We knew going in that Disney Channel's "High School Musical 2" was going to be the Super Bowl for kids this year. And in landing as the most-watched single telecast in the history of the medium among kids 6-11, it's fair to say that Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay and the rest of the East High gang didn't disappoint.

This time around, there were were nearly 10% more boys and a whole lot more adults tuning in to the tuner. Among the 6.1 million kids in the 6-11 age range, the gender breakdown for the Friday premiere airing was 62% girls, 38% boys, compared to a 70-30 split for "High School Musical," which became a not-so-sleeper hit early last year. This past Friday night, two out of three kids who were watching TV were tuned to "HSM2." In the girls 6-11, the audience share was an astounding 80, translating to four out of five girls in the vicinity of a TV set, as Variety's Rick Kissell reports in his detailed look at "HSM2's" perf. (And just wait until the Live-Plus-7 numbers accounting for a week's worth of DVR playback viewing roll in next week...)

But of all the impressive stats generated by the sequel, the sweetest number for Disney Channel stewards may be the fact that one-third of the telepic's aud was comprised of adults 18 and over. The number of young adults (18-34s) and older-younger adults (18-49s) who watched stand as empirical evidence for Disney Channel programming execs that their master plan is working. For a network oriented around grade-schoolers, engaging the attention of voting-age viewers is a coup. Getting kids and moms and dads to all sit still at the same time and gather round the electronic hearth as in the days of yesteryear and three networks (NBC, CBS and DuMont) is an absolute slam dunk in our frantically fragmented age, even even for a commercial-free cabler that isn't worried about selling soap.

Humongous. Gi-normous. Cable record-setting. The Friday preem of Disney Channel's "High School Musical 2" brought in an astounding 17.24 million viewers (17,240,884 to be exact) in its Friday 8-10:05 p.m. ET/PT preem. Take a bow, Disney Channel entertainment prexy Gary Marsh (pictured below), Rich Ross and the rest of the exec team that backed the notion of a kid-friendly tuner last year when most of us were going, huh?For the kids of today -- singing and dancing, Mickey and Judy style? Just goes to prove the industry cliche about zigging when others are zagging....and finding talent, good-looking comers a la Zac Efron to showcase.

"HSM2" tuner now ranks as the most-watched TV movie ever with kids 6-11, drawing 6.1 million viewers in that demo, and the most-watched ever with tweeners 9-14, drawing 5.9 million viewers in that demo, according to Disney Channel. In total households, pic drew a massive 9.4 million cable homes, putting the telecast behind only a handful of sports and news telecasts in cable history in total households deliver. The high total viewer tally also indicates that pic was a family viewing event in most of those 9.4 million households. And as Disney Channel's hard-working PR maven Patti McTeague observed this a.m., who knows how many were really watching given all the viewing parties set around "HSM2" last night.

Disney Channel followed "HSM2" with a sneak peek of the upcoming animated series "Phineas and Ferb," which held onto a healthy 10.8 million viewers from its windfall lead-in. And at 10:20 p.m., a fresh seg of Disney Channel hit "Hannah Montana" was socko enough to rank as Disney Channel's second most-watched telecast ever, with an average of 10.7 million viewers. "Hannah" also set all kinds of series records for Disney Channel and the basic cable biz in general, including most-watched seg with kids 6-11 (4.1 million), and most-watched seg with the 9-14 crowd (4.2 million).

Can't you just feel the anticipation? As of this posting it's about 20 minutes and counting to the East Coast preem of "High School Musical 2" on Disney Channel. As any parent of a kid in the 6-16 demo range knows, the return of Troy, Sharpay, Gabriella, Chad and the rest of the East High gang is a big freakin' deal. I for one was begged for a "HMS" shoulder bag emblazoned with "Troy Rocks!" and Zac Efron's smiling face this past weekend during back-to-school shopping with my 6 1/2-year-old. (Her plaintive cry of "PLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEAAAAAAAASSSSSEEEE!!" echoed through the Target on La Cienega).

Disney Channel is promising to tabulate ratings for the premiere 8 p.m. ET/PT airing of the Super Bowl of tween-dom, so check back here tomorrow for what will undoubtedly be some wildly impressive stats.

