...a series that by any measure is one of the biggest flops in TV history. Gossip Girl barely averages 2 million viewers a week in a country of 300 million. In repeats the week of April 7-13, it ranked 12th among CW shows--like being the 12th highest scorer among the Toronto Maple Leafs--with 1.18 million viewers. It would have trouble cracking the Canadian Top-20 with that number.To many, GG is the perfect example of the lunacy and imbalance of TV these days. So much hype, so much effort going to court young people because of notions of their consumer desirability ("they are open to trying new brands! they're not set in their ways!" etc, etc.) and yet, so undelivered. In terms of hard metrics, it's hard to argue against what Brioux is saying. The audience is small. New York magazine covers aside, this is NOT a show that merits the attention it gets.
So Gossip Girl a red hot hit? LOL. In fact, LOFL. Yet it continues to get referenced as "buzz worthy" on hyperventilating tabloid TV shows like eTalk and Entertainment Tonight. The CW argues that it is a sensation if not a ratings hit and it does rank as one of the most downloaded shows on itunes and in Internet streaming. Still, not a lot of glory or ad money yet in outdrawing Britney Girl. As a TV show, Gossip Girl is still just all talk.
Compare it, for instance, to NCIS, a show that most people -- except the tens of millions who watch it every week -- would scratch their heads and say, "is that still on?" It can't just be that everybody writing about TV is in their 20's, is it?
Well. Maybe not.
From Sonia Zjawinski of Wired:
Rather than figure out how to cash in on this new way of watching television, the CW's president of entertainment, Dawn Ostroff, has made one of the worst decisions of her career: She's shutting down streams. From now until the end of the season, all new episodes can only be seen on Monday nights at 9 p.m. in front of the TV, recorded on DVR or via iTunes.
Those hundreds of thousands of viewers who were watching directly on the CW's site will either have to tune in or turn to P2P networks to download the show illegally. And knowing how savvy kids are, that very well may be what happens. Doesn't Ostroff know you can't tell a teen what to do?
The persistent "are we missing something here?" isn't just "Getting old" paranoia; it's a reflection of the very real changes I've seen myself in teen consumption habits.
The idea of the GG audience consuming the show online first made sense to me the moment I saw the way that my goddaughter, who's 16, interacts with the computer.She's on it all the time. She does her work, Facebooks, IM's and watches TV in a window all at once. That's her space: online. It's a place away from adults, unlike the TV, which is only one way. I don't want to watch the show. I want to watch the show and text and IM Chelsea, and OMG, did you just see that?
In much the same way my parents would get on me about talking on the phone, sprawled in front of the TV doing my homework when I was a teen - "You can't possibly be paying attention to your homework!"-- this way of consuming TV programming might not be a blip. It might be the start of something. That computer window might just be GG's natural habitat.
Maybe they're not coming back.
The question then becomes, well...then what? If the metrics of measurement of online, streaming audience vs. TV audience are skewing weirdly when it comes to younger viewers, what does that mean for a place like CBC, with its new obsession for younger viewers? What does it really mean for a canceled show like JPOD?
I was amazed a couple years back to see that the very teens who would not pay 99 cents to download a song were perfectly willing to pay $3.50 for a 30 second ringtone snippet of the same song. The ringtone thing was so important to teens that Itunes managed to incorporate a ringtone maker into a recent update. (We'll get them to buy the song somehow!) Could this be the ringtone thing writ upon our beloved TV medium?
Somebody better figure this out soon. I mean, the one thing I know for sure is if we're going to continue to chase and be obsessed with reaching this audience, who wants to watch TV but not on TV, well...wow....
...there's gonna be a lot of tears.
4 comments:
Young people have no concept of making an appointment to watch a show, it isn't part of their consciousness. I'm sure when you grew up if you missed Charlie Brown's Christmas you had to wait a year to see it. A teenager today will have grown up with a video and then a dvd player as a sometime babysitter before moving to the computer. Anybody who wants to attract that audience has to accept that.
I see connections everywhere in your world here, Denis. Not the least of which is the connection between this blog posting and the one immediately preceding it.
Do you think maybe this is exactly what Jim (Il Duce) Shaw and the webs he's fighting at the hearings are, to paraphrase your term, "crazy batshit" scared of?
What if this is where it's all headed? And I'm not talking about the stuff just being streamed over legit DSL and Cable Internet lines, where the middleman is part of the deal. I'm talking about why Bell among others is (another recent blog of yours) "bandwidth throttling." They're getting out in front of what they see coming. They're doing it to stop P2P connections from happening at all; that is unless they can control and charge for those connections. Another stab at vertically integrating content and distribution so none of us has any choice.
Since I read Peter Grant's book I've feared the notion of one company not only making the film, but distributing the film, owning the network where it gets its first broadcast window, owning the rental chain you get the DVD from, and making the BluRay player and TV you watch it on. We're almost already there (does the name Sony Pictures Television mean anything to anybody? How about NBC /Universal?) Jack Valenti -God rest his soul- is probably LHAO at us from the other side.
I've got to stop reading your shit man, I'm getting scared too.
The CW claimed Monday's episode of Gossip Girl was the third highest rated episode of the season (it has aired, what, 14 originals?), that it was No. 2 in its timeslot among girls 12-24, that it scored well among young women generally. This is all just face saving hooey. After all that hype, after shutting down the streams, the show still fails to pull three million viewers. The One did better than that on ABC and they nearly had Strombo stoned to death.
I don't think Gossip is a TV flop because everybody is watching it off screens or ipods. The word out early on this show among my teens and their friends was that it was lame. They just never warmed to the hype. It was all nasty, aloof Manhattan rich kids bitching on cell phones. They just found the pilot boring. They certainly never went looking for it on the internet.
My observation is that young viewers tend to consume content in three minute chunks whether they are flipping between MuchMusic and Robot Chicken on TV or surfing a string of YouTube follies. They would never give 22 minutes to Gossip Girls in any media. (And they don't have to. There's a funny one minute recap of Monday's GG posted at the Huffington Post.)
I think, too, that the Gossip Girl audience simply watched the show it tries to clone, The O.C., or they did when that show hit early prime in syndication last September. Every girl in Grade Nine was hooked on that first season of O.C. and if they sampled Gossip Girl, they never went back.
As for jPod, you called it--a half hour show trapped in an hour long format. It killed itself. My son lives for Wii and really wanted to like that show but it just outlasted him every week--or suffered compared to the fun he could be having playing Super Smash Bros Brawl.
Is CW seeing any money from the Itunes downloads?
Are the musical artists that are featured on the show part of the CBS records / Warner Records stable?
To quote Deep Throat: "Follow the money."
Speculation to follow:
It's possible that CW sees an uptick in other areas we are not even considering here. GG could be their loss-leader for a range of deals (products, music, etc...) that is showing a profit. Maybe they sold the damn thing worldwide with the proviso it has to be on air in the states for X seasons.
Also, what is the new yardstick for success on a small net like CW? What's the magic number/demo for them? You can't compare CW to ABC because it's like comparing AAA Baseball with the major leagues - different rules apply.
And yes, CW is hyping the show every opportunity they get. Did anyone really expect them to do ANYTHING different? Did anyone expect them to lie down and take it? To admit defeat? (If truly it has been defeated. We won't know until it's been officially cancelled.)
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