Solidarity

Writer's strike propaganda marches on as Nancy Franklin abruptly decides to turn her essay on Gossip Girl away from the subject at hand, and conclude instead with a complaint about the injustice of the studios' demands:

“Gossip Girl” has indeed become a hit, though not a megahit. It’s now possible—and necessary—for Nielsen to count viewings of shows that people have recorded on their DVRs and watched within seven days, and “Gossip Girl” ’s ratings jump from not so hot to respectable when those figures are taken into account. It’s also the top TV show on iTunes at the moment. It was on the basis of these two elements of our brave new multiplatform world that the CW decided recently to order a full season of “Gossip Girl.” Advertisers’ being drawn to a show that sells well on iTunes wasn’t even a concept until a couple of years ago. All the new ways of delivering shows to viewers are starting to pan out for the studios and the networks that own them. That they continue to balk at sharing a larger fraction of their stupendous wealth with writers—the people who make that wealth possible—is as mystifying as it is sensationally wrong.

At any rate, I agree with pretty much everything Franklin says about the show, but to me it seems remarkable to comment on Gossip Girl's decision to portray rich New York City as a place that doesn't contain any Jewish people.