Teeny-- and Tiny--Boppers

Pop and R&B; singer Monica remembers one of the turning points in her life--the first concert she attended. It was Michael Jackson, and she was just 7 years old, one of thousands of preteens in the audience screaming their heads off.

“After seeing such a good show, I had an entirely different interest in the artist and in music,” the singer, now 18, recalls.

That memory is one reason she’s enthusiastically signed up as co-headliner along with 98 Degrees on the “All That” Music & More Festival, a national tour assembled under the banner of the Nickelodeon cable channel specifically for pre-adolescents.

Unofficially dubbed both Nickapalooza and Kidstock, the tour will also feature the acts B*Witched, Tatyana Ali, 3rd Storee, No Authority and Aaron Carter, as well as cast members from the channel’s popular “All That” comedy and music show.

The 40-city tour, kicking off Thursday in Indianapolis and including July 26 and 27 dates at the Universal Amphitheatre, will have variations on the arcades of recent rock and pop festivals such as participatory games and activities and a second stage for local bands. Ticket prices will be relatively modest when compared to the $75 or more figure that is becoming increasingly common for veteran acts--generally from $12 for lawn areas at facilities that have them and top seats generally at about $30.

The tour comes at a time when signs are growing that the youngsters could prove a gold mine addition to a concert business that last year took in a total of $1.3 billion in the U.S. A sign of the kiddie box-office punch: ‘N Sync’s 1999 tour ranks in the year’s Top 10 alongside such acts as Shania Twain and the Rolling Stones, averaging more than 13,000 tickets and a $380,000 gross per show.

Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of the concert business monthly Pollstar, says the Nickelodeon tour is a positive development.

“This is the first real festival package oriented toward that particular market,” he says. “Since the New Kids on the Block [a decade ago], young preteens have not been an active concert market until just recently. So this is great news for the concert business since most of these kids can get their first exposure to concerts and if that becomes part of the lifestyle as opposed to the latest video games, that’s a positive development.”

The jury’s still out, however, on whether this children’s crusade will be a box-office smash. Ticket sales in Los Angeles have been steady, but the shows here are far from sold out--though organizers point out that Nickelodeon’s promotional campaign is just kicking into gear and that events targeted toward young children tend to sell more as the date draws closer.

The Nickelodeon event conjures images of frantic kids--one of the quintessential visions of pop music history from Frank Sinatra in the ‘40s, Elvis in the ‘50s, Beatlemania in the ‘60s and even David Cassidy in the ‘70s and New Kids on the Block in the ‘80s. It’s a rite of passage in which generations of music fans are born.

But if Monica had been 7 at any time through most of the ‘90s rather than in the late ‘80s, she might never have had her early concert revelation. With grunge (appealing to older teens and young adults) and hip-hop (of which tours were hampered by fears of violence) the dominant genres of the pop scene, there wasn’t much out there to initiate preteens into the experience.

That’s changed, though, with the Spice Girls, Hanson and the Backstreet Boys entering our consciousness in the last two years. Today the demographic range of music consumers is expanding downward, age-wise, dramatically. Such youth-skewed acts as the Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync and Britney Spears are dominating the charts, with exposure via such name-brand powerhouses as Nickelodeon and the Walt Disney Co.’s cable Disney Channel and Radio Disney network giving the music a lot of exposure to 12-and-unders, helping drive them in unprecedented numbers to record stores.

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Teaming Concert With ‘All That’ Was a Natural

Jonathan Hochwald, president of Pace Variety Entertainment, is executive producer of the tour. His company, part of the SFX Entertainment family that has acquired most of the nation’s major concert promotions firms and many top amphitheaters, is housed in the same Times Square office building as MTV’s New York headquarters.

“The MTV studio is on the first floor and to see the crowds of kids that gather when acts like ‘N Sync and Britney Spears are there, it’s like a visceral kind of emotional connection that gets made and these kids go crazy,” he says.

Pace has for several years had a joint venture arrangement with Nickelodeon to develop such live events as a show presenting costumed actors in the roles of characters from the “Rugrats” animated series last year. The idea of teaming a music package with “All That,” which regularly features top pop and R&B; acts in performance, was a natural.

Albie Hecht, president of film and TV entertainment at Nickelodeon, notes this comes at a time when the channel is celebrating 20 years on the air--meaning that some of the parents who will be bringing their kids to these shows were themselves in the first generation of Nickelodeon viewers. For them, the name-brand association is a vital link.

“They know they can feel safe taking them there,” he says. “It’s a great way to introduce them to concerts, and kids can have a certain amount of autonomy in the festival arcade. It’s like going to a music amusement park.”

While it’s too early to tell if this is a box-office success, it certainly is a hit with the record companies.

“What I didn’t see coming was the record companies have been absolutely stampeding to get artists on the show to the point we’ve had to say, ‘Stop! We can’t take any more,’ ” Hochwald says. “The opportunity window is limited for the acts to perform for the [very young] audience. With the exception of radio, which is song-oriented rather than artist-oriented, there are few opportunities for exposure for the bands, and few opportunities for the kids to get that big concert experience until a later age.”

It’s the same phenomenon that has happened with Radio Disney. Scott McCarthy, vice president and general manager of the network, currently heard in 41 markets including on KDIS-AM (710) in Los Angeles, says that when the operation was initiated three years ago, it was only seen as filling a void.

“With TV, print, movies and the Internet there’s a ton of things out there specifically for young kids,” he says. “But there was not much on the radio.”

He’s been pleasantly surprised to see how big an impact it’s seemed to have on record sales.

“We woke up to the possibility as we launched Radio Disney and did our research,” he says. “Record companies are now waking up to the fact that we can help drive sales as we educate and develop taste for the product--and help develop not just interest in an artist or genre, but in music and radio at earlier and earlier ages. That’s good not just for radio but for the music business.”

The same long-range payoff is part of the appeal to concert promoters, who hope to cultivate lifetime concertgoers.

“We’ve had the last decade of not building a concert culture,” says Alex Hodges, senior vice president of Universal Concerts, which operates the Universal Amphitheatre. “Now we’re trying to build one with the youngest concert audience yet. I’ll show my age, but when I was a kid, there was a young interest in Elvis Presley and Fats Domino and Little Richard from kids who couldn’t get driver’s licenses. And that carried over to an appreciation for the concert for the rest of our lives--when all those folks were in college, they wanted to see Stevie Wonder and the Allman Brothers. It’s exciting to imagine what today’s kids will have a hunger for when they get a bit older.”

* The “All That” Music & More Festival, July 23 at Coors Amphitheatre, 2050 Otay Valley Road, Chula Vista, 5:30 p.m. $23-$41. (619) 671-3600. Also July 25 at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, 5 p.m. $12-$32. (714) 855-4515; July 26-27 at Universal Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, 5 p.m. $40.50-$53. (818) 622-4440.