The Queens of Disney Channel: Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato
Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato, or the trio, all got famous through their time on Disney Channel. Miley Cyrus starred on Hannah Montana, Selena Gomez starred on Wizards of Waverly Place and Demi Lovato starred on Sonny With a Chance. Though these are just three of the many stars to try to make it in the real world after their time on Disney Channel, these three women were the ones to have the most success in their solo careers. Throughout this article, I will show how these three powerful women have been able to gain more success after being on Disney Channel than any of the other stars.
This trio has earned themselves the title of the most successful stars to come out of Disney due to their success in making individual singing careers. These three women have constantly had attention from the media and popular music since their shows ended in the early 2010s. This trio of women each receive more than 10,000 pageviews every single day. The graph below shows the trio’s number of page views over time since 2016, which is four years after the last of their shows ended. Additionally, the graph highlights that each woman is getting on average around 15,000 pageviews every single day. At most, Selena Gomez receives 15,703 pageviews a day on average. This is almost as much as major music icons such as Rihanna who receives an average of 16,347 pageviews every day. The trio’s pageviews being so close in numbers compared to music icons like Rihanna highlights how successful the three have been since the ending of their shows in 2012.
These women look even more impressive when compared to other stars who gained their fame on Disney Channel during the early 2000s like the Jonas Brothers, Cole Sprouse, and Bridgit Mendler. These three stars that represent a few of the other Disney Channel stars who have continued to act or sing after their time on Disney only receive on average about 5,000 pageviews everyday. This is a third of what the trio is receiving. These averages, shown in the graph below, compared to the averages of the trio highlight how successful the three women have been in growing their solo careers. A few moments throughout these stars’ careers have tested the theory that Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato are the most successful stars to come out of Disney Channel. The first was by Cole Sprouse when he made a return to acting in 2017 to star in the Netflix series Riverdale. This show brought him back into the spotlight and spiked his pageviews from a couple hundred every day to 10,000 everyday. Though his return to acting brought a lot of attention towards him and his wikipedia page, he was still getting less views on average than the trio.
The second event that tested the theory came when Bridgit Mendler received close to 100,000 pageviews for a few days in late 2018. The spike seems to have come from her new movie Father of the Year that was released in 2018. Though this spike had Bridgit getting more views than anyone else, the spike only lasted a few days and is not consistent over time. The last event that tested the theory that the trio are the most successful people to come out of Disney Channel was in 2019 when the Jonas Brothers announced that they were reuniting and going to make music together again. After this announcement, the group received pageviews as high as 100,000 views however, as the excitement came to an end, their page views lowered to under 10,000 a day. These events show that the trio are not the only ones still working in the entertainment industry and getting attention on Wikipedia; however, they are constantly getting more attention, through pageviews, than any of the other stars.
The question we are all asking ourselves is “were their shows just more popular to begin with?” The answer is no. Hannah Montana is the Disney Channel show out of the six that still receives the most page views however, the second place TV show is not one of the trios but, rather, Cole and Dylan Sprouse’s The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. The graph above shows that even though all six actors gained their fame through Disney Channel, the popularity of their show did not really help them start their solo careers. The graph shows that there is no correlation between the popularity of the show and how popular the star is now. Through this analysis, we are able to conclude that Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato were able to gain and sustain popularity through their solo careers and not through the popularity of their show.
Compared to other stars such as Cole Sprouse, the Jonas Brothers, and Bridgit Mendler who all also gained fame through their time on Disney Channel, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato have been the most successful at making a name for themselves outside of Disney. Therefore, I end this article by giving these three women the title of the Queens of Disney Channel.
