Gays of our Lives (May 26, 2009)

BITS AND PIECES
The CW Network has officially and finally canceled Privileged after a lot of talk about the future of the series … The BBC is developing a teen oriented soap opera called The Cut that will air in five-minute daily bites on the BBC website and in a weekend omnibus on BBC Two. Written and developed by EastEnders writer Al Smith, the show will debut later this year … The new season of Waterloo Road, its fifth, began filming on May 11^th.

The second season of Gossip Girl, which features little-seen gay Eric, will be released on DVD August 22 … Gilles Marini, the runner up of Dancing With The Stars who is joining Brothers & Sisters next season, will play a love interest for Rachel Griffith’s Sarah. He is signed for an undisclosed number of episodes … Openly gay film director/producer Pedro Almodovar is working on a television version of his cult classic film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown for FOX TV.

Pedro Almodovar

RATINGS AND RANKINGS
The season finale of Desperate Housewives won its time slot, but just barely. It was the top rated program of the night with some 13 million viewers, down 24% from last season’s finale … After a few weeks as the top rated soap in New Zealand, Shortland Street has slipped back down and is the second highest rated soap behind Coronation Street, with SS getting 556,000 viewers and CS grabbing 579,000 viewers.

Glee won’t be for long if it gets ratings like this when it debuts in the fall…

The debut of Glee was third in its time slot, with 10.75 million viewers … As The World Turns gained about 37,000 viewers last week and a percentage point in the ratings. Still, it remained in the 7^th spot while The Young and the Restless lost about 175,000 viewers from the previous week. Of course, it remained at number one … The season finale of Waterloo Road won its time slot, with 4.5 million viewers or 20.5% of the audience.

Both Ugly Betty and Southland, which both had their season finales this week, are going head-to-head against each other come fall. Unfortunately, the ratings for both shows last week weren’t especially good considering both aired mostly against reruns. The only new programming UB faced was So You Think You Can Dance and it was beaten handily, coming in second with a little over 6 million viewers. Meanwhile, Southland was beaten by a rerun of Flashpoint, grabbing 6.3 million viewers for its season closer.