Any talent agent worth his business cards and representing no-name Hollywood hopefuls is pulling every string, calling in every favor, and responding to every Craigslist "Casual Encounters" listing hoping to get his client on Gossip Girl. The buzzworthy exposure of even a bit part on there is worth accepting scale for. So it's interesting that one actor being offered a regular part on the show has refused. He would be Connor Paolo, the One Life to Live actor who plays Gossip's gay newbie Eric van der Woodsen. Producers offered the kiddo — he's 18, so let your freak flag fly — an upgrade from his current free agent status, to full-blown contract character. And yet he turned them down. So begs the question: Because he doesn't want to be pigeonholed as a gay twink? CONTINUED »
Because we are just on a roll with these graphs today, check out the one of Google Trends comparing Gossip Girl's searches to that of Google searches regarding the economy.
But okay, fine, Gossip Girl is a fixed term, while economy can be searched for under many different titles. Like "bailout" for instance or "Morgan Stanley" or "holy shit we're doomed."
Sorry, Internet. I took statistics 101. You can't fool me with your fuzzy math!
(Click Image to Enlarge)
If you opened The New York Times or the Post this morning, you may have noticed this ad for the Candie’s Foundation’s “America, Wake Up” PSA campaign, which aims to prevent teenage pregnancy and promote discussion among teenagers and young adults.
What you don't know is that the same full-page ad, featuring pictures of Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin, was supposed to be in today's USA Today issue, but was pulled editors for fear of controversy:
CONTINUED »
Cecily von Ziegesar, the scribe of the Gossip Girl book series, looks like Laura Dern on crack in that photo. Just sayin'. But at least the lady knows her subjects: Ziegesar (mouthful) grew up in that snooty New York private school lifestyle that she puts her characters in.
How relieved were the show's creators then, to find out that Cecily not only liked the CW series based on her books, but was a 'faithful watcher' of the program as well, and had only one character complaint (and no, it isn't that Nate Archibald and Chuck Bass never acted that gay in the books):
CONTINUED »
You always knew a device that let you fast-forward through commercials was too good to be true. The reason why shows like Gossip Girl have gotten so heavy-handed with their product placement ("Here Serena, try some of this delicious Vitamin Water while mulling over your relationship with Dan!") is because the coveted teen demographic are using DVRs to prerecord their programs and skip the commercials. Which is totally their right! But also, it's hurting The CW's Nielsen numbers. Except! New "delayed viewing" ratings are out, and it shows more people are watching The CW than previously thought. But! Those viewers are probably skipping ahead 30 seconds at a time. And!: CONTINUED »
Are the kids from Gossip Girl even old enough to vote in this election? And isn't one of them British? Yes, these two GG actors in this commercial are 22 (Penn Badgley) and 21 (Blake Lively) so technically they can vote, but the question remains: who is this commercial marketed to?
While it's important for teens to learn about politics early, but this is a wink-wink commercial for adults, and not really a P.S.A. on how doing illegal drugs or underage drinking are activities comparable to voting Republican. So, theoretically, this is an ad campaign launched at adults who know the ironic format of traditional public service announcements but also watch Gossip Girl?
MoveOn.org's really got to stop catering to the blogging community in this campaign.
Regarding our earlier story about Chace Crawford's publicist demanding (but not receiving) solo treatment on the cover of Details, a new twist: When Crawford did the cover of Out, she demanded the exact opposite. Read about it in our updated original post.
The television show Gossip Girl is not all teenage sex in limousines, classy drinking at posh hotel bars, fashion internships with elite designers, and xoxo-ing. Behind the scenes, a compelx machine is at work, where diva personalities are "managed," drug abuse is "handled," and eating disorders are ignored. (No quotation marks on that one.) And while the tense relationship between Leighton Meester (Blair) and Blake Lively (Serena) is played out in the press like their fictional frenemy relationship on the show's Gossip Girl blog, almost entirely ignored is the backstage backstabbing going on among the guys.
Ed Westwick (Chuck), Chace Crawford (Nate), and Penn Badgley (Dan) all seemingly get along in non-fiction. Westwick, with his not so secret nasal sports, and Crawford are in fact best friends, and their living together and ubiquitous enjoyment of each other's company has led to ample evidence for gay rumormongering. Badgley, the real life and television boyfriend to Lively (well, they broke up, for now!), is friendly with the other two, but less so.
But just because the guys get along … doesn't mean their Hollywood handlers do. CONTINUED »
For all five of our readers who follow Gossip Girl, Details magazine shot a beautiful cover of the show's leading men, along with an in-depth interview with each. To make a long story short: Ed Westwick and Chace Crawford totally love each other in a not-gay-bromance kind of way (maybe), Penn Badgley is kind of an ass and thinks he's better than you, and all the boys love Christian Bale. We knew we loved these guys for a reason.
