Now that WPIX is moving on without its captain, we analyze if they are better off, and what’s ahead for the Tribune flagship?

Earlier this month, we reported Bill Carey stepped down as Channel 11 news director. It was a three-year run that attempted to finally lift WPIX past rival WNYW. But Queensborough Community College media professor Eileen White thinks aside from the new bells, whistles, and talent, nothing much has changed at WPIX. She says the newscasts, primarily at 10 p.m., attempted to reinvent the wheel, but in the process, alienated viewers.

One of Carey’s signature moves were to extricate Jodi Applegate from News 12 Long Island and bump seasoned partners Jim Watkins and Kaity Tong.

“That smacks of ageism too,” White tells FishbowlNY. “Let’s just put younger people on, because younger people like [watching] younger people.”

Ironically, Tong, 63, earlier this year gave testimony in an age discrimation lawsuit filed by former WPIX news director Karen Scott.

White also points to a more chronic problem for WPIX, the Fox prime-time lineup.

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It was hard to miss the buzz surrounding the scandalous Gossip Girl when it debuted in 2007, and the books the television series is based on weren’t any tamer.

In mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do? interview, the series’ creator Cecily von Ziegesar explained how she came up with the inspiration for those elite Upper East Side teenagers.

“I always start with something that’s real, an actual occurrence or somebody that I really know. Then, I change it so much that it’s not that anymore. But that’s always a kind of germ of where the person comes from,” she said. “I had a friend who was obsessed with Audrey Hepburn and, so, Blair is obsessed with Audrey Hepburn. But I just borrowed that characteristic from a friend. The rest of Blair’s characteristics have nothing to do with that friend.”

Click here for the full interview.

FishbowlNY isn’t used to doing this, but: SPOILER ALERT.

Starting next Monday, January 31st, W and Stefano Tonchi, the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, will be featured in a story arc on the hit show Gossip Girl. Stefano will appear in the first episode, along with appearances from New York’s fashion elite as the show integrates the city’s Fashion Week into the plot.

As for the role of W in the storyline, viewers will see an excited Blair (Leighton Meester) get an internship at the magazine, only to be disappointed when she finds out that Dan (Penn Badgley) will be working there too. We give them two more episodes before they start hooking up. C’mon, you know it’s going to happen, we’re just putting it out there girlfriend.

As some of you may know, FBNY has an intermittently active twitter feed. And every time some nice soul (usually named “John Smith” or the like) decides to sign up as one of our followers we get an email announcing the new member. Today however, there was a whole new sort of arrival on the scene.

Apparently, the NYT Co. has a twitter and they are following us (which means among other things that they are aware of our random Gossip Girl encounter yesterday — we aim to inform!). But what is the NYT Co. doing with a twitter feed? We took a look and discovered that it appears to be relatively new: thus far they’ve made 13 updates, acquired 31 followers, and are following 71 people (wow, we made the top 100). Thus far it’s mostly news and links.

This actually isn’t the first time we’ve noticed a large company testing the twitter waters (just ours). Apparently the SEC is also in the game, along with CSPAN. Perhaps not surprisingly Barack Obama has one (he has 59,567 followers and is following 62,241). John McCain, however, may want to look into whoever is currently squatting on his space, no pun intended.

Good News! Literally, we have some actual good magazine news to report. The folks at New York have informed us that the magazine has achieved a “3.4% increase in single copy (newsstand) sales for the first half of 2008.” Not only that, they achieved it after raising their cover price by 20%.

The strongest performers included the Spring Fashion issue featuring Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe, Hillary Clinton, the fall of Eliot Spitzer, and the Best of New York (wait, what about the Gossip Girl cover?!). Also, paid subscribers are up. Full release and more numbers after the jump.

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