. We’re going to take this in stride.” But you also have [then president of entertainment at Disney Channel] Rich Ross and [then Disney/ABC Television Group chief] Anne Sweeney hopping on a plane to Nashville like, “Tish and Billy Ray, this is not okay.” Part of that is a loss of control. That’s a star getting so big that she does not need Disney Channel. They did not let the network know they were doing the photo shoot.

With Vanessa, it was enlightening to hear the way that the executives look back on that now, because I think that statement at the time was very scolding—Vanessa’s curated apology that she had to put out. Part of this is at the time, [nude photo leaks] was a bit of uncharted territory for the network and for celebrities on the internet in general. Anne Sweeney would say it wasn’t a slap on the wrist, it was “we don’t want something like this to happen to you again”—that’s the way that they view it, or say they do.

Raven, the way that they handled her body type—people made a point of saying, “Well, it was never to her face.” When you talk about the way they edited some of the footage to make her appear slimmer in certain episodes, sometimes they would say, “Well, we wanted to protect her. We were looking out. We don’t want her to feel bad. We don’t want viewers to judge her.” It’s interesting to hear the rationale from different parties. I grew up in the 2000s, and it was a horrible time to be a young girl in a body of any shape. I think some of the things that were happening then would not happen now, or at least would face immediate backlash.

The stars’ parents—Hilary Duff’s mom, Shia LaBeouf’s father, Raven’s father, and of course Billy Ray Cyrus—all played prominent roles in their kids’ careers. From your estimation, what was the best way to be a parent in this world, and what was maybe the most harmful?

The parents obviously loom large over everyone, because when you have a minor, a parent or guardian is required to be on set at all times within sight or sound. Then the difference becomes multiple levels. One, are they involved in a way that they also want to be an actor or a director or a writer, and they’re scooting in trying to advance their dream? But the biggest difference is the financial situation of the families coming in.

The Duffs, the Cyruses—they were financially well-off before Hilary or Miley started professionally acting. And that is a completely different dynamic than when the child is the breadwinner for the family. Even if Hilary very quickly was probably making more money than her dad, it wasn’t detrimental to their life if she stopped. That’s a much different dynamic than someone who manages their child’s career. I don’t think most of these parents have bad intentions. Most of them are still very close with their children. But I do think it puts a much different strain and dynamic on a relationship when suddenly the child is able to call the shots. In her memoir, Dianna De La Garza talked about when Demi Lovato was struggling and maybe dabbling in different substances. Dianna was aware of it, but she said, “I can’t take her phone away–she’s paying the phone bill. I can’t put the car keys away—it’s her car.”

You don’t necessarily think about the complicated dynamics going on behind the scenes between Miley and Billy Ray, even though he essentially had to step aside to make room for the family’s new star.

He had done a very public GQ interview around the end of the show saying Hannah Montana ruined his life. But the degree to which people described him just really being miserable by the end, it weighed on him. Miley was 13-, 14-years-old, getting New York Times profiles, and she was like: “They used to say my dad’s name, and now they say my name.” If you’re a parent who never craved the spotlight, that’s great. I think you’re so happy for your kids. But I would imagine if that was also a dream that you had and you didn’t reach the level that you had aspired to, part of that is soul-crushing.

By all accounts, he stuck it out. He showed up every day and didn’t hurt Miley’s career. He didn’t ruin the show. So there’s something to be said for that relationship. And Tish [Cyrus, Miley’s mother] sounds like she really held down the fort there. I do love the imagery of the Cyruses on that Hannah Montana set—grandma in the kitchen answering all the fan mail.

There was also behind-the-scenes conflict between Miley and Emily Osment, who played her onscreen best friend, as well as between Shia LaBeouf and Christy Carlson Romano on Even Stevens—and on Lizzie McGuire between Hilary Duff and Lalaine, who narrates your audiobook. Did you have a hard time getting people to open up about those situations?

I did not want to be exploitative and evasive about these kid’s personal lives. Someone would tell me a story like, “Oh, I remember when she got her first period on set.” I didn’t feel like those were my stories to tell, unless it’s public. Someone like Demi has been very public with what they went through during their time on Disney Channel. And so that I think is worth examining.

To begin with, these aren’t people that come into the shows as best friends. Other than Selena and Demi, who were friends before [Princess Protection Program]. Then maybe they develop a friendship because they’re around each other all day, but they often don’t. Emily and Miley Cyrus, they’re very different people and you can’t expect that just because they’re going to play friends that they should be friends.

