NEW YORK - A year and a half ago, Bindi Irwin was an eight-year-old growing up in the Australian outback, home-schooled so she could travel with her father, Steve Irwin, to film popular nature shows like The Crocodile Hunter. She sometimes appeared on camera, happily petting the occasional wallaby.
Then on Sept 4, 2006, Steve was killed by a stingray's barb while shooting his show. Rather than retreating into the background, Bindi has moved to centre stage, in a spotlight just as bright, and sometimes harsher, than the one trained on her father.
She has her own show, Bindi The Jungle Girl, on the Discovery Kids channel, an offshoot of Discovery Communications.
She also stars in a fitness video with her own back-up dancers and tours the world making public appearances.
Last year, she delivered a speech at the National Press Club in Washington about wildlife conservation. A few months later, she was a presenter at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.
Because Discovery Kids is a smaller channel, specific hourly numbers are not released. But executives there have high hopes for her, believing she can do for the network what High School Musical did for the Disney Channel.
'We think Bindi will be a big, big star,' said Mr David Zaslav, chief executive of Discovery Communications.
In the late 1990s, as Steve's star rose, so did the popularity of his US television partner, Discovery Communications' Animal Planet channel.
Bindi could conceivably advance Discovery Kids in a similar way. The 10-year-old channel, available in 60 million homes and intended for children aged two to 14, lacks the visibility of Nickelodeon or Disney.
'It doesn't have a SpongeBob Squarepants, it doesn't have a High School Musical yet,' said Ms Marjorie Kaplan, general manager of Animal Planet and Discovery Kids Media, both part of Discovery Communications. It is jointly owned by Discovery Holding and Advance Publications.
With her crimped blonde pigtails and broad grin, Bindi has already become a brand, supported by merchandise like backpacks, a clothing line and party plates.
She has appearances on Larry King Live under her belt, as well as David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres and the Today show, where she was interviewed in November before riding a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
No one expected her to take over the family business so soon or under such circumstances. Her own show was already in the works, but production was halted when her father died.
'After we lost Steve, Bindi started to ask, 'When are we going to get back to filming?'' her mother, Terri Irwin, said in an interview.
'I think for Bindi, it was normal and fun and what life is all about.'
Television executives see dollar signs in her ability to speak earnestly about the plight of endangered animals.
Steve reaped millions of dollars a year from his Crocodile Hunter persona, and Discovery, which owns Animal Planet and other channels, continues to pay talent fees to the family.
But the first season of Bindi The Jungle Girl was not lucrative, said Mr John Stainton, the family's long-time manager, adding that his company subsidised the series because the fees paid by Discovery did not cover the production costs. The Irwin family does not rely on television for its income, but rather on the profit from the Australia Zoo, which Terri owns, Mr Stainton said.
He added that he had turned down many job offers for Bindi, from endorsement deals to voice-over work.
'We're still finding the parameters for what we're going to do next,' he said.
Whatever it is, Bindi is expected to have an even more pronounced role.
She is 'the perfect embodiment of what Discovery Kids stands for', said Ms Kaplan. Better still, she is not a limited franchise: Her brother Robert, who just turned four, appears (among many places) on the cover of Crikey! Magazine, a publication of the Australia Zoo (named after Steve's trademark expression).
Outside of Bindi's immediate circle, however, people have registered second opinions on whether her newfound celebrity is eclipsing her childhood.
'Not one person is standing up and saying, 'Is this appropriate?'' wrote Daniel Donahoo, a writer and research fellow at an Australian public policy think-tank, on his blog, referring to Bindi's neat segue into her father's hiking boots.
Other bloggers, as well as newspaper columnists in the United States and other countries, have drawn inevitable comparisons to the problems of other child stars and pointed to off-note elements of the Bindi juggernaut.
Bindi The Jungle Girl alternates between fresh footage of Bindi and older clips of her father; perhaps because the show is aimed at children, there is no hint whatsoever that Steve is anything other than alive and well.
Television critics and bloggers have called the show creepy.
Bindi's mother, who recently published a book, Steve And Me, dismisses the criticism that her daughter is being robbed of her childhood.
Filming wildlife footage is a way of life for her family, she says, and continuing her husband's work is what sustains them.
'I'm not creating a Hollywood movie star, I'm creating a little person,' she said in an interview in her New York hotel room last month, in the midst of a media tour for her book. She said the trip had included a trip to Toys 'R' Us and playing in Central Park.
NYT
'After we lost Steve, Bindi started to ask, 'When are we going to get back to filming?.... for Bindi, it was normal and fun'
