While Disney and Nickelodeon specialize in providing lighthearted, feel-good entertainment for young television viewers, they're dead serious when it comes to winning. And that usually means beating each other.
It's been a see-saw battle, with both cable networks claiming major victories. But lately, Nickleodeon's been scoring heavily with iCarly in the show's second season.
The network boasts that among kids (ages 2-11) and tweens (5-14), iCarly is averaging more viewers per first-run episode than Cyrus' popular Disney comedy, Hannah Montana.
Strong in its opening season, iCarly has picked it up a notch in Season 2. It pulled its most recent coup in the Nielsen ratings when its hour-long episode, titled iFight Shelby Marx, drew a series-best 7.9 million viewers to rank No. 1 among all basic cable shows for the week of Aug. 3-9, 2009.
What Makes iCarly Click
Actually, clicks help. iCarly centers around three teens who produce a weekly webcast featuring silly skits. The Internet theme is stressed to a point where the TV program's official website, iCarly.com., invites viewers to upload their own silly skits to the site for possible use online or even on the air.
iCarly does not stray drastically from the tween comedy formula. Teen-agers Carly (Miranda Cosgrove), Sam (Jennette McCurdy) and Freddie (Nathan Kress) deal with a variety of teen-oriented problems in addition to creating their webcasts. Carly's parents are overseas with the military, so her older brother Spencer (Jerry Trainor) is her legal guardian.
Honor student Carly and computer-geek Freddie are the normal ones, even if they're both a bit insecure. The pint-sized Sam is tough and brash while Spencer is eccentric and klutzy.
The actors are appealing. Cosgrove is a versatile veteran at age 16, and McCurdy and Trainor each have considerable physical-comedy skills.
An area where iCarly differs from most other tween-oriented comedies is that there isn't always an "everybody's-happy," "we-all-learned-a-valuable-lesson" resolution.
The show can also be outrageous. Freddie encounters a mixed martial arts fighter carrying a plate and asks him where he got the sushi. He discovers that it's not sushi, but the fighter's detached ear.
And the characters, most notably Sam, can be mean-spirited. That creates extra laughs, but also invites criticism.
Is iCarly Suitable for Youngsters?
Some have complained online that the show's characters simply don't set good examples.
In one episode, the gang attends a funeral service for a restaurant owner, not out of respect for the deceased but because they want to find out his secret pie recipe.
Another episode has Carly and Sam vying for the affections of the same boy, and it leads to his falling down an elevator shaft. The two friends make up at the end, but show little concern for the boy who is left alone in the hospital wearing a body cast.
Sam, meanwhile, eats virtually everything she sees, and picks on Freddie for the pure fun of it. She also hates school, takes pride in her ability to lie, and has a penchant for fighting.
Speaking of fighting, the iFightShelbyMarx episode, which involved mixed martial arts, was criticized by some parents for showcasing violence.
But no matter what some parents think of the show, kids love it. Nickelodeon stated in a press release that in this year's second quarter, iCarly was the No. 1 show on all television for both kids and tweens.
Dueling with Disney
Disney has big ratings of its own. In July, the network's Wizards on Deck with Hannah Montana -- a 90-minute special combining half-hour episodes of The Wizards of Waverly Place, Suite Life: On Deck and Hannah Montana -- drew 9.3 million viewers to rank as cable's top-rated scripted show this year. That surpassed the 8.5 million scored in June by Disney's Princess Protection Program, a movie showcasing Wizards star Selena Gomez and Sonny With A Chance Star Demi Lovato.
Nickeldeon can counter that the premiere of iFight Shelby Marx clobbered its Disney competition -- the finale of four-part batch of Wizards episodes called Wizards vs. Vampires and a rerun of a Hannah Montana episode. The iCarly episode premiered Saturday night, and was so popular that two Sunday rebroadcasts also ranked among cable's top 20 shows for the week.
In star power, Nickleodeon is no match for Disney. Cosgrove, while certainly an emerging star, is a relative unknown compared to international star Cyrus. A Google search of "Miranda Cosgrove" will bring only a fraction of the results attained by typing in the names of Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, or even Gomez and Lovato.
But in other numbers, namely the ratings, Cosgrove and Company have been competitive, and then some.
Sources
NielsenMedia.com
TVbyTheNumbers.com
