If you want to hear Radio Disney before its signoff, planned for later this year, the station’s own app no longer works (in part because it was also the home of the already dark Radio Disney Country). Radio Disney’s deal with SiriusXM expired at the end of 2020. That leaves the iHeart Radio app, the station’s own website, and KRDC Los Angeles, the AM station once known as Top 40 legend KRLA, and an FM translator, where the format will live until the frequency can be sold.
There’s some irony in the AM station being the final placeholder. Radio Disney began as an agglomeration of AMs; in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s, it was often the only English-language music on AM in some of its markets. Between 2010 and 2014, the network sold off the rest of its owned-and-operated stations, something taken in the consumer press as a vote-of-no-confidence for broadcast radio.
If there was any radio station in a position to “burn the sticks,” and survive without broadcast outlets, it was Radio Disney. It was already one of our best-known, best-realized national franchises — satellite and online should have been enough. When Radio Disney was on broadcast radio, its stopsets were mostly filled by station promos. Later on, it didn’t even attempt to sell spots, in part because Disney had a different revenue model. But when COVID-19 made live events impossible and affected Disney’s theme-park business, Radio Disney was suddenly vulnerable after nearly 25 years.
When I eulogized Radio Disney on Twitter after the shutdown was announced last year, one reader messaged me and suggested that it was really Disney Channel, not RD’s network of AMs, that had achieved critical mass for Disney projects from Hillary Duff to Hannah Montana to High School Musical. But Radio Disney helped codify what was happening on Disney Channel for the radio and music industry. Out of nowhere, a program director I was talking to would bring up, say, “If You Wanna Dance” by Nobody’s Angel, and you would know that they must have had kids in the RD demo at the time.
Towards the end, Radio Disney’s contributions to the industry included the launch of Radio Disney Country and its support for female artists. For the last few years, Radio Disney itself was mostly current, in what the station described as an attempt to keep up with an audience that was finding new music faster. At a time when music enterprise slowed to a trickle, RD was playing one discovery after another.
By that time, Radio Disney was relying far more on music developed elsewhere. For years, there had been a pattern where Top 40 wouldn’t acknowledge Disney Channel acts until they had migrated to a major label and made more clearly adult music. (Troublingly, the rite of passage for the female acts also included some sort of Britney Spears/Miley Cyrus-type provocation.) But acts that began at Radio Disney or in the Disney Channel Universe were a significant part of CHR in the ‘00s.
When Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” became phenomenal a few weeks ago, it seemed like the industry had figured out how to circumvent the Radio Disney step altogether. The star of the High School Musical reboot went straight for a song that RD would have played, but would have had to edit, powered by tabloid gossip. And yet, even Rodrigo had gotten her learner’s permit from Radio Disney, where “All I Want” racked up about 250 spins last year. So did Sabrina Carpenter, whose “Skin” may be her CHR breakthrough as well.
In the age of Billie Eilish and TikTok-as-America’s-music-supervisor, there’s been a lot of discussion about where the pure pop acts of the Radio Disney era fit in. Again, this seemed to apply more to the female acts like Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and Selena Gomez, who still have hits, but fight for every one of them, than to Justin Bieber, currently represented by four singles, or the Jonas Brothers, now on their second comeback. CHR radio, in its worst shape in 25 years and perhaps ever, is certainly waiting for something new; a bruised America is eager for a new Beatlemania, especially around this time of year.
“Driver’s License” is cathartic, not cheering. But it is pop—in fact, the sort of mainstream-pop-but-with-an-edgy-lyric that was typical during CHR’s last successful era in the late ‘00s/early ‘10s. It’s also worth noting that Interscope still saw taking it to radio as “the next level,” even after BTS’s “Life Goes On” had shown that a record could reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with minimal airplay.
Radio Disney isn’t playing “Driver’s License” or “Skin.” Since New Year’s Day, it has been rotating a tight list of music from the station’s history, much of it from the 2010s. In an hour, you’ll hear Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars, but also a lot of pure Disney records (from Cheetah Girls to the Descendants soundtracks) and those acts that came to the edge of mainstream CHR (Hilary Duff, Ashley Tisdale). Hearing, say, Tisdale’s “He Said, She Said,” which may have been just one more pop song in a format with plenty to choose from in 2007, is certainly a reminder that Top 40 doesn’t have much to choose from now.
Radio Disney was, until December, still actively trying to find CHR hits at a time when the format needed them. Toward the end, what it did was often to codify songs from the streaming world—at least those that were even remotely family-friendly—the way it had Disney Channel songs a decade or two earlier. Radio Disney was trying to create a national CHR format by choice, not necessity. It was still trying to train and engage with younger listeners. As 12-to-24 listening plummets, that may have seemed increasingly hopeless, but who’s going to do any of those things if they’re not?
Here’s Radio Disney on December 30, 2020, shortly before it went to an all-library version of its format:
- Dua Lipa, “Levitating”
- BTS, “Life Goes On”
- Cash Cash f/Georgia Ku, “Love You Now”
- Zara Larsson, “Wow”
- Descendants, “Rotten to the Core”
- Harry Styles, “Golden”
- For King & Country f/Kirk Franklin & Tori Kelly, “Together”
- H.E.R., “Hold Us Together”
- Lost Kings f/Destiny Rogers, “Runaway”
- JP Saxe & Julia Michaels, “Kissin’ in the Cold”
- Stephanie Poetri, “Selfish”
- Surf Mesa f/Emilee, “ILY (I Love You Baby)”
- Tate McRae, “You Broke Me First”
- Ashe, “Moral of the Story”
- R3hab f/Astrid S & HRVY, “Am I The Only One”
- Shawn Mendes & Justin Bieber, “Monster”
Here’s Radio Disney at 8:15 ET on January 25, 2021:
- Hailee Steinfeld & Grey f/Zedd, “Starving”
- Taylor Swift, “Shake It Off”
- Ashley Tisdale, “Kiss the Girl”
- Justin Bieber, “Sorry”
- Miley Cyrus, “The Climb”
- 2 Unlimited, “Get Ready for This”
- BTS, “Mic Drop”
- Kelly Clarkson, “Miss Independent”
- Dua Lipa, “New Rules”
- Cher Lloyd, “Want U Back”
- Bebe Rexha f/Florida Georgia Line, “Meant to Be”
- Anne-Marie, “2002”
- One Direction, “Best Song Ever”
- Descendants, “Rotten to the Core”
