Pop Culture
Gossip Girl Threesome Has Parents Television Council’s Panties in a Bunch
Once again the Parents Television Council are playing right into the hands of the Gossip Girl marketing team, making a big fuss about on-air promos for a sexual threesome on an upcoming episode — and, therefore, garnering even more publicity for the show.
The Council is asking affiliates of the CW network to pre-empt the show. A request that I’m sure will be very effective. *AHEM*
Airing the teen tryst, which is being teased in an ad as a “3SOME,” is “reckless and irresponsible,” said PTC president Tim Winter in a statement Wednesday. (Grammatically reckless, perhaps. “3SOME?!” Seriously?)
The 3SOME involves three main characters in the show but they are not identified in the promos.
In a letter to the affiliates, Winter asked:
“Will you now be complicit in establishing a precedent and expectation that teenagers should engage in behaviors heretofore associated primarily with adult films?”
Hey, porn is a VERY respectable career path! (Says the woman with a porn name.)
This is not the first time the PTC has complained about Gossip Girl, which Winter said is “expressly targeted to impressionable teenagers. . . CW has been defending graphic content on ‘Gossip Girl’ by asserting that they don’t target teenagers,” Winters said Wednesday. “Such a claim doesn’t even pass the ‘laugh test.'”
CW spokesman Paul McGuire said the target audience for “Gossip Girl” is 18- to 34-year-old women, with a median viewer age of 27 years old. Outliers include my three-month-old daughter, who is MESMERIZED by the show. (YES, I let her watch Gossip Girl. It keeps her QUIET, okay? I have no qualms about letting Chuck Bass babysit my kid.)
As for the network, they had no comment on PTC’s complaint.
Except to say behind closed doors, “Woo-hoo! Thanks for the media coverage and extra viewers, suckers!”