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

NASHVILLE, Tenn. –

Country star LeAnn Rimes has caught the acting bug – and she’s ready to bring it from Nashville to the Upper East Side.

“I would love to be on ‘Gossip Girl!’” she told OK! magazine, explaining that she’s looking for film and television roles. “Every video I do, I think I do more and more acting in them, which I think is kind of setting the stage to do more and more film.”

And “Gossip Girl” would be her first pick, thanks to one of the show’s young stars.

“My husband is obsessed with Blake Lively,” she admitted. “She’s such a doll. I think she’s such a cute little girl and the actors are great and the storylines are really good.”

Former O.C. star Willa Holland is to appear in The CW’s Gossip Girl for a three-episode guest stint.

The actress, who played Marissa Cooper’s younger sister Kaitlin on the hit drama series, will take on the role of 16-year-old model Agnes in the new season. Her character is introduced when she starts working for Blair’s mother Eleanor Waldorf (Margaret Colin).

Meanwhile, John Patrick Amedori has been cast as Aaron Rose, a new love interest for lead character Serena (Blake Lively), according to E! Online. As well as starring in The Butterfly Effect, he has also appeared in a variety of US dramas, including Law & Order, Nip/Tuck and Ghost Whisperer.

Gossip Girl’s second season premiered on Monday in the US. It will continue for a full 24-episode run.

SOURCE

The CW took a risk by debuting its fall schedule a full three weeks ahead of most of the other networks, and starting on Labor Day no less, a night that usually sees pretty low ratings. But it looks like the strategy is off to a good start.

The network’s buzzy second-year show “Gossip Girl” debuted to its best-ever ratings in the network’s target women 18-34 demographic, according to Nielsen overnights, averaging a 2.3 rating and finishing a close second behind Fox’s “Prison Break” in the 8 p.m. timeslot.

“Gossip Girl,” which launched a racy campaign earlier this summer that included criticism from the Parents Television Council as part of the promotion, also hit series-high ratings among women 18-34 (3.2), women 18-49 (2.3) and adults 18-49 (1.7). Read the rest of this entry »

Taylor Momsen was the subject of a long New York Observer piece last month. For those of you avoiding “Gossip Girl,” which returns at 7 tonight on the CW, Momsen is identified as the real “it” girl from the show. She plays the de facto villain, Jenny. Taylor, who just turned 15, finds herself the object of love and scorn from people well into their 20s.

“It’s funny because I forget that I look the same — you know, that I look the same all the time,” she said as she ate “Pinkberry” yogurt covered in Fruity Pebbles. “I have two different modes: I have my on-set mode, and then I have my mode with my friends and family. My Taylor mode. And when I’m in my Taylor mode, I forget that people still see me as Jenny.”

The second season, which starts Sept. 1, has aspiring fashion designer Jenny working as an intern for designer Eleanor Waldorf, who — of course! — is the mother of chief rival Blair (Leighton Meester).
Read the rest of this entry »

With its impossibly good-looking cast, a parade of candy-colored designer fashion and provocative ad campaigns, it’s easy to dismiss the CW’s “Gossip Girl” as just another sexed-up, youth-oriented product to step off the TV drama assembly line.

There are certainly similarities between the show and its teen soap predecessors, particularly “Beverly Hills, 90210.” “Gossip Girl” is also set in an affluent ZIP code, Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and features an ensemble of archetypal characters, including the social outcast and the pretty-boy rebel with great hair. Its female leads, Blake Lively, who plays reformed bad girl Serena van der Woodsen, and Leighton Meester, who plays conniving socialite Blair Waldorf, even bear a strong resemblance in looks and character to Jennie Garth’s Kelly Taylor and Shannen Doherty’s Brenda Walsh.

But “Gossip Girl” - which returns for its second season Monday at 8 p.m. on the CW/11 - represents a distinct step beyond “90210″ and the teen dramas before it, starting with the show’s sophisticated use of point of view. Its rarefied world of youthful excess and angst is observed through the eyes of a mysterious blogger, the unseen yet ubiquitous Gossip Girl. The show deftly intertwines irony with authenticity, poking fun at itself while also commenting on the voyeurism and sensationalism driving the culture right now.

Visually, its depiction of New York City satisfies every last urban fantasy, and the city can’t help but love it back. New York magazine went so far as to call it “the greatest teen drama ever” in a recent cover story. And in the final measure of its success, “Gossip Girl’s” popularity has sparked the CW to resurrect and reinvent, yes, “90210″ this fall. The show, said co-creator, writer and executive producer Stephanie Savage, “is a story, but it’s also a platform for ideas. I think people like the Gossip Girl connection. The idea of people watching and talking about each other is something that’s very real to their lives.”
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a long, dry Summer without our favorite Upper East Siders, but tonight the wait is over! Gossip Girl, the most buzzed-about show on television, premieres tonight at 8 p.m. EDT on The CW. It looks like we will get a little peek into the gang’s wild Summer before they head back to school. So crank up the AC and tune in tonight: It’s going to be hot.

Last season on “Gossip Girl,” teenage playboy Chuck Bass tried to force himself on 14-year-old Jenny, take advantage of bad-girl-gone-good Serena and succeeded in deflowering his best friend’s girlfriend, the scheming socialite Blair.
Read the rest of this entry »