Time for the CW to send a fruit basket to thank the Parents Television Council.
The PTC blasted the CW for Monday's
Gossip Girl episode in which the characters Vanessa, Olivia and Dan end up in a threesome. As a result of the added attention,
Gossip Girl matched its season high in the 18 to 49 year old demographic important to advertisers (a 1.7 rating) and saw its total audience rise to 2.4 million, a 20 percent increase over the previous week.
Combined with a strong outing for
One Tree Hill, which hit a season high of 2.7 million and a 1.9 rating in the 18-49 demo, the CW had its best Monday of the season.
The PTC issued another statement late Tuesday regarding the episode. "Though there was no explicit sex scene on last night's episode, the CW Network's behavior was grossly irresponsible by adding a story line where a sexual threesome was to be celebrated as some sort of rite of passage for teenagers," it said. "The network inserted this story line into a program that they themselves deem to be appropriate for 14-year-old children based on its content rating."
The CW saw the episode differently according to a press release that celebrated the ratings. The headline read "The CW Basks In the Afterglow of Its Most Watched Monday of the Season."