Drew Barrymore has gone where every Upper East Side tween would empty out their trust funds to go: The actress reportedly made out with both Ed Westwick and Chace Crawford in a matter of days.
A bunch of authors of young adult books got together on the Internet and created a new social networking site, because there really aren't enough of those things floating these days (young adult writers or social networking sites, obviously).
But! Judy Blume and the woman who wrote The Princess Diaries aren't just using the Internet to promote their works or interest kids in reading. Oh no, the site, which launches September 22nd and is called YA for Obama, has a dark and sinister agenda. Care to guess what it is?
CONTINUED »
'Gossip Girl frenemies Leighton Meester and Blake Lively have closed a deal to guest-star in a November sweeps episode of NBC's increasingly stunt-happy 30 Rock, sources confirm to me exclusively. The dynamic duo will play — prepare to laugh 'till you piddle — former high school classmates of Liz Lemon's in a flashback sequence that reveals a shocking and deeply ironic truth about Tina Fey's morally superior alter ego: She was a Mean Girl!' [EW]
"And so she, Serena, came to, cognizant of the reciprocations and thus revisitations to Billard—i must i must yes a bodys got to travel in heat mother idont hate billard idont hate billard idont."
-"William Faulkner Reviews Season One of Gossip Girl" (Mcsweeney's)
The ratings are in! The ratings are on it! Gossip Girl survived, and indeed flourished, during its second season premiere last night. Despite that stupid plotline with Blair and the British lord, GG saw a 6% increase among adults 18-49 for a total of and pulled in a total of 3.4 million viewers.
The result of an extensive promotional campaign, both IRL and online (*cough*), this is good news for the channel. might Dawn Ostroff & Co. have managed to turn Gossip Girl, and tonight's premiere of the revamped 90210, into defibrillator to overcome the flat lining of the network? No longer will the endless seasons of One Tree Hill keep The CW alive all by its lonesome.
Of course, you'll have to wait till tomorrow when the 90210 ratings are in to find out if lightning strikes twice for offensive ad campaigns.
The CW network found a new contingent to exasperate via racy ad campaign, just in time for the premieres of their two biggest shows, Gossip Girl and the new 90210. No longer content to just piss off the Parent Television Council by using the PTC's disapproval to shill GG (which returned to primetime last night), Dawn Ostroff's teen scandal channel has chosen a new target for garnering free negative publicity: Brooklyn's Hasidic Jewish community.
CONTINUED »
The Parents Television Council is ruining quality cable. Not because their cause is bad, exactly — we like protecting kids too! — but because networks like The CW realized they could turn all those wagging fingers into little dollar signs. How? By incorporating all the negative soundbites the PTC handed out about Gossip Girl into marketing so clever, the spots themselves got press.
Sell the people sex and scandal, with a seal of disapproval from the "authority."
Which is how you get those ads on the sides of buses that say "Mind-blowingly Inappropriate" while promoting the series. Cute trick, but now the CBS-Time Warner network hopes indignant lighting will strike twice with their remake of 90210: CONTINUED »
Chace Crawford, he of your dreamy Gossip Girl fantasies, is right at the point of his career where any wrong move could derail his future fortunes. That's why his publicist has been so busy planting items about him flirting with girls to counter all those reports of him playing with boys. It's also why there's no way in hell he'd lend his face to a dating site called WooMe.com, whose tagline "Find guys and girls near you" is another gay joke waiting to happen. But WooMe has Chace's face being used to promote its webcam-to-webcam service in the same way a certain Chinese pantyhose company claimed Jennifer Aniston as its spokesperson. That is, without authorization. [SFG]
That ad there, above? For The CW's Gossip Girl, the low-ratings show that everybody can't stop talking about? The show's creator, Josh Schwartz, actually hates the way the network has gone about pushing the show on viewers, taking advantage of the Parents Television Council's general frustration with its means of teaching young people about the birds and the bees. "The network came up with that, and I just stand back. I don’t want anything to do with it. … When you drive by a poster for your show and it says, ‘Every parent’s nightmare,’ you have mixed feelings." Ya know, that's sort of a mind-blowingly inappropriate thing to say.
'People think Chace is gay, and thought I was gay, that we were humping. It’s not true, but hilarious. People project their fantasies onto people. I’ve never been someone who makes it my objective to go out and pick up chicks. But I’ve met some fantastic ladies here. You know those amazing conversations where you find yourself in a café talking until 2 a.m. and never see them again.' —Ed Westwick on his non-sexual roommate relationship [P6 Magazine, Earlier]
For all the hype, influence on the fashion industry, and magazine spreads, Mad Men is not the ratings draw you might've been led to believe.
In fact, it "continues to shed its audience at an alarming rate," intones Michael Starr. While the second season premiered on July 27 with 2.1 million viewers, last Sunday's episode averaged just 1.1 million (and a season low of 514k in the 18-49 demo).
None of this should be terribly surprising if you've been paying attention to the hype-vs-ratings measurements of late. CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
