Flashback 2: More Great Moments at TV Press Tour

Here's The CW's Dawn Ostroff trying (not?) to explain how her network is staying afloat despite pretty awful ratings and that shadowy sinister deal with Media Rights Capital to create generic TeeVee shows for the network's Sunday-night lineup, which we have already made fun of:

QUESTION: There are a lot of reports about your network's health. What would you say about your network's health? I mean, how long can this network be saved? I mean, are you under some deadline to prove yourself?

DAWN OSTROFF: No, there's no deadline. We feel that we've made a lot of progress. To have a show like "Gossip Girl" in our second year on the air is -- it's been really great for us. I mean, as I said, everywhere we go, we see our talent out there, people talk about the show. Just yesterday, I was watching "Good Morning America," and they did a piece on - a whole fashion show on how to get that "Gossip Girl" look. So I think that, you know, we all feel that we're on our way. And obviously, shows like "90210"
and "Stylista" and "Privileged" and "13," we feel we're going to have a good season.

(Aside: Did she answer the question? No, she did not. But then, she rarely answers the question; she just talks about what a sensation "Gossip Girl" is, when it's only watched by 2½ million people and every last damn one of them must work at Entertainment Weekly because they write about it so much.)

(CW executive Dawn Ostroff is all smiles after managing to avoid giving a single straight answer at a press conference.)

QUESTION: Couple of questions about the Sunday [MRC] night deal. First of all, can you explain the business aspect? Do they get a piece of the ad revenue? And second -- or something like that? And secondly, how much creative input will you have at the network? Will they be reporting to your drama or comedy executives, and can you give notes and things like that?

(FYI: The CW disbanded its comedy division a couple of months before Press Tour.)

DAWN OSTROFF: No. We're involved creatively with the shows. Our group of very talented executives, Michael Roberts and Thom Sherman -- they're all reading the scripts. And the deal's very complicated, but it's a deal that makes a lot of sense for us and for MRC.

(Other questions, about why The CW is abandoning black audiences for shallow, upscale audiences with shows like "Gossip Girl," "90210" and "Privileged," and then back to MRC.}

QUESTION: And the other question again, going back to MRC, who gets to cancel the shows there?

DAWN OSTROFF: Well, we're not up to canceling shows. We want to get them on the air first.

QUESTION: Just miracle of miracles, one might do well. I mean, who makes the decision?

DAWN OSTROFF: Well, we make the decision with MRC.

QUESTION: Dawn, if I could follow on the MRC thing a little more. I mean, other networks have done this. NBC rented out its morning Saturday time to Discovery Channel and some others have let people simply buy chunks of their time. Isn't that closer to what you're doing? Isn't MRC simply buying the time from you and then can sell the advertising and do what it wants to?

DAWN OSTROFF: It's a much more complicated deal than that, to be honest. But the idea is that, look, we all are looking at different ways of doing our business as are many of you. I mean, we're all in a time where, you know, there are opportunities and there are different ways to look at how we put programming on, and it's been done for many years. We're not doing anything that's that unusual.

QUESTION: To be a little more specific, then, they're not buying the time like Discovery does from NBC where they just pay the flat sum. Is it a profit sharing thing where they're taking the time?

DAWN OSTROFF: Let's leave it at it's a very complicated deal and we'll leave it at that. It is. Next question.

FINAL SCORE: Ostroff Obfuscation 1, Actual Information 0.