That Awkward Phase

When Britney Spears tells the crowd midway through her current concert, “I’m not a little girl anymore,” she is stating the obvious.

Pop’s princess, whose tour is generating more than $800,000 a stop, makes that point in the opening moments when she arrives onstage in an Ozzy Osbourne-inspired black robe while performing a metal-tinged version of her hit “Oops! ... I Did it Again.”

The former “Mickey Mouse Club” TV cast member underlines the idea again near the end of the show with a series of bump-and-grind dance moves set against a steamy jungle backdrop for her latest single, “I’m a Slave 4 U.”

By the movies’ rating system, even Spears’ raciest moments would probably only draw a PG-13. But her latest music-video imagery and lyrics are grown-up enough that the pop star, who turns 20 today, is facing a wagging finger from the kid-oriented media outlets that have made her and other teens into global stars.

Nickelodeon and Radio Disney each decided against playing “I’m a Slave 4 U,” saying Spears’ new approach is inappropriate for their audience. Although they may play other songs from her new album, executives say she is reaching the outer edge of the demographic range that defines their programming.

But the maturing of these acts doesn’t mean parents will get a reprieve from the kid pop phenomenon and all those $75 concert tickets, $35 T-shirts, and endless posters, calendars and glow sticks.

Until now, prepubescent pop was always a novelty. A few acts have struck gold--the Jackson 5 and the Osmonds in the 1970s, New Edition and New Kids on the Block in the 1980s--but there have been lengthy dry spells in between. Record labels in the past concentrated on finding adult acts that could turn out hits for decades, instead of the young acts whose fans would quickly outgrow them. Moreover, the kid pop performers faced long odds as they competed for radio and TV airplay on the stations that played Elton John and the Eagles--there was no format specifically for kids.

Record executives who enjoyed the boom of the last four years, however, are insisting that the party isn’t ending this time. The reason comes down to a basic but commercially explosive fact: Labels have learned they can hook ‘em in early. There’s now a kid culture infrastructure--led by Radio Disney and the Nickelodeon TV network--to keep music in the ears of their young customers. And that marketing machine will remain long after Spears graduates from it.

“The beauty of what has happened with these pop artists is they’ve gotten kids into buying CDs and concert tickets earlier than they had heretofore,” said Barry Weiss, president of the wildly successful Jive Records label, home to Spears, ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys.

“The fact that there are 5-year-old kids going to these shows tells you something. I don’t think kids that age would have known what a CD or a concert ticket was 10 years ago. What Radio Disney and Nickelodeon did is brought kids [to those artists] earlier. I think that’s a fantastic thing.”

The commercial punch of kid pop has been jaw-dropping. Since 1998, the top three acts of the latest teen boom--Spears, ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, each of which received early exposure on the kids’ outlets--have collectively sold more than 120 million albums worldwide and easily more than $400 million in concert tickets and merchandise in North America alone, record and concert executives estimate.

‘N Sync’s “No Strings Attached” achieved an industry milestone last year that may well outlive the band: The album sold 2.4 million copies its first week in release. That’s some 530,000 copies more than the second-biggest first-week sales record--held by another ‘N Sync album, this year’s “Celebrity.”

Record executives predicting such peaks would have been considered delusional before the music industry gained easy access to the kids’ market through Nickelodeon and other outlets. These TV and radio channels--including Radio Disney, the ABC Family channel (recently changed from Fox Family) and the Cartoon Network--either promote teen music around the clock or weave hefty chunks of it into their programming.

Songs can be used as themes for cartoons or featured in G-rated film soundtracks, while artists can perform at awards shows or appear as variety-show guests. Many of these outlets air music videos, feature young acts on high-traffic Web sites and sponsor concerts.

Such broadcasters often provide a child’s first exposure to pop music. Programmers at Nickelodeon, owned by media giant Viacom Inc., note the commercial possibilities of such programs as “Slimetime Live,” an after-school show geared to children as young as 2. An estimated 1.5 million viewers are watching the channel at any one time.

At Walt Disney Co.’s Radio Disney, researchers test music in focus groups of children as young as 6 before adding songs to a national playlist. The station reaches an estimated 1.2 million kids ages 6 to 11 during an average day.

Why have these global media conglomerates focused on such a young audience?

They realized parents needed a baby-sitter.

“We’re all becoming part of an on-demand culture,” said Paul Orescan, a vice president of marketing at MCA Records who has spearheaded campaigns for kid-oriented acts such as A*Teens. “Parents can leave their kids watching Nickelodeon and not have to worry about the content.”

Minding the kids has delivered a hefty paycheck.

Nickelodeon generated more than $568 million in profits last year on sales of more than $1 billion, making it one of the most profitable cable channels on the dial--even more so than its older cousin, Viacom’s MTV.

