Country of origin United States Original network Disney Channel
ABC | No. of episodes 26 | |
Original release March 24, 2006 (2006-03-24) – March 30, 2007 (2007-03-30) | ||
The first season of the television series Hannah Montana was aired on Disney Channel from March 24, 2006 to March 30, 2007, and included 26 episodes. It introduces the five main characters of the series and Miley Stewart's situation of living a secret double life as a teen pop star. The season also introduces several significant recurring characters such as Roxy Roker, Jake Ryan, and Rico Suave.
Contents
The season's soundtrack was released on October 24, 2006 under the title Hannah Montana. The season itself was released on DVD as a four disc set on November 18, 2008, by Disney DVD. Certain individual episodes had been released earlier on other Hannah Montana DVDs.
Production
Hannah Montana debuted Friday, March 24, 2006 on Disney Channel with "Lilly, Do You Want to Know a Secret?" The first season completed its run on March 30, 2007 with "Bad Moose Rising". In the United Kingdom it first aired in the Summer period of 2006, then the first series aired on free-to-view channel FIVE showing all episodes, the second series then aired in 2009. The first season consists of 26 colored, full-screen, approx. 23-minute episodes (without ads) recorded using a multiple-camera setup. Filming began November 7, 2005.
Opening sequence
The theme song for Hannah Montana is "The Best of Both Worlds" written by Matthew Gerrard and Robbie Nevil, produced by Gerrard and performed by Miley Cyrus (as Hannah Montana). John Carta, who also composes the music cues to signify scene changes and commercial breaks, composed the music for the song. The song's lyrics describe the basic premise of the television series.
The full-length version, which is 2 minutes, 54 seconds in length, was included on the show's soundtrack, released in October 2006. For the TV version of the theme, which lasts only 50 seconds, only the first two stanzas and the last two were used.
"Just Like You" and "The Other Side of Me" were originally tested for the opening theme song, before "Best of Both Worlds" was chosen as the theme. Each cast member's name is "wiped" on the screen in a marquee-light-style, and episode clips of the cast members' character are shown as well. The sequence then switches to full-screen episode clips (most of the clips used in the Season One version of the sequence were of the early produced episodes) with the creator's names appearing in the second-to-last clip. The show's title logo design appears at the beginning, and again at the end, of the sequence (the latter portion as with most other portions of the sequence on the "concert stage" feature Cyrus as her character Hannah Montana).
Closing sequence
Episodes of the first season typically end with a scene that is not crucial to the plot, often functioning as a throwaway joke. Credits are shown for the crew and any guest stars or co-stars.
Casting
The show's five stars — Miley Cyrus, Emily Osment, Mitchel Musso, Jason Earles, and Billy Ray Cyrus — appear in all first-season episodes.
Recurring cast are Shanica Knowles as Amber Addison, Anna Maria Perez de Tagle as Ashley Dewitt, Greg Baker as Francis Corelli, Morgan York as Sarah, Cody Linley as Leslie "Jake" Ryan, Romi Dames as Traci Van Horn, Dolly Parton as Aunt Dolly, Vicki Lawrence as Mamaw Ruthie, Frances Callier as Roxy, and Moises Arias as Rico.
There were many guest stars including Corbin Bleu as Johnny Collins, Paul Vogt as Dontzig, Matt Winston as Fermine, Andre Kinney as Cooper, Ashley Tisdale as Maddie Fitzpatrick, and Lisa Arch as Liza the photographer.
Co-stars for this season are Derek Basco, Kyle Kaplan, Creagen Dow, Jack Taylor, Blake Berris, Frances Bay, Christian Serratos, Ryan Newman, Summer Bishil, Kunal Sharma, Cutter Garcia, Helen Duffy, Jeff Mallare, Betsy Kelso, Noah Cyrus, Aimee Teegarden, Gena DeVivo, Destiny Edmond, Jay Brian Winnick, Dollar Tan, Jason Thornton, Gary Pease, Marius Mazmanian, and Alec Leddand.
Episodes
The series premiere with "Lilly, Do You Want to Know a Secret?" had 5.4 million viewers breaking the highest-rated series premiere on a kids network in seven years and was the highest rated Disney Channel series premiere until Cory in the House. In the episode, Miley reveals to Lilly that she is Hannah Montana.
Season 1 included a special episode called "On the Road Again?" that was part of "That's So Suite Life of Hannah Montana". The episode had cross-overs with shows That's So Raven and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.