The success of Gossip Girl's "OMFG" campaign and other buzz-making efforts have proven too successful, driving so much traffic to The CW's website that hundreds of thousands of people have been watching free streams of the show … WHICH WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF ALL THIS.
Now the network everybody talked about behind its back is shutting down the web streams over fears they're cannabilizing the show's television audience. And since the target demographic of young people are so Internet savvy, The CW thinks they're becoming too lazy to bother catching the show in primetime, where ad dollars are much more grand, and instead growing accustomed to catching the show on the Information Superhighway, which nobody has figured out how to monetize.
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This is a short-sighted move by the CW.
No one can argue with the economics of the need to increase or maintain the viewership of the televised broadcast to attract Ad dollars flowing.
However, the new business model is about widening your audience. Entertainment is available in so many forms that Networks should embrace these forms to build the popularity of the show. Popularity grows virally now. You Tube, MySpace, Facebook, iTunes, whatever the case maybe, the more people see the show, the more people talk about the show, the more popular the show becomes.
The internet's power is in the masses. By building a good internet fanbase, you would actually increase the viewership numbers of the televised broadcast. The more people that 'sample' the show, the potential for more viewers is apparent.
I for one watch the broadcast, then watch the stream to pick up the little things that I missed or to recap the show prior to the next broadcast.
By eliminating the stream, the CW are forcing me to download it from P2P sites.
So I still get to watch it on my computer, but the CW now loses on the potential of attracting more viewers.
WAKE UP CW!!!