Radio Disney, which has multiplied from four to 48 stations across the country in the five years since it went on the air, is one of the fastest-growing segments of Disney’s estimated $500-million-a-year radio division. Disney executives are discussing a plan to acquire more than 20 additional stations in the next four years.

“Music is woven into kids’ lifestyle, so we weave it into the programming across our business,” said Albie Hecht, president of film and TV programming for Nickelodeon. “If the right act comes along, now the audience is there waiting.”

Some observers, however, warn that the marketplace is on the verge of collapsing under the collective weight of too many kid outlets and too many sound-alike teen acts.

“Institutions like Nickelodeon will remain, but anybody who’s building a business out of this stuff now is making a mistake,” said Tommi Lewis Tilden, editor in chief of Teen magazine and editorial director of Teen Beat and Tiger Beat.

“To manufacture these acts using this cookie-cutter mold isn’t going to work. The press releases all seem like they’re written by the same person. They’re all trying to sell the same thing, and you cannot force that connection with kids.”

Another popular Disney outlet, cable’s Disney Channel, dropped much of its music programming, which included videos and concert specials, about six months ago. But the channel said it wasn’t folding in the face of competition. Rather, said Disney Channel general manager Rich Ross, the company grew wary of associating its brand name with young acts who were rapidly maturing--particularly after the release of a revealing video from Spears’ last album.

“If you attach your name to a pop star and that pop star does something potentially inappropriate in the world of their lives or the world of their music, you’ve taken your brand and put it together with something you can’t control,” Ross said. “It’s a really dangerous place to go because music is famous for being a rebellious art form. A recording star lives to rebel.”

Although the channel occasionally promotes young artists by using their songs as themes for new programs, “it’s a difference of one act versus 25” before the shift in strategy, Ross said. “We just want to do it sparingly, fittingly, appropriately.”

For 20 years, the record industry’s marketing machinery has consisted primarily of mainstream radio formats such as Top 40 and one music-oriented cable channel, MTV. Record labels had to promote such acts as New Kids on the Block using the same airwaves that broadcast Van Halen and Public Enemy.

Label executives put little effort into selling to the pre-teen market, aside from working an act into the occasional Saturday-morning cartoon, and radio programmers saw little reason to court the kids. Arbitron, the radio rating service, didn’t even track listeners younger than 12--and still doesn’t.

What’s more, audiences seemed to have a taste for youth-oriented pop only every so often. Following the decline of the Jackson 5 in the 1970s, nearly seven years passed before R&B; vocal group New Edition rocketed to pop fame. Another five years or so ticked by before the ascent of Tiffany and New Kids on the Block.

And five more went by before the sudden stardom in 1997 of British quintet the Spice Girls and Oklahoma kid band Hanson, who faded abruptly just before the Backstreet era.

So what’s to prevent fans from tiring of kid pop once more?

“People keep asking me, ‘What are you going to do when the pop bubble bursts, as it always has in the past?”’ said Larry Rudolph, Spears’ co-manager and attorney. “My answer is, the world has changed. With Nickelodeon and Fox Family and other cable channels, we’re now in a world where, even if MTV was to bail on pop music, these other outlets will exist to pick up the slack.

“In the past, this stuff has gotten to burnout levels and then the industry moves on to other things. I don’t think that’s going to happen again because of the media outlets out there.”

Consider the case of A*Teens, a Swedish quartet whose 1999 debut album consisted of versions of songs by 1970s pop act ABBA. When MCA executives tried to get the group’s first song played at Top 40 pop stations, program directors slammed the door in their face. MTV paid no attention.

Radio Disney, however, embraced the band’s single “Mamma Mia.” Nickelodeon booked the quartet to appear on “Slimetime Live” and made the band’s video its “SNICK Video of the Week.” With no other airplay, the band’s first album sold 661,000 copies.

But the outlets can have even greater effect. Two albums by Aaron Carter, younger sibling of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter, have sold a total of about 2.9 million since September 2000, with almost no airplay on mainstream radio formats. And basketball games haven’t been the same since Nickelodeon began playing the video for the Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?,” a single included on the soundtrack of Nickelodeon Movies’ 2000 “Rugrats in Paris” feature film.

Nickelodeon lately has become the antithesis of the usual promotion model, in which record companies provide talent and cachet to broadcasters. The star of one Nickelodeon series, “Taina,” has just signed a record contract with MCA, while Nick Cannon, the star of another series, is releasing an album on the channel’s Jive-affiliated label next year.

Such deals signal that the kid outlets have opened a permanent niche, record executives say.

“People are always going to have kids,” MCA’s Orescan said. With the arrival of such outlets, he said, children and preteens “have their own club now. This is their club, and it feels hip. It doesn’t feel like school. We may not be at the peak of teen pop anymore, but I think it’s continuing.”

