A Better Mousetrap?

''The major difference between Nickelodeon and the others is it's contemporary,'' says Hecht. Kids and adults ''recognize themselves in it. They see the edge and difficulty as well as the fun of a modern-day world. It isn't a fairy-tale or a historical world. It isn't some glossy point of view about life. It's warts and all.''

It's also a strategy that has Michael Eisner feeling a bit envious. Though the Disney CEO declined a request to be interviewed for this story, when recently asked by the Los Angeles Times if Nick's marketplace represented a missed opportunity, he responded, ''I can't say I wouldn't like to have the success that Nickelodeon has.'' Gregg Liebman, a media analyst at J. Walter Thompson, says older kids regard Disney as soft and Nick as more contemporary. ''It speaks to them, and they view Disney [as being] more for their younger siblings.''

Although The Rugrats Movie might not break Disney's much-vaunted $100 million animation mark, a sequel is already under way. Nick's also setting its sights on another corner of the Magic Kingdom: live-action kids' movies. Following the modest successes of Harriet the Spy and Good Burger, it's now developing more mainstream fare, including How to Eat Fried Worms, a coming-of-age tale (from Imagine's Ron Howard and Brian Grazer) based on the children's book, and a $50 million-plus comedy is in the works about the life of cartoonist Rube Goldberg.

Perhaps the channel's most precocious partnership is with Mollie Israel, the 13-year-old daughter of director Amy Heckerling (Clueless) and her ex-husband, writer Neal Israel (Look Who's Talking Too). The teenager has an autobiographical movie now in development at the company; it's about a girl who gets her mother to cancel a move to New York on the condition that she can get a boy to fall in love with her during the school year. The young Israel and her father first pitched the idea to Disney, but the company passed. And that, according to Heckerling, was just fine by Mollie, who prefers Nick, calling it ''MTV for kids.''

''It has a sense of irreverence, but it doesn't assume that kids [want] sappy,'' says Heckerling, who is also on the Nickelodeon payroll. (She's developing a movie based on Nick's Prometheus and Bob, which she was introduced to by Mollie.) ''Nickelodeon's more cynical than people give them credit for, but that doesn't mean they're jaded.'' And that notion puts the channel somewhere between weird and funny — but miles away from Disney.

A Child's Garden of Versus
True, Disney is the ruler of the Magic Kingdom. But Viacom offshoot Nickelodeon may eventually have the teeth to nibble away at the Mouse House's hunk of Swiss. A comparison:
Highest-Grossing Movie
Nickelodeon: Harriet the Spy, $27 million
Disney: The Lion King, $312.8 million

Times Square Real Estate
Nick: Four floors in the Viacom building
Disney: Refurbished New Amsterdam Theater; Disney Store

Live Show
Nick: Bus & truck road show, Rugrats — A Live Adventure
Disney: Broadway's Tony award-winning Beauty and the Beast

Top 'Toon Character (Sans Pants)
Nick: Tommy Pickles
Disney: Mickey Mouse

Product Tie-Ins
Nick: Rugrats' Kraft Macaroni & Cheese
Disney: Mulan's Chicken McNuggets with Szechuan sauce