As a Disney (NYSE: DIS) shareholder, the High School Musical juggernaut is important to me. It means money for the company. It means a point of distinction for Disney that adds value to its content and differentiates it from other media businesses such as News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX). It means that tweens have something realistic to relate to that reflects their own days of breaking out in song while walking through school (okay, that was a joke).

But I was disappointed to hear that a reality show extension of the brand is having a tough time in the ratings. According to this blog post at The Hollywood Reporter, the show, called High School Musical: Get in the Picture, had the worst ratings on Monday night. It's some sort of competition show with a prize related to being in some sort of video in the Musical franchise.

I'm not sure of the specifics, but my main concern is that it couldn't offer any competition to CBS (NYSE: CBS) or General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC. Remember, Disney's big model is to take its content and spread it around to enhance the value of the company's other platforms. It's all about the synergy. Unfortunately, it didn't work this time. I honestly thought that ABC would have seen huge numbers from the kids on this one. It makes me wonder if Musical might be getting long in the tooth.

There's good news and bad news for shareholders of Disney (NYSE: DIS). The good news, according to data published in this Hollywood Reporter article, is that the latest Disney Channel movie, Camp Rock, achieved better ratings than the first High School Musical movie. Rock attracted 8.9 million eyeballs while the first Musical brought in about 7.7 million viewers. The bad news is that Rock unfortunately couldn't match the success of the second Musical project, which captured the attention of over 17 million viewers.

This movie is extremely important. Disney execs want to find out if they truly know the formula for creating new fads for the kids. This is definitely a strong start, although I thought the movie's ratings might come a little closer to the second Musical film since all we've been hearing about lately is how hot the Jonas Brothers act is right now. It at least should have brought in over 10 million viewers.

I don't know, maybe it's me, but I just don't feel the same kind of buzz for this project as I do for the Musical franchise. Here comes the interesting part: Can Disney grow the movie from here? That will depend on how fickle the Disney Channel audience actually is. Don't fool yourself, the powers that be at Disney are under pressure to form a suitable pipeline of intellectual properties to replace the aging Musical and Hannah Montana brands. Make no mistake, they are aging quickly, as these kinds of things don't have terribly high half-lives.

Shareholders will want to see the Jonas Brothers and Camp Rock really grow into a merchandising phenomenon in the coming months. No matter what, though, the cable channel is a great asset, and it is a strong competitor of Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Nickelodeon network.

Disclosure: I own Disney; positions can change at any time.

I knew Disney (NYSE: DIS) was an awesome licensor of its content. Still, I was pretty happy when I read the following Hollywood Reporter piece about the Mouse and its success at growing retail sales of its merchandise. Disney is looking at revenues of $30 billion at retail channels based on products bearing its logo and characters to be booked by the end of its current fiscal year. That would represent a magical double-digit growth rate of 12% if the figure is reached.

Merchandise sales based on characters and intellectual properties owned by companies such as Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), which licenses heroes such as Batman, and Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Nickelodeon, which has had great success with SpongeBob SquarePants, don't compare.

The article rightfully reminds readers that the total amount generated in retail sales is only an indication of how seemingly popular a company's brands are in the marketplace. It does not point to the amount of revenues or profit a company books on the sales (Disney will only receive a small percentage of those sales, perhaps between 5% and 15%).

The important thing I take away from this as a shareholder is that Disney is doing a reasonably good job of milking its franchises. As one might expect, the usual suspects were cited as drivers: Hannah Montana, High School Musical, the Jonas Brothers music project, and Disney Princesses are doing the heavy lifting for Disney's consumer-products division, along with a property that continues to surprise me: Cars. Amazing that the latter remains a popular seller in the boys category.

Is Viacom (NYSE: VIA) green with envy over Disney's (NYSE: DIS) High School Musical? Probably; and who could blame the powers that be over at Viacom for exhibiting such a sin?

The Hollywood Reporter recently discussed plans made by Viacom's Nickelodeon cable channel for a project dubbed Spectacular! Here's all you need to know about it: it's a musical movie that takes place in -- are you ready for this, you'll never guess in a million years -- a high school. Talk about a coincidence; I'm sure this has absolutely nothing to do with the success of High School Musical.

In case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic. It has everything to do with Disney's Musical franchise -- Disney has made millions upon millions off the concept.

Here's the problem for Viacom: shouldn't the media conglomerate be zagging while Disney zigs? In other words, Viacom may be putting too much faith into the belief that a hard formula has been established -- that formula being kids-cable-channel-movie + high-school-setting + catchy-musical-tunes = profitable-long-term-franchise.

Britney Spears, it turns out, won't be posing for Playboy -- she's reconsidering the idea with her rather imperfect post-baby body, and according to the National Ledger, she's now only worth $400,000 to Hugh Hefner. She won't take less than seven figures (note she was offered $2 million several years ago). Even with her clothes on, however, everyone's favorite has-been is still making cash over the barrelhead.

Nope, it won't go into her kids' college fund; she's not making the money. Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), and just about every company that covers the entertainment industry is making money just for the idea. It may have been a mistake for Vanessa Hudgens to let a nude photo of herself bounce around the internet, but it's hardly a blow to Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), for whom she stars in movie after movie after teen musical movie. In fact, she's the biggest search term on the internet today.

