Somewhere in Hollywood, writers are polishing the pilot episode for a Gossip Girl spinoff set in a distant time that much of the CW network’s target audience has no memory of—the 1980s.
Teenage angst is teenage angst and the CW expects that its viewers can appreciate it, no matter the era. The untitled spinoff is a flashback to the youthful years in Los Angeles of Lily van der Woodsen, the mom of Blake Lively’s Gossip Girl character.
The three-year-old television network is betting its future on the whims of young women, almost to the exclusion of everybody else. By designing a schedule that appeals to them, the CW hopes to build an identity where there really hasn’t been one in the three years that it’s been operating.
“We really needed to stand out in the marketplace and not be another broadcaster,” said Dawn Ostroff, CW entertainment president.
There were high hopes at parent companies Time Warner Inc. and CBS Corp. when the old WB and UPN networks shut down and combined into a single entity with the best programs from each. But it has never come anywhere near a network on par with ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, giving rise to talk that it would be shut down.
Even the numbers during this season are alarming: the CW’s average of two million primetime viewers is down 24% from the year before, according to Nielsen Media Research.
However, the numbers are skewed by the shift of the popular professional wrestling night from the WB to My Network TV. As Ostroff points out, the CW sells advertising almost exclusively aimed at an 18- to-34-year-old female audience, among whom the new 90210 is a hit and Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill have shown growth.
CW also has a do-over of Melrose Place in the works, and other potential new series include Vampire Diaries and Body Politic, hoping to tap into an interest in vampires and the idealism of the Obama administration, and Light Years, about a teenage girl getting out of foster care and trying to reunite her birth-parents.
Ashton Kutcher is behind Beautiful Life, about an apartment house populated by models.
“The more you define what your brand is and what you stand for, that is probably the key to survival,” said Shari Anne Brill, senior vice-president for media buying agency Carat.
The downside to having such a specialized appeal is that it cuts off the potential for further growth, Brill said.
Besides trying to keep the network afloat during a terrible advertising climate, Ostroff faces two big challenges in programming Friday and Sunday next year. Both are weak spots, and the network’s experiment in letting an advertising agency program its Sunday lineup last fall was a disaster. The CW’s temporary fix of a Sunday movie may stick.
