For the last five weeks of its freshman season, the CW discontinued posting its buzzy but largely unwatched series Gossip Girl online, as part of an effort to drum up its oldteevee viewer numbers. We newteevee watchers booed and hissed, hoping the ploy wouldn’t work and set an example for other networks. Ratings stayed low, but the series got renewed, and then over the summer, the CW said it would reverse its policy and post Gossip Girl online when it returned to the air in September.

But…It’s been nearly a week since the series’ sophomore debut, and episode 1 still isn’t online. Standard practice among the TV networks is to post shows online after they air in Hawaii; if not then, sometime soon the next day. A week is pushing it. We have to wonder if the CW is reneging on its reversal.

Furthermore, as far as I can tell, the CW hasn’t posted any episodes from its new season; what seems to be the most recent video in its full episode queue is an episode of Everybody Hates Chris that originally aired in May. Either the guy who loads new videos into the system quit last week, or there’s been an unacknowledged policy reversal. And this at a time when networks across the board are posting more and more of their shows for free, ad-supported streaming online, in some cases before they air on TV.

As for actual broadcast television, interpretations of Gossip Girl’s season premiere’s ratings were mixed; on the one hand, the episode failed to top last season’s premiere, and it got beat by the CW’s 90210 revival the next night; on the other hand, it apparently did amazingly great with women aged 18 to 34. Meanwhile, Gossip Girl was promptly posted on iTunes after it aired. And nearly a week later, it still occupies the No. 1 slot. (The show has done well all along on iTunes, and probably since people actually pay $1.99 for it there the CW hasn’t messed with that success.) One Tree Hill is at No. 2, while 90210 doesn’t seem to have been posted at all.

We’ve tried to contact the CW’s press department through official means, but that hasn’t worked so far, so maybe blogging will do the trick. Hey CW, whatever happened to posting your shows online?

Source

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The makers of “Gossip Girl” are planning a spinoff series set at a girls’ boarding school.

Producers are hoping to expand the popular CW show either by giving co-star Taylor Momsen her own series or by introducing a new character in the fall who is later spun off.

Regardless of which actor is used as the center of the new show, the story would likely draw on the arc of Momsen’s character, Jenny Humphrey, in the “Gossip Girl” book series for inspiration.

Jenny is a self-esteem-challenged outsider who struggles to fit in. In the books, as the result of a series of public embarrassments (such as appearing in a teen magazine wearing next to nothing), Jenny must repeat ninth grade or find a new school. She elects to enter a boarding school and reinvents herself as a popular girl. Her story is told in a series of six “Gossip” spinoff novels called “The It Girl.”

The big question is whether such a project would be picked up by the CW. The network already has two teen dramas set in high school this fall — “Gossip” and “90210,” a contemporary spinoff of the 1980s Fox series — as well as “One Tree Hill,” in which the characters recently graduated from high school. Beyond that, despite the devoted following and significant pop-culture buzz that “Gossip” has drawn, its ratings are modest. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m told that tonight MTV’s Tony DiSanto is still very busy denying to Hollywood that he is replacing Dawn Ostroff as head of The CW. I first heard from sources three weeks ago that Dawn was out, and Tony was in, following rounds of not-so-secret meetings with possible candidates for the network run jointly by Warner Bros and CBS. Then silence. The “explanation” making the rounds was that DiSanto, who’s been a very big deal at MTV for more than a decade, was still negotiating his CW deal. Well, DiSanto this week had a puff piece written about him where he said he isn’t leaving MTV. But today, this CW rumor went from a whisper to the talk of the town. So why? “Someone is really pushing this story hard,” says a CBS insider. ”But I believe the person who told me it’s not happening.” And the bigtime TV power-players also think it’s smoke, not fire. Perhaps it’s karma that DiSanto (EVP of series, development and animation for MTV and head of programming for MTV2), has to work overtime to dispel the chatter. After all, this is the guy responsible for some of the most-talked-about swill on MTV, like Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, Run’s House, The Hills, 8th and Ocean, The Andy Milonakis Show, and TRL with Carson Daly (thus foisting that no-talent on all of us…). Whereas Ostroff got her job by the skin of her teeth after programming as badly as she could at the old UPN and brown-nosing Les Moonves who was making a power-play move on Barry Meyer. Nevertheless Hollywood folk fail upwards: I’m told Dawn could end up running Oprah’s new cable network.