If you own a television, radio, or computer, chances are you’ve heard of the Jonas Brothers. And if they seem particularly inescapable lately, it’s because Disney has made it their business to pipe the New Jersey trio into every imaginable media outlet possible to promote their upcoming movie Camp Rock (which, if we’re lucky, is actually a Scissor Sisters biopic). The L.A. Times has an article on the JoBro media assault with quotes from some of the sleaziest-sounding middle-aged men in the biz. Funny how those types always seem to pop up most often amid a boy band craze.

The exposure has turned the Jonas Brothers into a national media sensation. Last week, the brothers made appearances on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards and on a taping of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Some people might think that the Jonas Brothers should be in school getting their education instead of plowing through a nefariously synergistic media campaign, but that argument will soon be dispelled by Kevin Jonas’s forthcoming book All I Really Need to Know I learned on ‘Dancing With the Stars’.

“This is a moment where the platforms of the television group combine to launch a potentially valuable new franchise, ” said Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group.

“Platforms of the television group?” “Potentially valuable new franchise?” Network executives aren’t even trying to not sound like cyborgs anymore, apparently.

Although Disney’s tightly orchestrated media exposure of the Jonas Brothers is different from how boy bands were made in decades past, when such acts were the creations of independent music producers, the perils to young performers remain the same, Smay said.

“What usually happens is that they get ripped off, kind of dumped when they’re no longer young and pretty. The Bay City Rollers’ story was worse than Motley Crue,” Smay said. “It’s really difficult to survive that. Because there’s so much money involved, people don’t have the interest of the kids in front of them.”

But the managers surrounding the group say the best protection for young artists is a solid family. In the case of the Jonas Brothers, they tour on a family bus that is limited to precisely that: family. Their father, Kevin Jonas, is a pastor who serves as the group’s co-manager and grounding influence.

Right, because pastor dads/managers never fail to keep the path righteous.

Steve Greenberg unearthed Nick’s eponymous CD in 2005, among a pile of recordings from artists Columbia Records wanted to drop. Greenberg, then the label’s president, said Nick’s voice stopped him cold and reminded him of a previous discovery: the pop/rock group Hanson, whose debut album sold 12 million copies globally.

“This was the best voice I’ve heard since Taylor Hanson,” said Greenberg, now head of S-Curve Records, a New York music company. “You don’t just let guys like this go.”

That’s right, you don’t just let them go. You sink your claws in and exploit them until they’re empty, maladjusted shells of humans, and then you dig around in another CD pile to find new victims from which to suck the lifeblood. Haven’t we been through this cycle at least ten or fifteen times already?

The group’s forthcoming album has even more potential, Disney Music Group Chairman Bob Cavallo said.

“I’m hearing the Beatles,” Cavallo said, singling out one new song, “Love Bug.” “It’s really good, as is the arrangement. ‘Love Bug’ is like Paul McCartney wrote a song that’s going to be a monster hit with adults and children.”

Bob Cavallo, please kindly never open your mouth ever again. I’m no Beatles fanatic, but I don’t think any half-sane being could let that quote stand. So let me inform Mr. Cavallo of what he’s actually hearing. It’s not the next Beatles, it’s Hanson harmonies over Sum 41 riffs.

Nothing more, nothing less. It’s quite good for what it is, but I fail to understand how Paul McCartney enters into it.

“We think the sky’s the limit with the band,” said Jason Garner, chief executive of North American Music for concert promoter Live Nation, who said that the group sold out the Gibson Amphitheatre in a record two minutes.

This fall, the band will appear in a Disney Channel TV series, J.O.N.A.S., playing rock stars who are undercover spies.

“It feels like some giant wave forming out on the ocean,” said Gary Marsh, entertainment president at Disney Channel Worldwide. “You don’t know how big it’s going to be until it hits.”

Until it hits and swallows the Jonas Brothers whole, sweeping them out into the vast abyss where all boy bands go to die. I hate to cast such a negative tone here, but it’s hard not to after reading an article so chock full of smarmy industry talk. There’s always a lot of talk about the misogynistic schoolgirl-fetish aspect of the music business, but nobody seems to cry foul as cute teen boys are being run through brutal boy band cycle. If only the Jonas brothers really could go to the year 3000.

Then maybe they’d Google themselves and figure out a way to avert the inevitable financial crisis and/or drug problem and/or gay sex scandal.

Disney machine working for Jonas Brothers [L.A. Times]