A note on future Disney Channel programming

While most normal broadcast networks are just premiering the new television season, a lot of Disney Channel shows will bow out in the next 60-90 days. Just yesterday was Dog With a Blog's series finale (which I already reviewed) and in the coming days and months will be the final new episodes for I Didn't Do It, Jessie and Austin & Ally. Of these four shows, two were pretty seminal series that have dominated the network in terms of promotion and fandom and for many people have come to define this "era" of the network; one is pretty much regarded as an abject failure at least in terms of building up a network identity and raw ratings despite being reborn into a second chance, and the last is somewhere in-between, kind of falling into a blip of a meh-space. In the meantime, Girl Meets World and Liv and Maddie will be entering into their third seasons and will be the oldest shows on the network. Everything else will pretty much be brand-spankin' new with the third oldest show, K.C. Undercover, premiering just this past January and Best Friends Whenever and Bunk'd not even being half a year old.

I'll try to come out with some meaningful retrospectives for these shows, maybe in multiple parts, especially for the one show I actually created this blog for in the first place. Except for Dog With a Blog since I more or less did that for the finale review and beyond what I've already said there isn't much to retrospect on. Jessie and Austin & Ally are a bit more complex than what their saccharine, kid-friendly exteriors belie - a lot of it is through the evolution those two shows have undergone, in some ways almost becoming their own spinoffs, especially Jessie. Both of these shows have huge fandoms, the largest since the days of Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place, yet at the same time both of these shows are almost universally hated especially by people paid to opine about TV. The surprising complexity these shows have, especially behind-the-scenes and regards to the fandoms (or hatedoms) and trying to explain to an outsider why these shows have caught the imagination and interest of so many of our youngin's today is the other thing that inspired me to create this blog.

We'll examine the lengths of these shows in the very near future and see if the current and future crop of shows can bring in the same fandom and staying power the super-fandoms adore for Jessie and Austin & Ally (and now Girl Meets World and Liv and Maddie) when their times come.