The CW met the Television Critics Assn. for the first time since its ownership and brand makeover — and both president Dennis Miller and entertainment president Brad Schwartz came armed with a message: The CW wants to be considered a “Big 5” network, right alongside ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.
“We have ambitious goals, but we recognize where we’re coming from,” Schwartz said. “We’re the underdog competing against titans. But ultimately what we are striving for is to have everyone stop writing ‘Big 4 networks’ and start writing ‘Big 5.’ We know it’s gonna take some time, but that’s the goal.”
It will be a challenge, given we’re now in an era where even the traditional “Big 4” networks aren’t so sure they want to be in that business anymore. But now operated by station group owner Nexstar and focused on expanding its scope (not to mention trying to get to profitability), the CW is throwing a lot at the wall — and hoping that some of it sticks.
Among new announcements were a series order to “Sherlock & Daughter,” a scripted series starringDavid Thewlis and Dougray Scott — a project CW noted was developed at the network and isn’t an international acquisition.
Besides an ambitious push into sports (NASCAR, WWE, ACC college football, LIV golf), the CW is picking up game shows based on “Trivial Pursuit” and Scrabble,” has unscripted relationship series like “Patti Stanger: The Matchmaker” and “FBoy Island” spinoff “Lovers and Liars”; crime reality series like “Police 24/7” and “Hostage Rescue”; new drama series like “Sight Unseen”; comedies including “Son of a Critch” and returning hits “All American” (and its spinoff “All American: Homecoming”) and “Walker.”
The two “All American” shows, “Walker” and the soon-to-retire “Superman & Lois” are the final scripted holdovers from the previous CW regime and ownership. When CBS and Warner Bros. co-owned the CW in a joint venture, the goal was to incubate hits on the netlet and turn them into financial assets — a model that continues to pay dividends for those companies, as CW series overperform in the off-network market on streamers. But new owner Nexstar doesn’t have a financial consideration in those shows — so their fate lies more in performance and creative. Schwartz said he’d love to see those series continue as long as possible, but it’s up to series producers.
“We’ve gotten both of those shows to an economic area where as long as they keep writing, there’s no reason why we can’t keep doing,” he said. “So it’s no longer a financial question. It’s a creative and performance question.”
The CW appears to be currently in a major volume push, as Schwartz noted that the CW will be airing more than 500 hours of sports and more than 450 hours of original series this year. “We’re trying lots of new things,” he said. “We want to be a big five network. And now with news sports talk scripted unscripted live events, game shows, we’re getting there… we couldn’t operate this as a niche kind of cable brand anymore. And specifically only targeted audience that they need isn’t watching as much broadcast TV as they used to.”
Miller said he was realistic about the CW gamble now underway. “Now it’s got to sort itself out,” he said. “We’ve got to get the circulation better on the stations. We’ve tried to get better and better stations. Nexstar has 200-plus stations, they have 32 CW affiliates, so we have a really good perspective on what the other networks are doing. And how those are working on all of our stations… everybody else is kind of pulling back, lamenting the days of broadcast to be a place where you come in every day and people want to do something different. We get to experiment. That’s the nature of the business, while things aren’t going to work will fail quickly. We’ll continue to explore what kinds of programs are going to work on a broad basis to be a Big 5 network.”
In picking up the controversial Saudi-owned LIV golf league (and human rights concerns that come along with that), Miller said the broadcast rights deal “opportunistic” at the time, given the network’s desire to get into sports. “Our focus was really on ‘hey, can we get high quality sports here at the network.’ We don’t want to as a matter of fact, get into the internal matters that are going on. There are those concerns. We certainly recognize them as as valid… there’s always controversy that surrounds high profile sports but our focus was really just putting on a quality program last June.”
