Quo Vadis CW? Or: a tale of Warner Bros. and CBS Television

Editors Note: This is a guest article by SpoilerTV Contributor Mac Schaer.

Writers Note: I’m a fan, not an expert. I have no professional experience in bureaucratic network decisions but I’m a long time follower of the decision making process behind various television shows.

Once upon a time there were two television stations, one owned by Warner Bros. and the other owned by CBS. TheWB and UPN. Both networks focused on a similar target audiences: young adults. A demographic usually less attractive for the other big three networks (CBS, NBC, ABC).

Notable shows for the UPN include Veronica Mars, Star Trek: Voyager, Enterprise, Girlfriends and Everybody Hates Chris. In theWBs corner we had 7th Heaven, Dawsons Creek, Gilmore Girls, Supernatural, Smallville, Angel and Everwood.

Both networks having a rather unspectacular target audience caused a ratings drop for both, in their entire run both made a $2 Billion loss and the studios behind the networks were put into a more than uncomfortable position.

Following the ratings both CBS and Warner went for a merger, they shut down their respective stations and put their assets into a joint venture: known as theCW.

The merger made sense, UPN already was a pretty enthusiastic customer of WB content. For example the network bought up Buffy-The Vampire Slayer after its fifth season.

Most of the networks shows went on to live another day on theCW, Veronica Mars, Supernatural, Smallville and 7th Heaven being a few examples. The Buffy spin-off Angel was cancelled despite good ratings though, it was rumored at the time that the network decided against Angel and rather brought back 7th Heaven to give the network a more family friendly identity.

Note that these were merely rumors at the time though!

Ever since, theCW served as a home for both CBS produced and WB produced dramas.

The head of the network was Dawn Ostroff, responsible for the primetime schedule and the networks general appearance. TheCW being known as a youth skewing network obviously caused youth themed shows to be green-lit. These days Mark Pedowitz is the new head of theCW.

CBS distributed TBL (5 episodes), Emily Owens M.D (13 episodes), Melrose Place (18 episodes), Star-Crossed (13 episodes), 7th Heaven (22 episodes on theCW, 243 episodes in total) and 90210 (being the only CBS series on theCW to make it beyond 100 episodes with a total episode count of 114).

Meanwhile Warner Bros television distributed a giant lineup of long-living shows on theCW like Smallville (107 episodes on theCW, 218 episodes in total), Gilmore Girls (22 episodes on theCW, 153 episodes overall), Nikita (73 episodes) only being some, this is excluding the MANY other WB distributed shows like Ringer, Hellcats, Cult wich only lived for one 1-2 seasons
Currently CBS has a larger stake in distributing Beauty and the Beast and Reign.

Meanwhile the rest of the schedule (Vampire Diaries, Originals, Supernatural, Arrow, The Flash, Hart of Dixie, The 100) are all distributed by Warner Bros.

At this point it is worthy to ask a question for CBS: what worth does theCW still hold to us?

Is it time for them to just back out of the joint venture?

Their current lineup is underperforming, Reign has dipped majorly on this Mondays season 2 premiere while Beauty and the Beast got renewed for a shortened third season scheduled for mid-season after having a 0.3 average for its second season with “final season” flags pointing at an eventual cancellation.

CBS has two shows ready to premiere on theCW this season. “Jane the Virgin” premieres this Monday and “The Messengers” premiering mid-season.

Looking at the sinking relevance CBS shows hold for theCW (and per extention CBS having a smaller take due to not having much additional merchandise to sell) it becomes questionable for how long theCW can keep CBS shows around


But let’s talk a futuristic ‘what if’ scenario for theCW.

What IF CBS actually backs out? What will happen to the network? Will theCW be shut down the way WB/UPN were? Where will the content move to if such a thing happens?

Obviously the beauty of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu comes to mind when talking the questionable future of scripted content but like so often it sounds more hopeful than it actually is. Netflix picks up limited amounts of shows and so far little to no shows have made the big jump for survival (Community being a pretty rare example).

Will these shows just disappear? Sadly this is a likely outcome, no matter how profitable content like “Supernatural” or “The Vampire Diaries” might be for WB at this point not having a station well watched enough is not going to save either program. Especially since theCWs most successful shows have already crossed the magic 100 episodes mark.

Is it possible for some content to be sold to other networks?

WB is producing a lot of content for other networks. Fringe, Revolution, Alcatraz, The Following, Mom, Shameless, Chuck, Dallas, Longmire and Rizzoli & Isles were/are altogether Warner produced shows sold to competing networks. So does that make it more possible for a female oriented mystery drama like ‘The Vampire Diaries’ to make its way to Lifetime or ABC? For Supernatural to make it to FOX or USA? Personally I’d like to answer this with a ‘eh…maaayyyybbee?’. The genres might fit to the networks and the popular names might help the shows cases as well but would the networks benefit from airing shows that premiered on a completely other network with 70% of the audience not knowing what is going on? It’s a call that would have to be made by the networks producers. I could see “Arrow” making its way to TNT though in case theCW were just to end.

Or a last possibility: is Warner simply going to open a new network or just keeps operating without CBS as theCW? A rather likely idea although it’d beg to question for how long, the merger happened due to the common issue of losing money, operating alone wouldn’t help the situation at all. If anything the network would probably have a harder time re-establishing itself than theCW ever did.

So how does theCW avoid losing CBS?

Simple tactic: renew what you can.

Many fans of these shows have said it and it’s sadly a very real thing, they can’t risk CBS leaving and thus find any whatever small reason to keep CBS shows around. May it be renewing Beauty and the Beast with numbers far beyond good and evil or renewing Reign while under performing in a slot other shows would kill for. The marketing has been heavy on the recently premiered Reign and yet not really much seems to have changed. The marketing either might have missed its mark or simply isn’t as effective as originally hoped for.

But for how long can this appeasing tactic work? If the downwards trend of CBS shows continues the network might one day be forced to pull the plug on the last CBS show.

What could possibly mean the death nail for theCW.

What do you think would be better for theCW, Warner, CBS and its shows?




What do you think about this issue? Please let me know in the comment section