Below is an article about a new short series based on Pixar’s movie Cars.

The world premiere of Disney- Pixar’s “Cars Toons,” a new animated short series directed by Academy Award(R)-winner John Lasseter, and starring Lightning McQueen’s rusty but trusty friend Mater, will be presented on, Disney Channel, Toon Disney and ABC Family beginning MONDAY, OCTOBER 27.

“Cars Toons” are directed by John Lasseter, (director on “Cars,” “Toy Story 2,” “A Bug’s Life” and “Toy Story”). Victor Navone (animator on “Cars,” “The Incredibles,” “Finding Nemo” and “Monsters, Inc.”) and Rob Gibbs (story artist on “Cars,” “Finding Nemo,” “Monsters, Inc” and “Toy Story 2″) are co- directors. Kori Rae (associate producer on “The Incredibles” and “Monsters Inc.”) is the producer.

The shorts premiere as follows on Toon Disney (all times ET/PT):

Monday, October 27 (6:56 p.m.)

“Rescue Squad Mater” — Mater is a fire truck that rescues Lightning McQueen from a burning building. When McQueen is rushed to the hospital, he discovers that Mater is a doctor, too.

Tuesday, October 28 (6:57 p.m.)

“Mater the Greater” — Mater is a famous daredevil who does all kinds of stunts. And Lightning McQueen becomes an unwilling participant in Mater’s greatest stunt ever.

Wednesday, October 29 (6:57 p.m.)

“El Materdor” — Mater is a famous bulldozer fighter in Spain. He’s so good, he’s able to fend off multiple bulldozers at once. Lightning McQueen joins Mater in this Tall Tale just as things are at their worst.

Disney Channel will present all three shorts throughout the day on Saturday, November 1. ABC Family will present the shorts beginning Tuesday, December 23 during the network’s annual “25 Days of Christmas” programming event.

I was certainly surprised by this news!

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts on Thursday announced a new promotion to admit visitors free on their birthdays next year.

“Every guest gets in free to one of our parks on their birthday in 2009,” Jay Rasulo, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, said at a news conference in Manhattan.

Visitors will have to show valid identification and proof of birthdate to qualify. Details are available at http://www.disneyparks.com, where birthday visits can be registered in advance.

Mike Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, said admitting guests free to the parks on their birthdays could very well make money.

“The only thing they lose is the revenue from those people whose birthdays it is who might have come anyway,” he said. “Having an extra customer in the park doesn’t cost them anything. Those people are still a benefit because they have to buy food and drinks, and their friends and family are accompanying them.”

The birthday offer is part of a larger Disney promotion announced Thursday called “What will you celebrate?” It includes a 30-city tour with public events featuring Disney costumed characters, beginning in Minneapolis on Sept. 25 and ending in Phoenix in February. Next week Disney will also start running “What will you celebrate?” TV ads featuring kids blowing out candles and brides in limousines.

In addition, the parks will offer buttons to wear that identify guests with phrases such as “Just Married,” “Just Graduated,” and “First Visit.”

“Our goal is to mark the special moments in your life in a way that your family will remember forever,” Rasulo said.

Peter Yesawich, a consultant on lifestyle trends, said at the Disney news conference that Americans often arrange vacations around personal milestones such as anniversaries and birthdays. He called the phenomenon “celebration vacations.”

Miley Cyrus, star of the Disney show “Hannah Montana,” plans to celebrate her 16th birthday at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., Oct. 5.

The birthday promotion is only good at U.S. parks. Visitors with multi-day passes or who are otherwise already ticketed on their birthdays can either get a one-day one-park ticket for use in the next year; a “Fastpass” for four rides for up to six people; or a card with a dollar amount equal to the free ticket, usable toward merchandise and other purchases.

The only thing I’m not sure of, is what exactly the “fun card” is. It sounds like basically a gift card, but it looks to only be available at WDW for some reason:

A birthday fun card in an amount equal to the price of a 1-day Magic Your Way base ticket* for you to use on your birthday for merchandise, recreation or fun activities at select participating locations at Walt Disney World® Resort; or

Webmaster Greg recently re-did the How to Help section of SDS to hopefully make it much more user friendly.

http://help.savedisneyshows.org/

Please give it a look and let us know what you think.

Please be critical - we can only make improvements when we know what users find good and bad.

