The Disney Channel is probably the greatest teen-star incubator since the N.B.A. stopped drafting high schoolers. It has been No. 1 in prime-time cable ratings among viewers under 18 for the past seven years, and in 2007, it held the top spot among total viewers. Walt Disney Records, which releases the soundtracks for the Disney Channel’s shows, and Hollywood Rec­ords, another Disney subsidiary, have become Motowns for minors, and last year, though CD sales were down 20 percent across the music industry, the Disney labels posted a high-single-digit gain over 2006’s figures. And that success—High School Musical was the bestselling CD of 2006; High School Musical 2 and Hannah Montana 2 were both in the top six of 2007—was achieved without any substantial Top 40 radio exposure. Of course, Disney doesn’t really need to go outside the corporation for airplay because Radio Disney is the most popular radio network for tweens, reaching 97 percent of the country’s markets.

Using a multiplatform attack—television, radio, internet, music, consumer products, theme parks—Disney has succeeded where so many, including Sony, Time Warner, and Viacom, have failed. Executives at the Disney Channel call 10-year-olds their “sweet spot,” and it will be virtually impossible for a competing faith—O fallen idols of Nickelodeon, take heed!—to win back the hearts, minds, and allowances of America’s tween true believers. “Some of Disney’s other assets—the parks and resorts, the filmed entertainment—have slowed down on the revenue side,” says Joe Bonner of Argus Research. Revenue at the movie studio was down 1 percent in 2007 from 2006, and revenue from the theme parks was up just 7 percent, a decrease from the 10 percent gain the year before. But, Bonner says, Disney’s tween business is “creating explosive value.”

It’s also helping Disney get back to what it does best—cross-selling in a way that had been impossible given the recent dry run for the company’s new characters. The suits over at Disney have no compunction about using words like brand, franchise, and property to describe Hannah Montana, Raven-Symoné, or High School Musical—another sign of the central role tween products now play at the company. Their importance is apparent from Disney’s most recent annual report, on whose cover Musical has displaced Mickey Mouse, Johnny Depp, and various Pixar characters.

During the first week of February, the company held an 80-person, all-platform international meeting to discuss Hannah Montana’s future. Publishing, theme parks, radio, games, internet, consumer products, theater, feature films—every Disney business was represented at this Montanastock to take its slice of Miley Cyrus, the 15-year-old daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who plays Hannah Montana.

Anne Sweeney, 50, is a fit, trim woman with short hair and a thick diamond in each ear. She is sharp-featured and pretty in a low-key way that doesn’t interfere with her being taken seriously. Her broad American accent betrays no provenance. (She grew up in Kingston, New York, about halfway between New York City and Albany.) On a rainy, late- winter day, she is back in New York to accept a Golden Mike Award from the Broadcasters Foundation of America and attend a Disney board meeting later that afternoon. Over breakfast, she fiddles with her earrings, sips her coffee, and smiles frequently; she has good reason to be happy. After years of regularly making every roster of powerful women in business, Sweeney can now claim the top spot on a much more exclusive list: those who might succeed Disney C.E.O. Bob Iger.

Sweeney, who has a 17-year-old daughter and 22-year-old son, has spent her entire career in television, working at Nickelodeon before going to FX. She recalls being at Nickelodeon in the early ’90s, launching its international channels and trying to beef up its Nick at Nite lineup, looking across the marketplace at Disney and thinking, “Man, the things I could do if I worked there...” She was particularly intrigued by the opportunity to promote and market through different channels, something that just wasn’t in the water at Viacom. “Synergy is so rooted in the Disney culture, it is unassailable,” she says. “It is the through line to everything we do. It’s not like anywhere else.”