The CW's plan to spin off Fox's iconic 1990s teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 this fall is a high-stakes endeavor, with producers daring to reprise the granddaddy of all teen soaps, and at a critical juncture for the network. Having struggled in its first two seasons on the air, the CW is now more than ever under pressure to produce ratings results.

Bringing a fresh crop of pretty young things to the halls of West Beverly High and not allowing advertisers or media to preview the show (not to mention the prospect of glimpsing an aging Shannon Doherty) has turned 90210 into one of the most eagerly anticipated new shows of the fall television season.

Two questions loom in the run-up to Tuesday's premiere: Will 90210 be the show to save the CW? And will it rot the minds of America's youth in trying?

The show faced its fair share of resistance when it debuted in 1990, but teen dramas have grown ever more adult since Brandon Walsh's experimentation with underage drinking and Donna Martin's nascent smoking habit were the issues setting off parents’ alarm bells. Dawson's Creek ruffled feathers with its sexual frankness when it premiered on the WB in 1998, and in 2002, The O.C. featured its own brand of unwholesome melodrama.  

And then there was Gossip Girl, which in one short season has put the CW in the doghouse with parental groups who have noisily objected to its sexually charged advertising as well as plotlines that make cocaine abuse and casual teen sex into everyday affairs.

With 90210 added to the mix, the CW's offerings are coming to represent the apotheosis of the teen drama genre: where left to go after you've had an 11th grader performing a burlesque show and then being defiled in the back of a limo by her male nemesis?

Nonetheless, the level of parental concern may be unwarranted.

"Gossip Girl is really targeted towards women 18 to 34," admits Dawn Ostroff, president of the CW. "That’s the sweet spot for the show and for many of the CW’s programming."
 
Despite what parents may think, even the most popular of teen dramas have never really been watched primarily by teens. The median age for the first season of the original Beverly Hills, 90210 was 29.6, according to Nielsen Media, while The O.C. averaged 30.6 years old. Dawson's Creek skewed slightly younger, at 21.5.

Gossip Girl follows in the same mold, with a median viewer age of 27.6.

These days, it seems to be good, clean fun that teens and tweens are craving. They have made the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon two of the most profitable channels on cable, airing wholesome programs like High School Musical, iCarly, and Hannah Montana that have enjoyed sensational success. A single episode of Hannah Montana last summer attracted 10.7 million viewers; that's the highest number for a regular series in the history of basic cable. The first season of Gossip Girl, by contrast, averaged 2.6 million viewers.

In other words, parents can breathe a sigh of relief because those impressionable minds are still firmly in the clutches of Walt Disney and company.

Corrupted youth aside, the issue remains of whether a show like 90210 will attract the audiences the CW needs to succeed. Even given its targeting of an older demographic, that risqué programming will draw viewers is not a foregone conclusion.

Despite ample media buzz, juicy, sexed-up Gossip Girl is not yet a ratings hit. The show's first season averaged only a 1.2 rating, whereas the first season of the original Beverly Hills, 90210 scored a 5.9, Dawson's Creek had a 4.6 in its first year, and The O.C. a 6.0 rating, according to Nielsen Media.

Yet wholesome, family-friendly alternatives like 7th Heaven and Gilmore Girls, which courted a similarly aged viewer on CW antecedent the WB, were tremendous audience successes for the network.

"This last five or six years of extraordinary profit and audience size has really rewritten the ideas of programming 101," says Bob Thompson, a professor of pop culture and television at Syracuse University. "When hip and wholesome became the new rock and roll, that really challenged the old ideas that the more you can tart it up the more people will watch."

Having already canned Gilmore Girls and 7th Heaven, added 90210, and greenlit Gossip Girl for a second season, the CW is taking an aggressively contrary approach.

Thompson believes that the CW's strategy may nonetheless be the right one, stressing the difficult nature of developing “hip and wholesome” content, versus the value for the CW in leveraging an attention-getting show like Gossip Girl into a distinct brand image for the network.

"Here's a show that's actually got some buzz," says Thompson. "They're putting their eggs in that basket, figuring, perhaps wisely, we probably cannot beat Disney at the Hannah Montana game."

Tom Weeks, entertainment director at Starcom Worldwide, believes that exploiting the niche created by Gossip Girl has begun to allow the CW to build a brand of its own.

"The CW is really going towards becoming the destination for young women,” Weeks says, “using 90210 as an entry point to making a lot of noise about the network and hoping anyone who has any kind of interest will tune in at least once.”