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.”