Friday's premiere drew 17.24 million viewers. That's a lot, and makes Musical 2 the most watched event ever broadcast on basic cable-- bigger even than the debut of Monday Night Football on ESPN, which attracted 16 million viewers on Sept. 23, 2006.
The ratings also make the sequel to the Disney Channel movie about high school theatre geeks most-watched TV movie ever with kids between the ages of 6 and 11 (with 6.1 million of them tuned in) and the most-watched ever with tweeners 9 to 14 (5.9).
The high number of viewers indicated that Musical was a family-viewing event. Remember those?