Hannah Montana And Her 'Sisters'
TV Character Wins Over Tweens, and Parents' Wallets

By Annie Gowen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 22, 2007

The frenzy has gone on for three weeks now.

The I-can't-believe-she's-coming squeals, the stampede for tickets, the it's-sold-out panic. And, of course, the scalping investigations, launched in three states, and the Ticketmaster lawsuit.

Washington parents are still feeling the sting of shelling out their hard-earned money for eBay tickets to the Hannah Montana show Jan. 7 at Verizon Center, $250 to $300 a pop. That's if they were lucky: One broker priced floor seats at $1,595 each. Elsewhere in the country where the "Best of Both Worlds Tour" is headed, seats were reselling for as much as $3,000. The national average hit $240, reportedly more than for Springsteen or Beyonc¿.

This is big. Beatles big, her promoter bragged. (Wisely, he took a lesson from John Lennon and did not use the phrase "more popular than Jesus.")

There's nothing left to do but watch the "Hannah Montana" TV show, listen to the Hannah Montana CDs, mimic the Hannah Montana dances, try on the Hannah Montana clothes and wait for Jan. 7.

And, for the adults caught in the maelstrom, ponder the question: What the . . . ? How did a 14-year-old slip of a girl get to be mentioned in the same breath as the Beatles? A little more than a year ago, no one had heard of Hannah Montana, the Disney Channel character played by Miley Cyrus.

"I'm just shocked about this whole thing," said Margaret Brown, 45, a public relations consultant from Leesburg. "I was stunned. She's a cute girl, but, my goodness. One of her tickets went for $2,000. I wouldn't even pay that for the Rolling Stones."

Luckily, Brown's daughter Molly Marshall-Brown and two friends would allow an interruption as they sat one day after school at Brown's home, squeezed into the same overstuffed club chair with a bowl of popcorn, and did what they do nearly every day -- watch "Hannah Montana" reruns on cable on demand. In this segment, the ordinary teenage schoolgirl Miley Stewart, with the secret life of a pop star named Hannah Montana, realizes she shouldn't keep her secret from her best friend. It's one of their favorite episodes.

Tell us, panel of experts, what's up with this Hannah Montana thing?

"She has a normal life just like we do," said Rachel Huet, 8, of Leesburg.

"We go to school just like her," said Molly, 9.

"And we have weird brothers," said Katherine Stuntz, 8.

But she gets to play dress-up whenever she wants. The girls' eyes flashed like glow sticks as they described in explicit detail Hannah's enormous rotating closet, where her schoolgirl clothes hang in front and her rock star garb -- including her blond wig -- is hidden behind a secret door. In Malibu, no less.

What girl wasn't a well-wardrobed singing sensation at 8, singing into her hair dryer as Britney or Madonna?

Madison Bruton's infatuation with Hannah Montana takes up stretches of dreamy playtime. At her home in Fairfax County, she watches the Disney Channel show over and over again. She draws Hannah pictures in a Hannah sketchbook. And alone in her secret-world room, she often takes the microphone from her broken karaoke machine and sings Hannah songs.

She had a Hannah Montana birthday -- the big 1-0. She and six friends had a Hannah Montana makeover at Tysons Corner Center's Club Libby Lu shop, all donning blond wigs like Hannah's. They line-danced to the "Best of Both Worlds" theme song and sang into sparkly mikes.

Same question for Madison: Why is Hannah Montana suddenly more precious than a puppy?

"I really like her show because the way she acts is kind of like how I act sometimes," Madison said softly. "When I sing to her songs, I feel like her. . . . I really think I've actually become a singer."

Since the show premiered last year, its popularity has soared with the tween set -- a coveted advertising demographic of kids between the ages of 9 and 14. It's second in ratings only to "American Idol" for that age group.

