Scalped tickets selling for thousands. Screaming kids laying siege to MuchMusic. A $70 million–grossing 3D concert movie. Chart-topping albums. Weekly saucy-photo scandals. This year has been positively owned by Miley Cyrus and those Jonas boys.

For those of us above the age of 14, this tween ’splosion erupted out of nowhere. How could these kid singers blow up so big without any radio play? But even mentioning radio ages us: kids don’t listen to it. But they do watch TV, and the small screen is from whence this achy-breaky offspring and her ilk have sprung forth.

Miley’s Hannah Montana — which airs here on Family Channel, like most Disney Channel fare, and started filming its third season last week — is not a good show. Though charismatic, Miley overacts and her kiddie-com makes Saved by the Bell seem sophisticated. But its wish-fulfillment premise — boring student Miley doubles as pop star Montana — is manna for millions of tweens.

Meanwhile, the Hanson-esque Jonas Brothers kick-started their career with Hanna Montana cameos followed by an opening slot on Miley’s tour and leading roles in this summer’s DVD feature Camp Rock. Next month Disney launches the Jonas’ new slice-of-life series inspired by the guys’, like, fave show, Flight of the Conchords.

Sure, it’s easy to dismiss this all as diabolical Disney machinations. The Mouse House has been refining its tween breeding centre since making Hilary Duff a star on Lizzie McGuire and then setting the singer/actor stage with the High School Musical phenomenon (recently spun off into reality show Get in the Picture, where talented young people compete to appear in HSM3’s closing credits — seriously).

But remember, this is also a company that saw preteen potential in then-Mouseketeers Justin, Britney, X-tina and, er, Ryan Gosling (as well as casting a 14-year-old Shia LaBeouf in Even Stevens). They’ve also been way more adept than American Idol at translating hit TV into hit music.

Much of Disney’s dominance is due to their casting actual teens instead of young-looking adults. The 15-year-old Miley is more interesting when playing herself online as she and her BFF, Mandy, host their own silly YouTube show where they goof around, go all Mean Girls (ridiculing Disney rival Selena Gomez, star of Wizards of Waverly Place)and engaging in over-the-top breakdance battles.

The Miley and Mandy Show has been playing online for months, garnering millions of views and attracting America’s best street dancers alongside celeb cameos from Adam Sandler, Chris Brown, Lindsay Lohan, Joey Fatone, Ryan Seacrest and Diana Ross. This climaxed with a live face-off on last week’s Teen Choice Awards, which queen-bee Miley was also hosting. (Her crew won with a routine choreographed to Chromeo’s “Fancy Footwork.”)

Earlier this week, MuchMusic aired MTV’s pale High School Musical clone The American Mall (starring Degrassi teen-mom Nina Dobrev), which could rival Reefer Madness for unintentional campiness. Appropriately, Mall’s plot revolves around commerce and marketing —?two things that fuel the tween scene. But what’s more remarkable is the fact that it’s an almost exclusively female-driven phenomenon. Girls often get overlooked in pop culture because it’s assumed they’ll check out guy stuff but not vice-versa — so you get one Traveling Pants for every 15 superhero flicks.

This multimedia Miley movement instills sky-high expectations amongst its girlie demo. If it does grow up — Miley is already hinting Montana’s third season may be the last — the audience will continue demanding to be catered to culturally. Maybe down the road a mostly women-only phenomenon like Sex and the City won’t be such an anomaly.

Don’t get me wrong: aside from Miley’s ultra-catchy new album Breakout and the first High School Musical, this stuff is qualitatively terrible. But to those who mock without considering the broader implications, I offer a resounding whatever.