Here is what the article says:
"Before it even aired, Gossip Girl was armed with two great advantages. One was the fan base of Josh Schwartz, which was giddily waiting to see how he'd follow up The O.C. The other was the legion of young girls who had read the tawdry book series but addictive Gossip Girl book series by Nightingale-Bamford graduate Cecily von Ziegesar. And yet, the numbers were bad. Really bad. New episodes pulled in an average of 2.5 million viewers, just over half of what the O.C. had the season it was cancelled. Teenagers just weren't gathering around the family tube to catch the show during the 9 pm slot. But that didn't mean they weren't watching.Okay so the few last lines of that is what is super interesting. The idea that the show is a 24-hour conversation. What does this really mean? Also, we talk so much about how print is dying, what about TV? Could the internet be destroying TV as well. Additionally, CW was forced to announce that the last 5 episodes of the season will NOT be available to download on their site of iTunes because they are losing so much money from advertisers. The only way CW knows how to fix this problem is through product placement, so in terms of advertising and television, are we looking at a drastic change in the future, as well?
"New episodes routinely arrived at the No. 1 most-downloaded spot on iTunes, and then there were the hundreds of thousands who were downloading free week-old episodes on the CW's site. Even executives at Nielson threw up their hands and admitted that Gossip Girl appeared to be speaking to an audience so young and tech-savvy they hadn't really figured it out yet
"This isn't the first show to find the Internet success - Lost and The Office are big download hits, too. But this is the first show that seems to have succeeded primarily on the Internet. There's something about the combination of the show's premise, the viewer's age, and the available technology that has given Gossip Girl a life of its own online. Not only do fans watch the show on their computers, but they post sightings of the actors on gossip blogs and exchange rumors (about both the show and its stars) on fan sites. You can even play Gossip Girl's Upper East Side on Second Life. It's not appointment television; it's a 24-hour conversation. We are all Gossip Girl! And the whole experience can happen sans television."
2 comments:
The fan sites and blogs as well as having the shows on the internet to be viewed by the audience at any time are changing to way people consume shows today. Along with DVR, having full episodes on the internet allow people to watch shows when they want to, not necessilarly when they are scheduled and may change the way people view them. Since people may now be watching shows on their computer, it may be more of an individual activity as opposed to a social one (like watching the show on a big television with a bunch of friends on a Thursday night). Also, the fan sites and blogs make watching the show more interactive and therefore the audience becomes more active as opposed to being passive as in the past. In terms of advertising, I think that companies have already starting incorporating product placement into their shows for advertising because the audiences no longer watch commercial because of things like DVR and shows on the internet. But I believe that this is only increase in the fuutre and more shows will continue with these trends.
I think the fact of having 24 hour entertainment is very interesting but would not work with every type of television program. Part of the intrigue of Gossip Girl is that the characters are tech-savvy so the fans should be too. If there were not options for fans to interact with the program via Internet I would think it would be strange because the entire show is based on text messages and a Web site that characters look at.
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