They aren't becoming desperate. As Man 2 stated,
They're trying to appeal to their audience, same as every company ever has since the beginning of time.
Their target demographic is 9 to 15. In order to retain the attention of this age group, they need to utilize techniques that will allow them to retain the attention of the target demographic in order to sell merchandise, receive decent/good ratings for their programming, and to raise awareness for the brand.
Of course, they may be going a bit overboard, but that may be a result of them just trying a bit too hard.