Here’s a news flash: “Lost” is a hit online. But so is CW’s “Privileged.”

For the first time, Nielsen Online has released rankings for online streaming of episodes and clips.
“Lost” tops the chart for the month of December with 1.4 million unique viewers, followed by NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” with 1.1 million.

By the yardstick of the total time viewers spent with a show online, the surprise leader in December was CW’s “Privileged.” The rating-challenged dramedy drew only 29,000 unique viewers, but those that did tune in stuck around for an average of 214.6 minutes.

There’s a big caveat to these rankings, however, in that they don’t include shows streamed via Hulu because Hulu won’t breakout its numbers to Nielsen (at least if I'm reading Nielsen-ese right. A Nielsen Online rep would only say that Hulu is "not available in our syndication service.")

Nielsen’s survey includes the websites of Hulu partners NBC and Fox, as well as ABC, CBS and CW. But by all accounts, Hulu's vid streaming traffic has outpaced that of the Peacock and Fox nets' individual websites. The survey captures clips that are embedded on other websites and blogs, as long as the streams come from the network's proprietary player (but not Hulu's player).

For once, a ratings press release doesn't lie. ABC Family's "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" truly did trounce CW's "Gossip Girl" in head-to-head competish in the Monday 8 p.m. slot.

"Teenager" pulled in 3.9 million viewers to "Gossip's" 2.2 million. And "Teenager" beat "Gossip" by a comfortable margin in the demos that matters to CW: persons 12-34, women 18-34 and femmes 12-34.

Clearly, "Teenager" creator/showrunner Brenda Hampton is doing something right.

CW is having a some marketing fun at the expense of its harshest critics.

I laughed out loud this ayem when I saw a "Gossip Girl" quote ad on the side of a bus that proclaimed the show to be "Mind-blowingly Inappropriate," with a tagline crediting that august organ of critical discourse, the Parents Television Council watchdog org. There are others in the series, including one touting the New York Post's assertion that "Gossip Girl" is "a nasty piece of work."

But it was the PTC quote that struck me as inspired. Tim Winter, prexy of the PTC, is rolling with it in the same way that CW is trying to use the PTC's outrage to its advantage. "Normally, we have to pay for our outdoor advertising," Winter noted. "We'd be thrilled if every network used our quotes about their programming to describe it in their ads."

That said, Winter stressed that he is troubled by the steamy "Gossip Girl" ad campaign. No matter what CW says about the sexy show being aimed at young adults, the ads are titillating bait for teens and pre-teens, in Winter's view.

"I am deeply troubled what the CW network is doing with the programming they're putting on the public airwaves and in particular the media campaigns they're putting out to promote their shows," Winter says.