HOLLYWOOD - Everyone knows who Hannah Montana is. But perhaps only kids know that she has been unseated as TV's reigning tween queen by Carly Shay.
Carly, the plucky 15-year-old star of the Nickelodeon comedy iCarly, quietly overtook Disney Channel's Hannah Montana -- and this year, American Idol -- in the ratings race for young audiences.
Miranda Cosgrove, who plays Carly, is still a name that draws quizzical looks while Miley Cyrus sells out movie theaters and concert arenas. Nor is Cosgrove the whirlwind of controversy that Cyrus has been. Last month, Cosgrove posted to her Twitter page: "Just finished 5 more hours of math. At least this afternoon was fun! My first real driving lesson!" -- a far cry from Cyrus' recent bio (dating a 20-year-old and a Jonas brother, and posing provocatively for Vanity Fair.)
And yet, in its second season, iCarly, which follows the misadventures of three friends who produce a Web show about, well, nothing in particular, has grown into TV's No. 1 series among kids (ages 2 to 11) and tweens (ages 9 to 14), drawing an average 5.6 total million viewers to new episodes.
So how did Carly do it? Unlike her scandal-attracting peers, she has the Web working with her instead of against her.
By design, iCarly is the only children's show plugged seamlessly into the online world, a playing field populated by blurbs of random, often outrageous comedy. Series creator Dan Schneider has been savvy enough to plot the iCarly Web segments as randomly as any teen would a YouTube channel.
During the show-within-a-show Webcasts, which the characters film in Carly's attic, Carly and her friend Sam (Jennette McCurdy) demonstrate making chicken soup in a toilet. They create trailers spoofing teen movies. They morph Carly's head onto a picture of Sam's rabid cat. They improvise short sketches with such names as "The Cowboy With a Mustache and the Idiot Farm Girl Who Thought the Mustache Was a Squirrel."
"When I pitched the show, (Nickelodeon executives) asked, ‘What's the Web show?' I said, ‘Whatever we want,'" Schneider said.
iCarly is his fourth live-action show for the network; he previously created the hits Zoey 101, Drake & Josh and The Amanda Show. It's frantic, silly and never predictable.
"I don't know who else besides us could say they've run over a microwave filled with toothpaste in a monster truck," McCurdy said.
Schneider also has been savvy about what the young people are watching and sharing online. In February, iCarly devoted an entire episode to viral-video star Lucas Cruikshank, who plays Fred, a hyper 6-year-old with temper problems, on his YouTube video channel, the site's most subscribed-to feed.
"I go online a lot, and I read stuff all the time from fans saying they love the weird stuff, the stuff that doesn't belong anywhere or make any sense," Schneider said.
To that end, he keeps the iCarly.com Web site stocked with online-exclusive videos to keep fans buzzing between new episodes. And, along with his actors, he is big on Twitter.
Which is not to say that iCarly is simply a string of Web-inspired sketches and gags. Outside of her Web-hosting duties, Carly is an overachiever in school, kind of neurotic and usually more mature than her older brother, Spencer (Jerry Trainor), who raises her while their father is (permanently) stationed on a submarine in Europe. Sam is her brash, school-hating best friend, and Freddie (Nathan Kress) is their nerdy-cool Web-show producer. Together they get into trouble while producing popular Web TV.
Further separating it from your average kids' sitcom, the series talks up to its audience, often appearing to forego lessons learned in favor of laughs. In the Season 2 premiere, Carly and Sam decided to date the same boy, and as they fought over him toward the end of the half-hour, he stumbled backward, falling eight floors down an elevator shaft and winding up in a full body cast. It ended the squabbling -- and the episode.
"There's no resolution, and I love that. And let me tell you, it took me a long time to win those battles (with the network)," Schneider said. "The sweet wrap-up scenes? Who wants to see 'em? Let's just end on big funny."
Cosgrove is without the promotional power of the Disney empire -- ABC, Hollywood Records and Walt Disney Pictures -- that has made stars of Cyrus, Hilary Duff and Zac Efron.
Instead, she falls neatly into the tradition of Nickelodeon talent, which includes recent breakouts Emma Roberts and Josh Peck, teens who are now trying to build their acting careers in independent films. Cosgrove is not a glammed-up pop star; she is a mirror of the audience watching her.
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