The CW pulls back on ‘Gossip Girl’ streaming

By Michael Gay 

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.

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“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.

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