All the publicity about Gossip Girl, a drama about elite prep school students who track each other's misdeeds on an anonymously penned blog that has the power to make or break reputations has certainly helped to establish a solid fan following for the show even after just 13 episodes.  An adaptation of the New York Times bestselling novel series of the same name, the show has been considered to be one of the more anticipated new series of the 2007-2008 television season. However, it hasn't exactly lived up to its hype, at least in terms of TV ratings.

When Gossip Girl premiered, the show came in last place in its 9pm Wednesday slot with only 3.65 million viewers.  Additionally, the show wasn't able to keep its viewers in its second outing, losing more than half of its lead-in audience from America's Next Top Model and 22 percent of its own debut numbers in the face of strong competition from other shows such as ABC's Private Practice and NBC's Bionic Woman, each of which made impressive debuts that night.  Overall, Gossip Girl averaged 2.6 million viewers for the pilot season.

Although the network hasn't been able to translate all the hype into substantial TV ratings, fans have shown a similar affinity for new media, consistently making Gossip Girl the most downloaded television program on iTunes.

"It's sort of become the first show that has managed to achieve some level of cultural permeation and success in the new world order where ratings don't really seem to apply," executive producer Josh Schwartz said.

On the other hand, ratings really do matter.  With the show's sophomore season approaching, the network executives are looking into ways on how they can “take advantage of viewership shifting to different places.”

"When you look at all the ways people are getting Gossip Girl episodes, whether on TV or TiVo or streaming or downloading it, clearly there's a very strong core group of viewers," Dawn Ostroff, the network's president of entertainment, said.  "Our job is to start getting the show broadened out a bit."


-Kris De Leon, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Los Angeles Times
(Image courtesy of The CW)