The writing was already on the wall, but now it’s getting bolder: The CW‘s carryover programming from its former parent companies Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery will be “minimal” by the next broadcast season.
“Programming for the CW is in place for the 2022-2023 broadcast season, that extends through the end of August/early September timeframe of next year. You’ll see that programming is consistent with what the programmers have historically had on the air for that timeframe,” Nexstar executive vice president and chief financial officer Lee Ann Gliha said during the company’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday. “Over the course of the next year, we’re really working to develop our slate, which will then come online in the 2023-2024 broadcast season. We will have some carryover commitment for the CBS and the WBD programming in that year, but it’s minimal at that point.”
“Warners and Paramount are not precluded from selling us programming, it’s just going to have to be a financial deal that we like and there may be a couple of shows that distinguish themselves that we want to hold over into next year,” Nexstar CEO Perry Sook added.
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Currently, the CW has just a handful of Paramount and WB Discovery-produced titles left to be considered for carryover into the 2023-2024 season, as many have already been canceled or announced final season end dates. These remaining contenders include “Walker,” “Walker: Independence,” “Superman & Lois,” “All American,” “All American: Homecoming,” “The Winchesters” and the upcoming DC Universe series “Gotham Knights,” which will debut at midseason.
Sook brought up the recent appointment of CW programming chief Brad Schwartz, a vet of Pop TV network, who was tapped by new CW network president Dennis Miller. The exec noted that Schwartz, “on a much smaller budget than we’ve given him at the CW, was able to find and develop a show called ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ which, boom, your job is easy — just go find a couple more of those and we’ll be in fine shape at the CW.”
As Nexstar has previously laid out, Sook again indicated the TV station group is looking to shift the CW to a mix of scripted and unscripted content for a “broader audience.” The company hopes to make the CW profitable by 2025.
Also on the call, Sook spoke about how NBC doing away with the 10 p.m. primetime hour and joining Fox and the CW in handing that block to local station groups would be “extremely profitable” for Nexstar.
“Oh, that would be good,” Sook said. “We’ll make more money with an hour of news at 10 than we do with an hour of network programming where, a) we have all the inventory and, b) I would expect NBC goes from 89 hours a week of network programmed time to 81 or 82 hours a week of network program time and we pay them less. But all around, we have a number of Fox and CW and MyNetwork stations who program news in that last hour of prime and they are extremely profitable.”
