In a less than shocking move, The CW has decided to put it’s long running and pitifully rated teen soap 90210 out of its misery. I suppose it is kind of shocking, because normally this kind of announcement before didn’t come until upfronts. The fact that The CW has decided to give this five year show a proper sendoff is the right thing to do, even if the show dropped in the ratings recently to an absolutely laughable .2 in the demo and half a million viewers. Chances are very good it wasn’t getting the online ratings this network craves either, and DVR boosts didn’t do much either.
Just for a fun little history lesson, 90210, a sequel series of the original Beverly Hills, 90210 that ran on Fox, was the brainchild of now departed CW President Dawn Ostroff. In her dream to persue the lucrative 18-34 female demographic and turn her network into a zeitgeist (her word, not mine) oriented destination for social network addicted young women, teens, and unbalanced tweens, she launched this show with a huge promotional blitz and tons of media buzz. Her efforts paid off, for the first episode. The ratings were a record turnout for this young network desperate for attention. Once most realized there wasn’t a Brenda, Brandon, Dylan or Donna anywhere, the ratings sank pretty hard. It was on the bubble the last few seasons, but it’s move to Monday nights this season only exacerbated the horrible crash.
I personally watched one hour of this show. I was too stunned to switch the channel, because I couldn’t believe anyone would conceivably find this entertaining. Then again, I said the same thing about Gossip Girl and look how long that lasted. It goes to show, Dawn Ostroff knew her target market. Too bad they didn’t know her! For the record, Dawn Ostroff was the same woman that took two top rated shows on her network, male oriented sci-fi shows Smallville and Supernatural, and moved them to the dead zone Friday nights. As a result, ratings dropped significantly, crushing her overall network ratings stats when shows like 90210 failed to pick up the slack. That pretty much costed her job.
Ah, but there had to be some people out there that found entertainment value in this show. After all, it did last five seasons. Please, tell us if you are one of those people and how long you stuck with 90210 before deleting it from your DVR playlist.
Here’s the press release and revised final schedule for The CW.
AFTER FIVE SEASONS,