Disney animation executive Andrew Millstein has been named general manager for Walt Disney Animation Studios, and renowned industry effects production veteran Jim Morris will take on a parallel role as general manager for Pixar Animation Studios, it was announced today by Ed Catmull, president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. Both executives will be responsible for guiding overall operations of their respective studios, and will continue to oversee all aspects of production related to animated features, short films and special animated projects. They will report directly to Catmull.

Disney.com, the No. 1 kids’ entertainment and family community destination on the Web, broke its all-time online video record in July. According to comScore Video Metrix, Disney.com video streams totaled 186.7 million, lifting the site’s online video streams ranking to the number six position among all Web sites. Significant drivers of the traffic milestone were original online video exclusives and events based on popular Disney entertainment properties such as “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” and “Disney Channel Games” as well as the latest Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers music videos including exclusive behind the scenes content.

Representing a 39 percent increase as compared to the prior month, the new record beats Disney Online’s previous video record set in July 2007 by more than four million streams. Time spent viewing (in total minutes) also increased month-over-month by 50 percent. Building on the popularity of video content on Disney.com, the site recently launched a video portal that offers thousands of videos fans can sort by character or property, and create custom playlists.

“Video is a huge priority for Disney.com and we work closely with our partners across the Disney company to create compelling online video programs that capture the essence of Disney’s properties while leveraging the unique capabilities of the Internet,” said Paul Yanover, executive vice president and managing director, Disney Online. “Our commitment to forge new territory in online entertainment continues to be validated by new guest engagement landmarks such as our latest video results.”

On July 14, Disney.com premiered a first look at the upcoming Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures feature “High School Musical 3: Senior Year.” The event contributed to a 30 percent increase in video viewers to the “Movie” category pages of Disney Online. Other video drivers in July included coverage of the third annual Disney Channel Games competition, the release of the latest Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus music videos and “making of” footage as well as the Disney Channel short form reality series “Jonas Brothers: Living the Dream.” These contributed to a monthly lift in video streams for the “Disney Music” category by 161 percent and an increase of 25 percent in monthly unique video viewers for the “Disney Channel TV Network” category.

I find it interesting that Disney Channel online viewership is up 25 when DC TV ratings are down 22% amongst Tweens. Could it be that those viewers haven’t left, they’ve just traded one screen for the other?

Personally, I don’t really like online video. Streams take forever to buffer and are always getting inturupted, and good quality downloads take forever. I’d much rather just watch everything on an actual TV.

They kept Stitch, Pleakly, and Jumba, but there’s no Lilo in this new Japaneese Stitch Series.

Watch Promo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfnZBdeR8N0

Effective Monday September 8th 2008, Phil of the Future is losing it’s 12:30AM time slot on Disney Channel - and not getting another one.

We can’t be sure that this is a permanent change, but it looks like we are but days away from Phil going off the air and into the disney vault. Hopefully not forever, but without box sets and no airings at all the show will gone.

Let’s all make one last stand on Monday. If nothing else, we may be able to keep the show around and on the air a little longer. Send emails using www.sdsmail.org, and please also make phone calls and send faxes. That info is on the How to Help page.

Please forward and re-post this information so that as many PotF fans as possible know what’s going on. For quick answers to questions about how to help visit the SDS Forum: http://sdsforum.com/.

Hannah Montana is coming to DVD, with a complete first season boxset!

Acording to tvshowsondvd.com, “This 4-disc set will contain all 26 episodes from the show’s opening year, including 17 episodes which have never been released on DVD before!”

I’m quite excited about this release, as it shows that Disney has lost it’s resistance to releasing current shows in DVD sets. Hopefully we’ll see more sets follow, although how quickly and what comes next will likely depend on how well this first set sells.

And you can preorder the set from Amazon right now!

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

For the first time in ages, Disney Channel suffered a ratings decrease.

Hannah Montana’s ratings are down ever sense Miley’s Vanity Fair photos. The original Suite Life series is ending. KP and ADJL are over. And the only new show getting any decent promotion is Phineas and Ferb. And I doubt few would disagree with the statement that Camp Rock was no High School Musical.

My hope is that now Disney realizes that they cannot endlessly manufacture hits. At some point the fans really will begin to walk away in noticeable amounts.

