Don’t Be Fooled By The Pretty Little Girls, Men Still Control The Airwaves

Teen TV seems to be on steroids lately, especially when it comes to shows with female leads — too bad it isn’t all actually about the women, though.

Television aimed at teenage girls has become quite the phenomenon lately. With Pretty Little Liars, The Nine Lives of Chloe King, Gossip Girl, and The Vampire Diaries, it is taking over prime time. A seemingly large step for womankind on the boob tube, but don’t get too excited. The person behind all of these girl-wooing masterpieces is not a strong, confident woman. He is 44-year-old a man named Leslie Morgenstein. Deceivingly female-sounding, I know.

He is the chief executive at Alloy Entertainment, one of the fasting-growing production companies with three new series this month bringing their everpopular list of successes to six. Even though he may be getting all of the credit, with his name running across every teen girl’s favorite show, he admits that hiring young women to do the creative work gets much more done than his management team of “middle-aged Jewish guys.”

Reminds me a little of Sex and the City, a seminal show about what it was like to be a single woman, which was conceived of and written by a gay man.

Apparently executives weren’t getting anywhere with teenage girl demographic because they are expected to be only interested in sappy romance and high school drama. That was until the Twilight series came out. This proved that girls enjoy intense plotlines with fighting and murder and vampires, oh my! So, what to do with a finding such as this? Take advantage of it, of course! His next move was to adapt the Vampire Diaries novels into a television series. And now it is almost just as popular as Twilight.

But why a man? Why does he deserve to be the main deciding factor behind all of teenage girls’ favorite nighttime viewings? Shouldn’t a woman be the mind behind shows like this? How does he know what girls want?

He doesn’t know and couldn’t know what girls really want to watch, but why should he worry? He gets the big bucks and all of the credit while his younger women creatives do the heavy lifting. And such is the way in so many markets. Some day women will be the creative and managing forces behind all of female-dominant TV, getting the credit they deserve. Until then, we will have to fight against the Leslie’s of the world.

Contact the author here: crazycolleen@morningquickie.com