One of the networks Big City Pictures (a partner in the Susty site) provides marketing materials for, The CW network, said Thursday that episodes of its series Gossip Girl will not be streamed on CWTV.com when the show returns Monday with original episodes through season’s end. The first 12 episodes of the season, which will remain on the site, were made available free to viewers about a week after their original airdate. CW is taking the step of limiting episode availability to test whether its online window is cannibalizing the TV audience.

It’s a big question and worthy of experiment we suppose. The concern is that younger demographics that consume more programming on the Web than older viewers may be becoming conditioned to catch Gossip Girl online at their leisure which could lessen the lure of appointment viewing in primetime. We’re not sure it’s possible to really count on appointment viewing playing such a key role in strategy for gaining, retaining and growing viewership even further. Eventually an equilibrium should settle into place where key new media platforms, in atomizing content to make it available to consumers when they want it (given that the notion of “where” is becoming an increasingly irrelevant one), play a role that in the aggregate is in no way cannibalizing or mutually exclusive. Rather, this integrated approach will necessarily redefine the mass market which none-the-less, by taking clever steps in positioning content in relation to media buys, should in fact be a mass market.

The freshman show has proved to be a big draw online with each episode said to be generating hundreds of thousands of streams. Episodes routinely rank among the most downloaded on iTunes, which also will continue to offer new episodes.

via: Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

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