You gotta give Disney credit. Mouse House is leaving no synergy stone unturned in its pre-launch tub-thumping for "High School Musical 2." Telepic's soundtrack will debut on Saturday on its Radio Disney service, a week before the really big shew bows on Disney Channel, to the orgasmic delight of teen and tween girls across this great land. Tunesmiths from the first "HSM" have delivered a bunch of new songs for Zac Efron and Ashley Tisdale (pictured left), Corbin Bleu and Co. to warble in the hopes that they'll become as synonymous with the sequel as "We're All in This Together" and "Start of Something New" are to the first tuner.

The hits-in-waiting in the sequel, which preems Aug. 17 are expected to include the opening anthem, "What Time is It," a love-letter to summer vacation penned by Matthew Gerrard Robbie Nevil; and "Fabulous," a Sharpay tune by David Lawrence and Faye Greenberg that is set to what's described as a Busby Berkeley-esque production number.

Thanks to the magic of digital distribution, Radio Disney is now widely available via the Web, at RadioDisney.com, on XM and Sirius satellite radio services as well as iTunes. And it's even available in a buncha big cities the old-fashioned way on more than terrestrial radio outlets in the U.S. and South America. A decade ago, when Disney transformed some of the radio stations it acquired in its Capital Cities/ABC purchase, I was sure the concept of "Radio Disney" was going to be a huge flop, given that kids don't grow up hugging transistor radios anymore. Shows how much I know.

Disneyland is prepping for an invasion of Zac Efron groupies. Disney Channel has set Aug. 14 as the premiere party for "High School Musical 2," to be held at the AMC theater in the Downtown Disney complex that abuts the happiest place on earth. (No matter how many times I go to the park I still choke up a bit at the plaque with the quote from Walt: "Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America.") It'll be followed by an invitation-only party by the pool at the complex's Grand Californian hotel. All the hoopla for "HSM2" marks the first-ever telepic premiere for Disney Channel at Disneyland, which is still recovering from the buccaneers bacchanal it hosted in May for the "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" preem. (Don't forget, details of Disney Channel's plans for "HSM2" bow on Aug. 17 appeared here two long TCA-filled weeks ago, thanks to Variety's hard-working Steven Zeitchik.) And of course, a new live "HSM2: School's Out!" stage show "springs to life," according to Disney's PR missive, at the California Adventure park starting Aug. 18.

POSTED BY STEVEN ZEITCHIK

Disney Channel took the wraps off the sequel to its money-minting--er, extraordinarily monetizable-- "High School Musical" at TCA Saturday morning.

The franchise has become a machine for the Mouse, between the various television/album/homevideo/legit/flamethrower extensions. How the net will position and promote the August 17 sequel--with cozy star-studded backyard barbecue (telecast, of course), pre-debut debuts of music videos online, and even a parent-aimed docu from Barbara Kopple (!) centering on a high-school stage production of the original--is the more fundamental question.

After all, the phenom was one of the biggest factors on Disney's bottom line in 2005 and 2006. And a sequel--especially for a television movie--is a notoriously tricky thing. Will the tens of millions of teens from Tuscon to Tuscaloosa (not to mention Brazil and Australia) go for a whole new set of numbers and storylines when they're so attached to the old ones? (Writer Peter Barsocchini said in an interview that he and other creators were especially careful not to "remake a single one of the elements" from HSM1.)

But most journos at the session were interested in the stars, lobbing fungo balls to the group about its projects and personal lives. The post-session chitchat offered the odd specter of dozens of, um, out-of-the-demo critics mobbing the cast; at least twenty crushed in on lead Zac Efron (pictured with HSM2 costar Vanessa Hudgens), shoving their tape recorders in his face the way a teenage girl might her camera-phone.

Execs, for their part, were coy about a potential theatrical, saying that a script was being written and that there was negotiation with the stars and...they couldn't say anything else. A movie based on a blockbuster property owned by the company? From Disney? The HSM cast wouldn't even need to say duh.

--Steven Zeitchik