I think Season sets would be out of the question... among other reasons, preschool shows rarely get season set treatments. We would be more likely to have best ofs or at least rereleases of the Sony DVD's under Disney's label. The only thing that really disappoints me with Disney's current Muppet plans is that they're really doing nothing with Bear at this point.
It sounded just bizarre when i thought about it. Disney does own both ABC and SoapNet. While news about the soap genre dieing and declining ratings is rampant, SoapNet's actually done well with its ratings increasing each quarter. Part of the reason daytime soaps' ratings have been going down is because a lot of people these days watch the shows at night on SoapNet. So the first part of this that's weird is that the station will be turned into something else. Some speculate it's because ABC plans to do away with its daytime soaps by aroung that time (which they deny) or that it's a way to get all the viewing of their shows focused back in one place and bringing the ABC airings' ratings back up.
The second part of this that's weird is what's replacing it - a 24 hours pre-school age station. Now what pre-schooler would be watching during nighttime/overnight hours? It seems to be it would make much more sense to make it a split channel with the Disney Jr stuff during the day and the SoapNet stuff at night - both compliment the others well since it gets rid of the deadtime for both components when its unlikely there's much of an audience. Like how Nick had been the basic station and then Nick At Nite.
Well, as we all know, the niche market is dead. Long dead. And, while I'm not a fan of the genre of television, the fact that NO ONE is basically standing up and saying "We need to save the Soaps" (other than the fan base, and they're oft ignored) is beyond depressing. And frankly, I'm sick of the "We don't know where television stands in the age of computers" excuse. If TV producers had their way, it would be like the world where Kermit was never born... nothing but reality shows. And it's not even due to popularity in most cases, because it's sweatshop entertainment they can make cheap and quick.
And as I've said hundreds of times, Cartoon Network doesn't want to air cartoons, TV Land doesn't want to air classic reruns, MTV doesn't want to air music television, none of the movie channels want to run movies, and all of the channels that should never run movies want to run movies. It's insane. No one's standing up for the niche saying, "We're never going to get the percentage of people happy with watching what they're watching, so let's just cater to our loyal viewers."
I agree... a 24hr preschool channel does sound pretty iffy, especially since Disney has the smallest collection of preschool television out there. PBS can get away with it, since they have years of the stuff they can run. Nick Jr. too... but all I can see is the off chance House at Pooh Corner and Dumbo's Circus will be run at 3 Am for a month, and then we'll just see all day marathons of Handy Manny (that lackluster Bob the Builder knockoff).
But as I said earlier, what happened with this digital cable revolution? I thought they were supposed to be able to broadcast multiple channels on a single wavelength or something, and no one's using it. Couldn't ABC just keep Soapnet and creatw Disney Jr. out of an entirely new channel? I wanna see the logistics behind not buying a new station and tearing down an old one. You'd think they could put that stuff on the Family Channel or something.