That Internet Ban On Gossip Girl? Not Working.

The hugely promoted season premiere of Gossip Girl got 2.44 million viewers Monday night. For those keeping score, that's a bit less than its average of 2.5 million last fall and way lower than the 3.5 million that tuned in for the premiere in September, according to Nielsen.

Why do we care? Well because we were interested in the outcome of The CW's experiment: remove all episodes of "Gossip Girl" from the Web, in hopes that its young-ish fan base would come scurrying back to the tube to get their fix of Serena, Blair and Nate when the show returned from hiatus during the writers strike.

Answer: It didn't. But that's not stopping The CW from declaring victory. The network says ratings for "Gossip" on Monday night were 8% higher than the comedy it replaced. So, expect The CW's experiment to continue.