Even if the record industry does manage to create a perpetual demand for kid pop, there is no guarantee of profits. Several record labels opened or expanded their soundtrack divisions in the early 1990s following blockbusters such as “Forrest Gump.” But amid a stretch of less-than-hoped-for sales, some labels this year consolidated their soundtrack operations.

Kid pop, executives say, will be different. Indeed, even as they survey the wreckage of dozens of costly teen-pop failures, many label executives vow to keep signing up new variations of the Spears/Backstreet breed to feed the youth broadcasters. And that suits programmers just fine.

“We tend to play new and breaking artists,” said Albie Hecht, president of film and TV programming for Nickelodeon. “I don’t think we have the same clock on our acts as other outlets might, but we do tend to try to break the next new thing. We’ve always had transitions from our talent.”

Don Crabtree, music director for the 48-station Radio Disney network, agreed.

Spears “is only one of many,” Crabtree said. “Somebody’s behind her, always. Who’s going to be the next ‘N Sync? Our audience is just as fickle as anybody else. There’s a lot of new stuff out there. There’s always somebody to take their place. It’s not like it’s hard to find anybody.”

But teen-pop veterans say there is a flaw in the formula. The broadcasters’ ravenous appetite for new music, coupled with the audience’s short attention span, is likely to reduce the shelf life of each new generation of junior varsity stars.

“Too much variety makes it confusing, and then nobody makes it super-huge,” said Louis J. Pearlman, the Florida mogul who assembled the Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync and O-Town. “You can only squeeze the lemon so far. Then you’ve got to find another lemon. I think Nickelodeon has a sustainable business as long as they don’t use it to oversaturate. They all have to be careful, Radio Disney too. It’s quality, not quantity.”

The evidence backing up Pearlman’s mantra is already piling up in record stores’ 99-cent bins. The pop graveyard is littered with acts who generated poor sales during the kid music craze--many of whom received heavy airplay from either Nickelodeon, Radio Disney or both. The list of disappointments runs from boy bands C-Note, My Town, the Lyte Funky Ones and Take 5 to girl groups such as Innosense and would-be teen queens Amanda and Angela Via.

“It’s nice that these outlets exist and they provide a very nice conduit, but you still have to have the right act,” Jive’s Weiss said. “Let’s say Radio Disney has a playlist of 40 songs. Maybe five out of the 40 are really selling. It’s the same percentages” as at mainstream Top 40 stations, he said. “Nothing is guaranteed. The fact that there’s a Nickelodeon or a Radio Disney doesn’t ensure that these acts are going to sell any records.”

The ultimate question trailing kid pop’s recent sales slowdown centers on the nature of the broadcasters’ power. Are they transforming kids into lifelong music fans? Or consumers who have simply been buying an advertised fad, latching on to CDs because they are today’s Furby toys?

Time will tell if such acts as ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys can hang onto their legions of fans after graduating from the kid outlets.

“Artists can go on and have a career that appeals to a wide demo,” Nickelodeon’s Hecht said. “But not everybody can be the Rolling Stones.”

Spears and her contemporaries now face the moment when they must leap the generation gap and reach for an older audience. Not only are their early fans growing up, but there are also signs that bubblegum seems to be losing its juice. Spears’ new album sold 746,000 copies its opening week--the third-best debut of the year but still half a million shy of her last album’s first-week number in 2000. The Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync have also seen declines from their sales peaks.

Indeed, plenty of other acts are waiting as the latest generation of kid pop fans begins maturing.

“All those little girls that used to want to go to bed looking at the poster of Kevin from the Backstreet Boys? They want to actually sleep with their favorite rock stars now,” said Steve Rennie, manager of rock band Incubus, whose lead singer is considered one of several new rock dreamboats. “This is a tough business to grow old gracefully in.”

Kid Pop: The Next Generation

Here are some examples of rising pop performers who may be promoted to young audiences through such outlets as Radio Disney and Nickelodeon:Christina Vidal. Described by one MCA executive as “a younger Jennifer Lopez,” Vidal is a 19-year-old from New York who plays Taina on the Nickelodeon series of the same name. Natural. The latest act from Orlando, Fla., boy-band mogul Louis J. Pearlman, the quintet has the nation’s eighth best-selling single this week, “Put Your Arms Around Me.” Stephanie Rae. The Orange County teen is fluent in Spanish and is expected to record a hip-hop-influenced pop album.No Secrets. The Los Angeles quintet is featured in a hit single from labelmate Aaron Carter and will contribute to the soundtrack for the Nickelodeon film “Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.”Lindsay Pagano. The Philadelphia teen has become a poster child for AOL Time Warner synergy. Signed to the conglomerate’s Warner Bros. Records label, she has been featured in a commercial for America Online and on AOL’s welcoming Web page.