How Gossip Girl shaped The CW

The Ringer

Premiering 10 years ago today, Gossip Girl became “the flagship around which an entire prime-time lineup would be built,” says Alison Herman. She adds: "Gossip Girl established the CW’s ethos in a way no superficial rebranding could. Viewers don’t care about arcane, behind-the-scenes business matters like affiliation renewals; they care about consistency and the expectation it creates of what can be found where on a particular night of the week. And Gossip Girl sent a crystal-clear message to the teen girls of America that what could be found on the CW was soapy, purely entertaining hours that starred beautiful people theoretically in our age group but obviously five to 10 years older — the kind of shows that had always been marketed to young women, but updated with to-the-microsecond name drops.”

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