daily list: 5 ways to boost TV ratings

It’s not appointment television; it’s a 24-hour conversation. We are all Gossip Girl! And the whole experience can happen sans television.

As the CW struggles to figure out how to make money off Gossip Girl, it’s overlooking what an amazing thing it has on its hands...

Bingo. Now, I don’t watch Gossip Girl because, you know, I’m older than 12, but I can recognize a nose being cut off to spite a face as well as anyone. But maybe the CW just needs some more advice on how best to court its already adoring audience, and ensure it keeps coming back for more. Some suggestions:

1. Ensure that future episodes of Gossip Girl are not listed in TV Guide or in any local newspaper television listings -- hell, get ’em off Internet TV listings too. Instead, CW phone reps can individually call all members of the target audience and beg them to watch each new episode as it airs.

2. Cast uglier stars. No one like watching pretty people on TV.

3. Try not to create episodes that actively appeal to a youth demographic. Older people are less likely to know how to get on the Internet, less likely to know how to operate their TiVos, even less likely to be able to operate a VCR. This ensures they will have to watch a show on television as it airs live.

4. Avoid exciting storylines or interesting characters that viewers will want to talk about with their friends. The less discussion a show generates on the Web, the better: this means audiences will be forced to talk back only to their televisions, which will keep them in front of the tube and away from the Web, where they might be tempted to download an episode.

5. Time-travel back to 1975 and produce TV shows when TV had a monopoly on home entertainment.

(Technorati tags: Gossip Girl, TV ratings)