For the rest of the world, "Hannah Montana" and its 14-year-old star burst into the public consciousness in recent weeks because of the frenzy surrounding her concert tour, which sold out in many venues in minutes. Brokers using sophisticated robot computer programs snapped up gobs of tickets, prompting parental outrage, the scalping investigations and the high-profile lawsuit by Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster is seeking to stop RMG Technologies from selling the robot software, which enables users to flood Ticketmaster with purchases, then scalp the tickets.

Such is the power of tweens, who rule on the Disney and Nickelodeon cable channels. Thanks to MP3 players and cellphones, kids-oriented satellite radio and portable DVD players, advertisers have nearly unfettered access to the giggling demographic group. Experts say tweens represent $39 billion in buying power that comes from allowances and gifts from indulgent parents and grandparents. And because moms, more than ever, consult with them on anything from their favorite juice to shampoo, they influence family buying decisions for billions more.

"They're just very tech-savvy, very connected and saturated with media since the day they were born," said Robbin Jaklin, who monitors youth trends for Chicago-based Creative and Response Research Services. "They're more demanding, definitely more affluent and more multicultural than kids were" in the past.

Jaklin's firm recently surveyed 1,500 tweens and found that 83 percent had a compact disc player, 72 percent had a handheld video game, 48 percent had an MP3 player and 46 percent had a cellphone.

But even Disney executives were surprised when "Hannah Montana" premiered in March 2006 with 5 million viewers. The show reaches an average of 2.2 million viewers daily and is the most popular cable show for kids and preteens, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Disney executives attribute the fan rage to its star, Miley Cyrus, who had little professional acting experience when she was tapped to play the part in 2005. Cyrus is the real-life daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, the "Achy Breaky Heart" country singer who plays her TV dad.

Disney's writers often crib details of the Cyruses' real-life relationship -- including a montage of her baby pictures and an argument in which her exasperated cry, "I hate you," has an authentic ring to many viewers, young and adult. Some of them get confused about where the real-life Miley ends and the fictional character begins.

"She's a normal kid, but you have this incredibly aspirational hook for the show that kids seem to love. That's the thing that sets it apart," said Adam Bonnett, senior vice president of original programming for the Disney Channel.

Her father, perhaps best known for his 1992 line-dancing hit, is no stranger to the vagaries of celebrity. But he is at a loss to explain his daughter's sudden fame. According to the Web site TMZ.com, young fans of the show burst into tears at one of his recent promotional appearances when they realized she wasn't coming.

"It's pretty crazy," he said in a brief telephone interview. "There's a lot of things I don't know the answer to, but all I can say is the kids love the show. . . . Every now and then, something comes along that's passion-driven."

Critics say tweens, and their open-wallet parents, are being driven less by passion and more by Disney's marketing machine, which cross-promotes its young stars through its TV channel, satellite radio broadcasts, movies, theme parks, merchandise and concerts.

"It speaks to a real confusion about children and childhood today," said Susan Linn, a psychologist at Harvard University's Judge Baker Children's Center and author of "Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood."

"Parents are being coerced into believing that kids should have adult experiences at younger and younger ages, like a concert like this and with this sort of celebrity. . . . There is a feeling that their kids should never be disappointed. They're not thinking about what it says to a child to get a $2,000 concert ticket," she said.

A few days before Hannah Montana tickets went on sale this month, Ellicott City resident Catherine Parks went shopping at Columbia Mall. In nearly every store, moms were buzzing about how to get special pre-sale ticket codes off the fan Web site and whether they'd have to resort to paying a scalper if they failed.

Then she went down to the food court. While her daughter ate her Happy Meal, a woman at the next table flipped open her cellphone to plot her strategy. Parks felt panic set in.

"I started to get freaked out," she said. " 'What am I going to do if I don't get these tickets?' "

She ended up winning one of the codes on eBay and bought her tickets on the fan site before they went on sale to the general public. Her son and daughter, ages 9 and 3, will be ferried to the Hannah Montana concert in a rented stretch limousine.

Just like well-wardrobed singing sensations with secret lives should be.