The Social

You know you love it: The CW Television Network has decided to start streaming its teen show Gossip Girl online again.

According to The New York Times, free ad-supported episodes of the program will soon reappear on The CW's Web site. They'd been taken down in April as an "experiment" to see how it affected viewership ratings.

(Credit: The CW)

Here's what happened: The melodrama about upper-crust high schoolers in Manhattan, based on a best-selling young-adult book series, had been blessed with the greatest of hype--the star power of creator Josh Schwartz, better known as the guy who brought us The O.C.; regular mentions in Gawker and New York magazine; scandalous sightings of its young cast partying all over the city; and racy ad campaigns featuring taglines like "OMFG" and "Every Parent's Nightmare."

But its ratings had been downright subpar, even as the show's subject matter grew more and more guilty-pleasure-fantastic with sex, drugs, gambling, murder, and the exploits of rakish antihero Chuck Bass.

The CW had said all along that because of Gossip Girl's young, tech-savvy audience--the title character is an anonymous blogger, after all--that traditional television ratings simply didn't apply. Nielsen ratings, the longstanding measure of broadcast popularity, don't measure episodes recorded on DVRs or watched on the Web, after all. But under pressure, the network pulled the show from its Web site to see if TV ratings would improve.

Any gain in ratings was negligible, the Times report said. That said, Gossip Girl episodes had been available for purchase in the iTunes Store throughout the "streaming ban," and it was certainly still possible to record them on set-top boxes.

But with the second season of Gossip Girl premiering September 1, this means that you'll once again be able to get your Upper East Side baby billionaire fix from the comfort of your procrastination-friendly office cubicle.

Chuck Bass would so approve.

Disclosure: The CW is a joint venture between Warner Bros. and CBS, parent company of CNET News.

Blurry Webcam photo shows a network news truck, but no other hullabaloo, outside the Apple store on New York's Fifth Avenue.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News)

NEW YORK--It's a lovely day here at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue and East 58th Street, at least so far. Temperatures are slated to hit 90 degrees within hours, and the short line for the iPhone 3G hasn't gotten any longer. It comes out on Friday at 8 a.m., in just slightly less than three days.

I was explaining to a friend over breakfast this morning that I think there's a critical-mass issue at hand; you need about 15 people in line to really get the ball rolling. Then would-be queuers will stop wavering and stake out a place to ensure that they get a phone on day 1.

Currently, there are only about five, and they're a group of activists who are all together. Put in five more, and the snowball effect might start.

But last year's remarkably smooth, shortage-free launch of the original iPhone undoubtedly has an impact too. This year, people are much more chill.

But who did show up, as evidenced by this picture taken with (naturally) my MacBook's Webcam, is a broadcast operation from WPIX, the local affiliate of the TV network The CW.

There was no camera crew in sight, so it could be that the station just wants to have a choice spot carved out for Friday's festivities. Or they could've been hunting for a story, only to find out that for the most part (the Waiting for Apples group notwithstanding), it's still business as usual at the Apple store.

Disclosure: The CW is joint-owned by CBS. CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, CBS unit.

The cast of 'Gossip Girl'

(Credit: The CW)

I'll admit it: I watched Wednesday night's series premiere of Gossip Girl, the new teen drama on the CW network that details the slightly-too-scandalous lives of privileged young New Yorkers--as chronicled by an anonymous blogger. One of the prominent characters in the first scene is a sleek LG Chocolate mobile phone. The show is packed with MacBooks, BlackBerrys, Sidekicks, and just about any other gadget that the average American high schooler could possibly want.

It is, indeed, tech-savvy. But let's face it--they aren't exactly dealing with the Gizmodo-guzzling demographic. I was betting that the word "blog" wouldn't even appear in the series premiere, despite the overall premise of the show.

Thankfully, I didn't bet any cash on it. "Blog" was said twice--albeit in the same conversation between socially awkward introvert Dan (played by Penn Badgley) and his father Rufus (played by Matthew Settle), a suspiciously good-looking ex-rock star. The two were stapling posters for Rufus' band's concert on lampposts around the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, which is apparently Gossip Girl's equivalent of "the 'hood." (If you'd like a reality check, head over to Craiglist and do a search for Williamsburg apartments. Yeah, not cheap.)

The approximately 16-year-old Dan seemed to think it was all kind of tedious. "You know, Dad, there's this thing called MySpace where you post all this information online," he said. "Save some trees. Have a blog." See? He said blog.

His father scoffed: "If musicians got off their blogs and picked up their guitars, the music business would be in better shape." Hmm, so according to that logic we can blame blogging indie rockers for that "This Is Why I'm Hot" song? I'll take it.

Dan's response was predictable: "Spoken like a true relic." Funny, since the actor playing his dad doesn't look a day over 35.

So maybe I lost my personal Gossip Girl bet, but I'm still holding out for the episode in which the anonymous hellraiser of a narrator is revealed to be a Boston-based Forbes magazine editor.