Article Source: Animation Insider

Disney Channel lacked stability in Second Quarter of this year, with an uneven stream of weekly performances throughout much of the Quarter. Although select growth could be found following the launch of key episode premieres or following various television specials, Disney Channel saw a plethora of audience losses, with demographic losses in each month of analysis. April saw a decline with Kids 6-11 of roughly -08%, recorded through the Total Program Day, which although much, was the children’s channel’s smallest decline of the Quarter.

The Tweens 9-14 audience showed a consistent decline (Total Program Day), throughout April 2008 for the Disney Channel. Although the cartoon and live-action kid sitcom network has previously helped guide the tween audience, in a year-to-year comparison, the Tweens 9-14 demographic dropped -11% (down to 375,000) on average for this month.

Moving on to the month of May, Disney Channel, with Kids 6-11, similarly declined another -08% (Total Program Day). May 2008 was a difficult month on some level for almost all kids cable networks, but Disney Channel, for its loss, showed modest growth in Total Program Day with Kids 2-11 as the weeks continued; and likewise, in Primetime, Kids 6-11 viewers grew from week to week, if not every so slightly, while other kid networks showed a decline viewers at least one week in said month.

Disney Channel’s June saw double-digit declines in every notable kids demographic. The network saw a decline with the Kids 2-11 audience, when compared to the previous year, of -10% (TPD) and -14% (Primetime), and a similar drop in viewer delivery of -11% (TPD) and -15% (Primetime) with Kids 6-11. From a larger perspective, Disney Channel lost more viewers in Primetime than throughout the entire day of programming, in each demographic. The largest of such losses, in June 2008, were with Tweens. Tweens 9-14 viewership decreased -16% (TPD) and down another -21% (Primetime).

Regardless of Disney Channel’s multi-media dominance among all kid’s entertainment channels due to household reach — Disney Channel averaged a 1.55 Primetime rating in June as based on total U.S. household projection — Second Quarter 2008 saw a decrease of -09% (K6-11, TPD) overall. One key highlight though, specific to the network’s animated programming, was an episode of Phineas and Ferb in Q2 2008, which pulled in a commendable 1.29 million Kids 6-11.

The new KP atraction is actually getting some local press!

Source: The Orlando Sentinel

Erupt the volcano in the Mexico pavilion, blow a puff of smoke from a chimney in Norway, make a jade monkey appear in China.

Those are among the 50 special effects created for Epcot’s Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure, a high-tech scavenger hunt that will debut in “late fall,” according to Disney officials. The animated Disney Channel heroine will guide participants through world-saving missions via a “Kimmunicator,” a hand-set that could pass as a cell phone in the real world.

“You hit the OK button, and something happens for you,” said Jeannette Lomboy-Russo, an Imagineer who previewed elements of the attraction during a behind-the-scenes tour. Each of seven countries presents a different adventure, storyline and villain. Each mission will take 45 minutes to an hour to complete, and will be contained within a single pavilion. Players won’t be scurrying all over World Showcase to save the world.

“It brings technology — without being invasive — from the Future World environment into World Showcase,” said Jim MacPhee, Walt Disney World’s vice president for Epcot.

It will add a youth-driven activity to the World Showcase, which features many shopping and dining opportunities. Participating pavilions will be Mexico, Norway, China, France, United Kingdom, Germany and Japan.

“Particularly for children, it’s very empowering,” Imagineer Jonathan Ackley said. “The kid is essentially controlling the theme-park environment.”

The activity is included in regular theme-park admission. A similar Kim Possible attraction had a smaller test run at Epcot in 2006.

Popular characters from the TV series are included in the Kimmunicator’s videos, but some original characters were created for the attraction.

Return of the devices was scripted into the stories’ finale. Lomboy-Russo compared it to the 18th hole of miniature golf, which typically conspires to keep the ball at the end of the round.

Epcot purists might be alarmed by the cultural contrast of World Showcase and a scrappy animated crime fighter. The Imagineers said their plans were designed to blend with the pavilions’ atmospheres and not alarm nonplayers. Ackley called it “an invisible Get Smart overlay.”

The theming and structures of the pavilions served as a base for the attraction.

“We didn’t want it to detract,” said Lomboy-Russo. “I think the two fit seamlessly together. I’m proud of the fact that people don’t notice.”