Disney Channel (1983-2009, 2017-present)
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Disney Channel (originally called The Disney Channel from 1983 to 1997 and commonly shortened to Disney from 1997 to 2002) is an American pay television channel that serves as the flagship property of owner Disney Channels Worldwide unit of the Walt Disney Television subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.
Why It Should Really Be On The Air
- It successfully launched on April 18, 1983, with Disney's biggest cartoon star, Mickey Mouse pulling the switch and launching the network.
- Unlike most of the sign-on bumpers on every local TV station, Disney Channel was perfectly launched with the announcer saying, "The Disney Channel is ON the air!".
- It has aired many great original programs, including Welcome to Pooh Corner (its very first original program), Dumbo's Circus, Bug Juice, Hannah Montana, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir (seasons 1 & 2), That's So Raven, Lizzie McGuire, Phil of the Future, Bunk'd (seasons 1 & 2), Mickey Mouse, Andi Mack, and Just Roll with It just to name a few.
- Starting on September 1, 1990, it combined a premium cable network with a traditional basic cable network.
- On April 6, 1997, it was rebranded, when it converted a premium service into a basic cable channel.
- On October 25, 1997, Disney Channel launched its own TV movie division, Disney Channel Movie, which makes original movies specifically for Disney Channel, starting with its first movie Under Wraps, and continuing to the present day.
- The on-air graphics from 1997 to 2000 were great.
- Its iconic 1997 logo is purely creative.
- Its cartoons, such as classics like The Proud Family (its very first animated original program), Kim Possible, American Dragon: Jake Long, The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa, Phineas and Ferb, and the modern ones like Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil (season 1), Gravity Falls, Wander Over Yonder, Star vs. the Forces of Evil (seasons 1 & 2), Big City Greens, Amphibia, The Owl House, The Ghost and Molly McGee, the 2017 reboot of DuckTales, Kiff and Hailey's On It.
- By 1988, it aired some episodes, as the preview episodes of Disney Television Animation's upcoming shows, which are aired on broadcast television.
- It even aired some cartoons that were based on the movies like Lilo & Stitch: The Series and The Emperor's New School.
- It's sitcoms from the early to late 2000s are also great such as: That's So Raven, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Cory in the House The Suite Life on Deck, Wizards of Waverly Place, Sonny with a Chance, even some of the modern ones like: Jessie, Good Luck Charlie, Liv & Maddie, Girl Meets World, The first two seasons of Bunk'd, Andi Mack, Raven's Home, Secrets Of Sulphur Springs, and Sydney To The Max.
- It airs a great weekday morning preschool-oriented programming block, Disney Jr. (formerly Playhouse Disney from 1997 until 2011 and Disney Junior from 2011 until 2024).
- The international versions it has left are also good.
- It's one of the few networks to have widescreen 16:9 for the 2000s cartoons, alongside The WB's Kids' WB shows.
- It spawned Toon Disney, to celebrate its 15th anniversary.
- The network was great from the early 1980s to late 2009 and has redeemed itself since the late 2010s (2017), unlike the other channels.
- During October 14-16, 2023, they celebrated the 100 Year Anniversary of Disney by airing classic shows.
- The Canadian feed of the channel, it's French Canadian counterpart La Chaîne Disney (both licenced by Corus Entertainment) and the Brazilian feed are miles better than the other international feeds because it does not air Miraculous (despite it being a good show, the show is still a cash cow for Disney), thus avoiding the show filling up the schedule of the feeds.
Bad Qualities
- The channel went downhill and lost its charm in late 2009 when Jonas premiered and they started to focus more on sitcoms than cartoons. Even Mickey Mouse and the gang had a minor presence on the channel outside of Disney Junior and Disney XD. This did cause the network to go downhill from late 2009-2016, even though some good sitcoms and animated shows were made during that period. But the network has redeemed itself in 2017 with the Ducktales reboot, meaning they are starting to slowly improve themselves. Also, focusing on live-action shows isn’t really a bad thing.
- It has a lot of bad/average shows in the early-to-late 2010s, such as:
- Seasons 3 onwards of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir
- The first two seasons of Bizaardvark
- Dog with a Blog
- Fish Hooks
- Shake it Up
- A.N.T. Farm
- Gabby Duran & the Unsittables
- So Random!
- The last five seasons of Bunk'd
- The second season of Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil
- Fast Layne
- Primos
- Beginning in 2020, Disney began shutting their Disney channels down in certain countries to make people buy Disney+, which is not good.
- Most Disney Channel songs are terrible.
- Take the Camp Rock and Hannah Montana soundtracks, for example–none of its songs sound like rock songs at all. They sound more like pop songs instead. The Gray Brothers (the Jonas Brothers), Mitchie Torres (Demi Lovato) and Hannah Montana/Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) are also posers because of this.
- Nowadays, most of their modern shows only last three seasons and will often get canceled pretty quickly afterward, though it could be by choice of any creators like Matt Braly.
- Ultra Violet & Black Scorpion, The Owl House, Saturdays, Pretty Freekin Scary and Hailey's on It! ended too early and had potential to continue for more seasons.
- It will often cash in on their mediocre cash-cow franchises regardless of whether they outstay their welcome.
- While some of their other sitcoms that came out after Hannah Montana are great, a lot of them overuse the laugh track, and have weak, unfunny humor, or unlikable, mean-spirited characters.
- Whenever a promising show in the channel doesn't do well (for example, Brandy and Mr. Whiskers and The Buzz on Maggie), the shows would be outright cancelled, no longer acknowledged by the company and will likely never get a re-release in services such as Disney+. This leads to dubs of the shows being lost.
- On April 6, 2023, the Disney Channel celebrated its 40th anniversary with an ID tribute on Disney's official Twitter page. However, fans of Demi Lovato pointed out that she was not included in the tribute. To add insult to injury, the network was criticized for hiding comments referencing Demi Lovato's allegations that a fellow Disney actor raped her and "never got in trouble for it." Which ruined Disney's reputation more than it already has been.
- While the network did utilize widescreen in the 2000s for the cartoons, they didn't do the same thing for the sitcoms from that era, until 2009 (except Hannah Montana which transitioned to HD in 2010).
- The remaining international feeds of the Disney Channel are plagued with reruns of the show Miraculous. What doesn't help is that the USA feed started to air the show recently.
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