The tension between the co-stars that I did include, it was because of the way that it affected the shows themselves. Like Lalaine and Hilary. Hilary and Lalaine are young teen girls going through this drama, but also their parents and managers are involved because this is a business. It’s not something that has been talked about before, but the network, they made the decision. They let Lalaine leave. It sounds like the show really couldn’t continue, with the way things were going between the two girls at the time.

The book mentions a lot of projects that almost made it to Disney Channel—a spinoff about Miranda Sanchez’s younger sister starring Selena Gomez, a second Lizzie film, a fourth High School Musical. Which would you have most wanted to see?

A That’s So Raven DCOM—it’s so egregious that there wasn’t one. The show was huge, and it’s really one of the only projects at that level that didn’t get any companion other than a spinoff series. I was fascinated to hear about the different potential plans for a fourth High School Musical. I would’ve loved to see Madison High, which is the [2012 musical] pilot that they filmed with Beanie Feldstein. I think they bit off more than they could chew, because doing a musical every episode is a lot harder than doing a standalone, in terms of budget. Then—I think it would’ve been horrible—but when they were looking at the third High School Musical before it was theatrical, the network executives were talking about making it Halloween and supernatural [themed]. It sounds like it might’ve been a disaster, but I’m so intrigued by Troy and Sharpay dealing with ghosts or aliens at East High.

It was interesting to read about the ways Disney allowed its stars and shows to get very vaguely political.

The 9/11 PSAs.

They get brought up every year. There’s also a Hannah Montana episode that celebrates military families, which is interesting to revisit. Where do you feel the line was drawn in terms of Disney encouraging its stars to connect with societal issues, but not get too political?

It’s definitely a line that they walked. When you look at the 9/11 PSAs, they obviously felt this was an important thing that kids are dealing with, but the brand had this idea that Disney represents safety and a coziness: we need to talk about 9/11 without really talking about 9/11. So we’re not going to remind them of the tragedies they saw on TV, but we’re going to talk about, oh, aren’t firefighters great? And isn’t the American flag a nice thing? Shia LaBeouf reading a little poem is so fun. It’s all very safe. You’re not isolating viewers and angering anyone because they pretty much pick things that everyone is in agreement on, that aren’t going to upset parents.

That’s very distinct from Nickelodeon. Nick News was such a groundbreaking show, especially if you grew up in a more sheltered household. They would really go in and directly explain heavier or more complex issues to young kids. In the ‘90s, there was an AIDS episode with Magic Johnson. That’s just very different from what Disney Channel was. I’m sure the military families episode was focus-grouped and polled—standards and practices looking at any possible point of tension. Especially when Disney Channel started to go international and they’re concerned with overseas markets, then you’re looking at how not only does this translate into a German or the Thai market, but is there anything that they might find inappropriate? You start conforming everything to be safer, to not upset anyone anywhere.

The book poignantly ends with Demi’s stint on Disney Channel. Soon after, some of our biggest current stars—Zendaya, Jenna Ortega, Sabrina Carpenter, and Olivia Rodrigo—arrived when the network began to fade in relevance. Do you feel like their post-Disney trajectories would’ve been different had they been on the network at its peak?

People lump former Disney stars all the way back: Well, Britney counts as a Disney Star, Lindsay Lohan counts. Then the more recent stars like Jenna and Olivia. Miley, Demi, and Selena, the level they reached? They were having number one albums on Hollywood Records while filming their Disney Channel shows. Then when you switch into Sabrina and Dove Cameron, who were also signed to Hollywood Records—I can’t remember the charting, but if they charted, it was not high. So you stop having that impact.

There’s a great quote in the epilogue from Steve Greenberg, who signed the Jonas Brothers to Columbia Records, saying, “Disney Channel didn’t make any of these people great. It just made them big.” So yes: Sabrina, Olivia, and Dove, if their shows had been in the 2000s, it would’ve happened a lot faster. Maybe you would’ve had a 17-year-old Sabrina Carpenter having a number one song. But also, is that a healthy thing? Is it maybe better for them that their success has been delayed until their 20s? Olivia Rodrigo would not be putting out the music that she did if she’d been signed to Hollywood Records. She didn’t go that route, and I think we’re all better for it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.