"Gossip Girl" and "90210": The CW's Day at TCA - Ed Martin Live at TCA

Maybe they should change its name to The GGIt seemed as if every moment of The CW39s morning at the Summer 2008 Television Critics Association tour throbbed with the influence of the twoyearold network39s first true signature show Gossip Girl From the sessions for 90210 and Privilege two new scripted dramas with canvases largely populated by wealthy and attractive young people to the presentation of a new reality series about young people competing for a job at a fashion magazine that caters to the wealthy and the attractive to a press conference with CW Entertainment President Dawn Ostroff The CW39s day at TCA felt as if it were all Gossip Girl all the timeIn her opening remarks to TCA members it took Ostroff less than one minute to make her first reference to GG which she described as one of the network39s quotbuilding blocksquot for the future Certainly it has been instrumental in identifying The CW as a destination for the very young Thanks to fancy freshman GG and veteran workhorses America39s Next Top Model and One Tree Hill the median age of the femaleskewed CW is now 34 a full decade younger than nearest competitor Fox Ostroff happily notedCritics enjoy picking on Gossip Girl because its television ratings are very small even though its demographics are young and desirable Some of them have been joking that there are more people staying here at the Beverly Hilton Hotel than there are watching the show every week That said traditional ratings appear to be deceiving in a negative sense Consider the growing issue of GG39s muchdiscussed laptop viewer base which would seem to indicate that the show is mightier than it appears under standard scrutinyquotGossip Girl is one of the big mysteries of the television universequot Ostroff asserted quotWe have a show that everybody is talking about We do research all over the country We can39t go anywhere without having women talk about Gossip Girl The press is writing about all of its actors Last week on the cover of The New York Times there was an article about Gossip Girl and the effect it has on the retail market Bloomingdales in the article is quoted as saying that when something appears on Gossip Girl it sells out in that storequot Ostroff also referred to a recent story on NPR that quoted an influential advertising executive as saying that 39Nielsen does not have enough people in its sample to accurately measure the viewing habits of this country People are viewing content in many different ways39quotEvery viewer must be counted and no viewer should be left behindquot Ostroff declaredShe then referenced Optimedia39s rating system It counts quotratings for television downloads iTunes and mobilequot Ostroff explained quotThe No 15 show in their system was Gossip Girl whereas in Nielsen we39re not in the top 100 We39re saying there needs to be a way to count all of these viewers because clearly people are watching Gossip Girl They39re just not necessarily watching it at home the day that it39s on TV or a few days afterquotAsked about the overall quothealthquot of The CW Ostroff again turned to GG quotTo have a show like Gossip Girl in our second year on the air has been really great for usquot she said quotI mean everywhere we go we see our talent out there Just yesterday I was watching Good Morning America and they did a story on how to get that Gossip Girl lookquotIf the response at TCA is any indication it would appear that The CW has another hit in its continuation of the 90210 franchise The kids in the cast of the show are not well known but the scrum that followed their session was one of the largest of the entire summer tour The dozens of salivating reporters who mobbed each and every young cast member have not seen the show39s first episode or even a clip from it But they are already preselling them as the next generation of television superstars and magazine cover subjects The opportunity to meet these young actors plus the announcement that Shannen Doherty would reprise her role as Brenda Walsh from the original Beverly Hills 90210 in multiple episodes joining her former costars Jennie Garth Tori Spelling and Joe E Tata whipped the crowd into a frenzyThe cast of The CW39s 90210 at the Television Critics Association tourAlso noteworthy during The CW39s presentation at TCA was the fascination and exasperation members have with Media Rights Capital Reporters wanted to learn more about the deal that The CW has struck to quotleasequot its Sunday night programming space to MRC Others simply wanted to know what MRC isBizarrely there was not a press conference with executives from MRC to introduce the company and explain what it will be doing with its Sunday real estate There were executives from MRC and talent from some of its upcoming shows at the CBSCWShowtime megabash Friday night at Boulevard 3 on Hollywood Blvd but TCA members didn39t know who any of them were Also the club was packed with big CBS stars like Julia LouisDreyfus Jennifer Love Hewitt Rob Morrow Neil Patrick Harris and the canine competitors from Greatest American Dog top Showtime talent including Michael C Hall David Duchovny and MaryLouise Parker and an actual Gossip Girl Leighton Meester so few if any critics were scoping out the talent from MRC39s inaugural lineup In Harm39s Way a reality series about people who work at dangerous jobs Valentine a onehour comedy about a family of Greek gods who seek to bring people together and Easy Money a drama about a family that runs a high interest loan businessThe MRC shows all sound interesting more interesting perhaps than some of the stuff that the Big Four will unveil this fall and they are all scheduled to debut on September 21 Ostroff said they would be promoted like CW shows and that viewers will not notice any difference between The CW and MRC But critics were left to wonder how The CW will promote MRC39s product since it missed the valuable opportunity to introduce them to potential viewers via the TCA tour

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"Gossip Girl" and "90210": The CW's Day at TCA - Ed Martin Live at TCA

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