There was a Presidents Day tussle for the eyeballs of tween and teen viewers, with Nickelodeon topping Disney Channel in the battle of teen idols and Disney overtaking Nick in the duel of original movies.
A new episode of Nickelodeon's tween series iCarly drew 5.1 million viewers in the 7:30 p.m. time period, winning a head-to-head matchup with a competing new episode from Disney's Hannah Montana, which garnered 4.4 million viewers, according to Nickelodeon. The "iMeet Fred" episode drew a time period-high 2.1 million kids 6 to 11, 2.1 million tweens 9-14 and 2.8 million kids 2 to 11.
Disney, however dominated the rest of the night, including a battle of original movies at 8 p.m. Disney's Dadnapped drew 4.6 million viewers, outpointing Nickelodeon's music-driven movie Spectacular, which pulled 3.3 million viewers, according to Disney.
Disney's Dadnapped, which featured Hannah Montana stars Emily Osment, Jason Earles and Moises Arias, also bested Spectacular -- which starred Smallville's Nolan Gerard Funk as a rock singer who reluctantly joins a show choir group -- among kids 6 to 11 (2.1 million vs. 1.3 million) and tweens 9 to 14 (1.8 million vs. 1.3 million).
The debut of Dadnapped, though, broke a network string of five straight original Disney movies averaging 5 million or more viewers, becoming the network's first telefilm to fail to score with 5 million viewers since 2007's Johnny Kapahala: Back On Board.
