Disney's New Channel for Preschoolers

For more than 70 years, Walt Disney has used a warbling Jiminy Cricket to encourage families to wish upon a star. These days, Disney is banking on Doc McStuffins, featuring a 6-year-old in a lab coat and pink-sequined sneakers who fixes ailing toys. The cartoon will debut on Disney Junior, a cable-TV network for 2- to 7-year-olds that the company is launching on March 23 in about 30 million U.S. households. If all goes according to plan, Disney will bring in big future sales from those tiny viewers.

Preschool programming is the latest front in a decade-long war between Disney and Viacom, the longtime leader in children’s cable television with its Nickelodeon networks. Kids’ TV has become a lucrative business because it can earn money from cable subscriber fees, advertising, and merchandise royalties. That’s why Disney is shuttering Soapnet, a 12-year-old channel devoted to soap operas, and shifting those subscribers over to what will be its fourth network aimed at families and young people, after ABC Family, the Disney Channel, and Disney XD, a four-year-old channel for boys. “It’s a better monetizaton of beachfront property,” says David Bank, an entertainment analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “[If] you have a hit show, it sells records, consumer products, and movies. They want to capture that consumer for a lifetime.”