The CW pulls back on ‘Gossip Girl’ streaming
Michael Gay April 18th, 2008
LostRemote has blogged before about how popular ‘Gossip Girl’ is online, buoying the audience of the show despite the low on-air ratings:
…it’s wildly popular online, even outpacing The Office on iTunes. Fans sites are everywhere. And when you add DVR ratings to the mix, it’s the most-watched show by teenagers.
So, the latest announcement from the CW will be a disappointment to the huge audience who watches the show on cwtv.com: wait. Yes, the CW is taking a step backwards and telling their audience that they will have to watch the show on TV.
“For these next five weeks the epicenter of the ‘Gossip Girl’ universe will be on The CW’s broadcast television airwaves,” CW president of Entertainment Dawn Ostroff told TVWeek.
This isn’t just inconvenient for the audience who risk being alienated, but a blow to the CW’s own website.
Adds Cory: So a show about a website is pulling itself off the web because it’s too popular online? Got it. While “Gossip Girl” is the first, I’m afraid it won’t be the last to panic and pull itself off the web when TV ratings erode. After all, it’s the TV commercials that still pay the bulk of the production costs, and (especially younger) audiences are growing more comfortable watching shows online faster than TV execs ever thought. But as Hulu’s CEO Jason Kilar would say, this is a “defensive” move when media companies need to be on the offensive — it may give the show a ratings boost in the short term, but long term it puts the show at risk by making it more difficult to watch.
9 Comments Add your own
1. Stephen Warley | April 18th, 2008 at 7:12 am
who the heck cares where they watch as long as they are watching!!
2. tdc | April 18th, 2008 at 7:32 am
i mentioned this sort of approach yesterday in the abcnews debates comments.
i’ve seen this sort of thing on the local level, too.
while my first instinct was to write a nasty letter of complaint, i thought it would be more interesting to sit back and watch how the audience reacts.
it’s a step backwards indeed… typical tv-think.
3. Safran | April 18th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
I predict they will either rethink this move or that the show will die as a result.
What a stunningly bad move. ESPECIALLY when you think about the core audience - the online kids who made this show, who have tons of online groups discussing it, and who are being slapped in the face for helping this show succeed.
There are ads online, too. And they’re plenty effective. If only the advertisers who buy the blocks of ads would stop throwing the same one in each break, we’d even pay attention.
Message to the core audience: “Hey, webbies, thanks for the help on this. Now get lost while we try and wrangle you back into our way of things.”
Success changes everything.
I
4. Jeff Harris | April 18th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Let’s recap the decisions made by The CW this past season in addition to this announcement:
- They cancelled their highest-rated series (WWE Friday Night Smackdown) after spending millions to help them enter the HD market, which was immediately snatched up by MyNetworkTV.
- They shut down the comedy department (there are currently a few comedy shows in development, but the bulk of the new fare will be unscripted programming and teen-oriented dramas).
- They sold broadcasting rights of the number-one broadcast Saturday morning block, Kids’ WB, to 4Kids Entertainment, the owners of the company that produces the number-three block, 4KidsTV on Fox, who already announced they’re scrapping 90% of the lineup.
I don’t see The CW lasting beyond the 2009-10 season at the rate they’re seemingly destroying themselves.
5. Anonymous | April 19th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
People actually watch the CW?
6. discreet_chaos | April 19th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
WTF? This means that I can no longer call “Gossip Girl” one of my guilty pleasures because I sure as heck aren’t going to watch it offline. Of course I’m not in their target market, but still, I did generally watch it online sometime over the course of a week.
7. Rob | April 21st, 2008 at 7:49 am
As they say in Survivor, “We’ll see how this plays out.” Don’t know if i would have played it in this way though. CW will, I believe, be producing new web exclusive content surrounding each show, and each show will still be on iTunes where it’s consistently been a top show.
Obviously they hope the streaming fans will find a way to watch it on tv for the next 5 weeks. And I would think it reflects the network’s hope for some good May sweeps numbers as they decide how to move forward next season.
As for wrestling, I thought the wrestling organization decided not renew their contract with CW?
8. Jeff Harris | April 21st, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Nope. The CW chose not to renew their contract with the WWE, not the other way around. See, just as the WB side of the CW lost their biggest strength (the Saturday morning block), the UPN side lost their biggest strength (Friday Night Smackdown, which was the biggest show on UPN before it became the biggest show on The CW).
There was actually much uncertainty within the wrestling community whether the Smackdown brand would even continue after August before Fox/My Network TV signed a multi-tiered agreement with WWE, including airing Smackdown on MNT and Fox distributing theatrical and DTV movies from WWE Films down the line.
9. fancastguru | April 28th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
You can resume your GG guilty pleasure online - fancast.com has full episodes of the show for free! The video streams so there’s no downloading - you can watch anytime.
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