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Can Disney's Little Einsteins teach preschoolers, outdo Dora--and make money?
When Shane Grant leaves her 3-year-old, Andrew, alone in front of the TV set in the morning, the Buffalo, N.Y., mom hears him pat the ground and call out Italian musical terms: Adagio! Accelerando! Allegro!
What has her tot sounding like a music aficionado is Disney Channel's Little Einsteins , one of the hottest preschool shows on TV. After its multicultural cast of four kids and their trusty rocket ship starred in a best-selling DVD last summer, they debuted on TV last fall in a half-hour animated adventure series set to classical music, earning the highest-ever ratings for any of the network's Playhouse Disney preschool shows, and now a second-season pickup.
These cute little characters regularly trounce their competition at 8 a.m. ET--Noggin's Blue's Clues and Cartoon Network's The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy --and have some parents gushing that they've turned their tots into prodigies.
"Andrew's just riveted by it," says Grant. "He thinks about the show even when he's not watching it."
Little Viewers, Big Bucks Performance of preschool and baby shows
Program | Launch | Average Rating (viewers 2-5) | Total Units Sold | Number of Titles | Retail Sales to Date |
Dora the Explorer | 2000 | 7.36 ('05-present) | 24.7 million | 27 videos and DVDs | $3.6 billion |
Little Einsteins | 2005 | 4.3 (Oct. '05-present) | 500,000* | one DVD | $11 million** |
Baby Einstein | 1997 | NA | 20 million+ | 21 videos, DVDs | $500 million |
Disney's bet on Little Einsteins reflects one of kids programmers' highest hopes these days: Hook 'em early and keep them loyal as they grow. The TV series is the second act of the country's most popular line of infant DVDs, Baby Einstein . Today, two out of every three mothers in the U.S. own a Baby Einstein product, and Disney executives project that the brand and its extensions will bring in $1 billion annually by 2010.
Each of the Baby Einstein videos and DVDs is set to soft classical music, designed to "expose little ones" up to 2 years old to music, art and language through puppetry and film of real kids. With titles including Baby Mozart Musical Festival and Baby Van Gogh World of Colors , Einstein gained popularity with parents enchanted that their infants were...