The next girl most likey to?

If Nickelodeon guesses right, 'True Jackson' star Keke Palmer will follow in the popular footsteps of Miley Cyrus, Miranda Cosgrove, and other tween stars

True Jackson has quite a bit in common with her fellow sitcom characters on Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. She’s a good girl — not a rebel — with adult-sized ambitions and a streak of adorable klutziness. She has a multiracial mix of goofy best friends. And she’s likely to appear on a product near you.

That about sums up the formula of tween TV, and of Nickelodeon's newest entry into the sitcom market. "True Jackson, V.P.," which premieres tonight at 9:30, features "Akeelah and the Bee" star Keke Palmer as a 15-year-old fashion designer, named vice president of a major fashion house. And Nickelodeon hopes it will make Palmer the latest in a line of mostly wholesome, multiplatform teenage stars.

The kids who might love True are the 8-to-12-year-old girls who made "Hannah Montana" a nationwide phenomenon, and whose spending powers have made them a coveted demographic. In recent years, the Disney Channel has unleashed a string of sitcoms designed for them, from the onetime hit "That's So Raven" to the current show "Wizards of Waverly Place." Nickelodeon has offered such competitors as "Zoey 101" - which was canceled after star Jamie-Lynn Spears got pregnant at 17 - and the current hit "iCarly."

Each has a multicamera format, a loud laugh track, a penchant for slapstick, and a lead character who projects a certain sort of purity. (The zapping of Spears was little surprise, and some believe Miley Cyrus's provocative Vanity Fair portraits herald her impending exit from the tween-idol scene.) Shows aimed at teenagers, such as the CW's "Gossip Girl" and "90210," are loaded with provocative behavior. But on tween TV, high school is a safe and pure place, and stars are aware of their role-model status. Both "Waverly Place" star Selena Gomez and up-and-comer Demi Lovato - the star of last summer's Disney Channel movie "Camp Rock," who is now filming a Disney sitcom of her own - wear "promise rings" declaring that they'll wait until marriage for sex.

Palmer, 15, who is involved with the teen mentoring program "It's Cool to Be Smart," seems equally willing to embrace the good-girl image.

"As I get older, I might play different types of roles. I might play someone crazy," she said by phone recently. But for the time being, she said, "I definitely want to continue to present myself in that good light so I can motivate young girls."

A role model was precisely what "True Jackson" creator Andy Gordon had in mind when he developed the show. The Framingham native, a veteran of such network sitcoms as "Back to You," "Just Shoot Me," and "News Radio," was lured to Nickelodeon by an industry friend, and said he wanted to create a show his 4- and 6-year-old daughters would enjoy. He dipped into his experience with workplace comedies, hoping to convey the idea that an office can be like high school. He wanted to play with the notion of a powerless kid getting power.

"I also wanted a character that I really liked, that I really wanted to have the qualities that I'd like in my daughters," Gordon said. "Which is that she's honest and she's good to people, she works hard but she's still a kid."

True hews to other standards of tween-role-model behavior, including a decidedly post racial sensibility. Where kid-friendly shows in the past drew part of their comedy from racial differences (think "Diff'rent Strokes" or "Webster," which featured adorable black children taken in by kindly white parents), today's tween fare treats race as an afterthought.

To young audiences, race "just does not matter at all," said Tina Wells, the founder and CEO of Buzz Marketing Group, a firm that researches teens and tweens. "They're looking for talent, they're looking for charm, they're looking for aspiration."

That was the mandate for casting "True Jackson," as well, Gordon said. At first, he eyed five finalists for the lead role: one African-American, two Caucasian, one Asian, and one from Madrid. Then he heard that Palmer had gotten hold of the script and wanted the part.

"I said, 'Keke Palmer is fantastic. She was amazing in "Akeelah and the Bee." But can she do comedy?' " he recalls. He says he was originally told he couldn't ask her to audition, because she was already too big of a star. But when he pressed, she came in, read a few scenes, and won him over.

"She is such a likable kid with all this energy," Gordon said. "There was no decision."

It probably helped that Palmer could sing, since today's tween stars are expected to branch out. Like Gomez and "iCarly" star Miranda Cosgrove, Palmer sings the theme song of her show, which she also co-wrote. She also has an album under her belt, though sales have been lackluster, said Tommy Ramirez, who edits the tween website www.tommy2.net.

"I don't know if she's had the opportunity to connect with the fans," Ramirez said.

But both Disney and Nickelodeon, Ramirez said, have figured out the keys to launching a show and a star. Part of it is finding a character tweens can relate to, he said. Part of it is cross-promotion. The "Hannah Montana" series, he notes, premiered just after an early airing of the mega-hit TV movie "High School Musical." Tonight, "True Jackson" premieres after an "iCarly" movie.

And while Nickelodeon says its merchandising plans have yet to be finalized, Wells predicts that "True"-related products will be unveiled sooner rather than later. Tweens are inclined toward immediate consumption, she said; she calls them "the microwave generation" because "they're so instant with everything."

So if Palmer becomes a major star, Wells predicts, it's going to happen fast: "You don't have 18 months to set up a celebrity the way they used to."

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. For more on TV, go to www.viewerdiscretion.net