It's not about sex or nudity or retouched photos: it's about Googling for them. Your two- and three-word search phrases (even the misspelled ones) may not take you to NSFW web sites. But they're working overtime for the companies who serve up the content. If you're reading this post right now? You're making money for Time Warner, just looking at those ads. The amazing fact about media: sex sells, even when no one's having any.

Oh reality, it's not for me
And it makes me laugh
Oh, fantasy world and Disney girls
I'm coming back
-- The Beach Boys, "Disney Girls"

Boy, Disney (NYSE: DIS) had a rough week. First the Marie Digby flap, and now this: In case it's not in your job description to pay mind to such things, the internet right now is all atwitter about a circulating photo of starlet Vanessa Hudgens baring her mouse ears, and then some. Miss Hudgens is one of the stars from Disney's very massive High School Musical franchise, and girlfriend of HSM co-star (and perhaps budding shutterbug?) Zac Efron.



But we're not here to judge -- well, I'm not here to judge. The boss is bothered though -- she had to explain to her seven-year-old what "nude" means (daughter's insightful reply: "Isn't she embarrassed?" From the mouths of babes...).

A few days before the debut of High School Musical 2, BloggingStocks' Tracy Lapa asked the question High School Musical 2: Can Disney repeat success?

According to The New York Times, the answer is yes: "Despite lukewarm reviews, the film's debut drew 17.2 million viewers, according to preliminary ratings estimates from the channel. If those estimates hold up, it would make the debut of "High School Musical 2" the No. 1 television program of the week, on cable or network, as well as the most watched show of any kind in basic cable history."

I doubt that anyone was expecting High School Musical 2 to be critically-acclaimed, so we'll have to go by the ratings, which make this movie a huge success. But Disney (NYSE: DIS) is currently at work on another, in-theater sequel, and I'm going to predict that that will be a bust. High School Musical 2 didn't achieve such high ratings because every 13-year old was watching -- Like Harry Potter, the movie had cross-over appeal. My grandmother watched it. But I can't see anyone over the age of 15 going to a theater to see it partly because, as popular as the franchise is, it's also seen as corny, a little too Donny Osmond-esque. For the record, I'm not going to say whether I have seen the movie.

Viacom (NYSE: VIA)'s Nickelodeon network, arguably the top brand in kids' television, will be spinning off two new networks: Noggin, a commercial-free daytime station for preschoolers and N, which targets teens.

This makes sense from a branding perspective -- Having N and Noggin on the same station gave the channel a lack of focus, which often prevents the network from building a core audience. But on a more immediate level, this may not help anything: Does it really make sense to have a 24-hour network for kids who are in school most of the day?

At least in terms of crossover success, Nickelodeon is getting killed by the Disney (NYSE: DIS) Channel, which has had breakthrough hits like High School Musical (Kevin Kelly's favorite movie) and Hannah Montana.

Nickelodeon is too small a part of the Viacom empire for this to have any material effect on the stock price.

Zac Efron has been turned into a plastic doll. Not only Zac Efron, but all the leads from the new film Hairspray. At this point, two questions probably come to mind:

1. Who is Zac Efron?
2. Why does he matter?

If you can already answer either of these questions, you are either one of the 100 million people who have seen the Disney (NYSE: DIS) film High School Musical or something HSM-related, or you are one of the millions of people who have heard of the film-turned-Broadway-musical-turned-back-to-film Hairspray, which opened in theaters Friday. What is interesting about Zac Efron is that while his only acknowledgment in the Hairspray trailer is within a list of names trailing the major celebrities, Efron should be a featured star.

If you have never heard of High School Musical, let me get you up to speed. The Disney Channel original movie, featuring Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens (a budding superstar with a gold debut album, figured to have earned $2 million last year), has sold over 7 million DVDs. The High School Musical soundtrack was the No. 1 CD last year, selling more than 3.7 million copies. The film was exported to 100 nations, launched an arena tour and "High School Musical: The Ice Tour," and will by followed by the sequel, High School Musical 2, due out this August. This is all, of course, in addition to your licensed merchandise. Yeah, I guess you could call it a franchise.

In essence, High School Musical has become a worldwide brand phenomenon, propelling Zac Efron to the forefront of popularity for a good segment of the population. Hairspray, on the other hand, is really Efron's ticket to breaking out from under Disney and reaching a different, older demographic. It is also rumored that Zac Efron will star in the remake of the musical movie Footloose. Apparently Efron is the go-to guy when it comes to musicals. So, whether or not you've seen or heard Efron, there's a pretty good chance you will sometime in the near future.

It seems like Play Along, a division of Jakks Pacific (NASDAQ: JAKK) and the makers of the 12" inch tall Hairspray dolls, are onto a good thing turning Efron into a collectible. Especially since his role in the film, about which co-star Nikki Blonsky raves, "He just jumps off the screen and right into every girl's heart," undoubtedly contributed to the film's weekend gross of $27.8 million. While loyal Disney kids may or may not see Hairspray, it's likely that their next visit to Toys 'R' Us will result in a quest for the plastic Efron, and now you newly exposed adults will be able to relate to their kids for $14.99 (or a singing version for $20-25).

Maybe Zac Efron is more doll-worthy than we may think.

Tracy Lapa is an AOL Money & Finance intern who recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.A. in Communications.