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The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications

TEEN AND ADRENALINE DREAMS:

A HISTORY OF THE CW NETWORK

A Dissertation in

Mass Communications

by

Anna Aupperle

© 2018 Anna Aupperle

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

May 2018

ii

The dissertation of Anna Aupperle was reviewed and approved* by :

Matthew P. McAllister Professor of Communications Chair of Graduate Programs, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee

J. Ford Risley Professor of Communications

Patrick Parsons Professor of Communications

Gary Cross Distinguished Professor of Modern History

*Signatures are on file in the Graduate School

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Abstract

This project investigates the history of The CW Television Network, a U.S. English- language broadcast television network founded in 2006 as the merger of The WB Network and

UPN. In just over a decade, the network has transitioned from a teen drama-focused network focused on programming to women ages 18-to-34, to an established network later best known for its DC superhero programs.

In order to understand more about The CW and why is relevant to the history and future of broadcast television, this dissertation makes extensive use of the popular and trade industry press. Articles found in several major databases and through other online sources, and focus on the network’s corporate parentage, its unique demographic strategy, and its emphasis on social media as a way to both communicate with and locate fans in the online communities in which . This project examines the financial, programming, and regulatory changes that have helped to make The CW what it has become as well as the ways the network’s innovations can serve as indicators for the future of broadcast television.

This project argues that The CW has developed several major innovations for television that have impacted the industry in ways beyond just its programming. These are 1) its demographic targeting and cultivation of social viewership, much of which associated with the teen drama, 2) advertising-oriented initiatives and a continued emphasis on the monetization of content, 3) renewed focus on broadcast relationships, and 4) structural monetization of the network, including cross-platform, sometimes “transmedia,” storytelling via comic-book licensing.

Keywords: television history, The CW Television Network

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...... vii List of Figures ...... viii

Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION & METHODS ...... 1 Why The CW is Worthy of Study...... 3 Research Questions ...... 11 Method ...... 12 Sources Utilized ...... 13 Self-Reflection on Method ...... 20 The Structure of This Dissertation ...... 23

Chapter 2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF TELEVISION REGULATION AND PROGRAMMING AS IT PERTAINS TO THE CW ...... 28 FCC Regulatory Influences in Television History...... 28 How Networks Disseminate Content ...... 30 Fin-Syn and PTAR – FCC Regulation to Protect Diversity ...... 31 A New Network, New Affiliate Structures, and of Fin-Syn ...... 34 Regulation Allowing for the Creation of Emerging Networks ...... 39 Economic Influences on Television Networks – Consolidation and Differentiation ...... 44 Economic Benefits of Owned Intellectual Property ...... 45 Consolidation and Increased Ownership of IP ...... 47 Declining Viewership and the Impact of Cable ...... 48 Economic Concerns Impacting Content: The Rise of Reality TV ...... 50 New Technology and Declining Traditional Viewership ...... 52 Changes in Viewer Measurement ...... 58 Trends in Viewership: Increasing Viewer Age ...... 60 Where Did All the Millennial Viewers Go? ...... 62

Chapter 3. UPN MEETS THE WB, PRE-JANUARY 2006 ...... 65 “2 Would-Be Networks Get Set for Prime Time” ...... 65 “The Night is Young”: The WB’s Programming Strategies ...... 69 On the Shoulders of Giants: The WB’s Parent Company, Time Warner, Inc...... 73 Trekkies and SmackDown: UPN’s Programming Strategies ...... 77 “We’re the Network, ”: The Musical Chairs of UPN’s Namesake, ...... 82 The Beginning of the End: 11 Years, >$1 Billion in Losses ...... 87

Chapter 4. COME FOR THE SMACKDOWN, STAY FOR THE TEEN DRAMA, FALL 2006- SPRING 2008 ...... 91 The Merger Announcement, and the Closure of The WB and UPN ...... 93 Early Days: Before the Upfront Presentation, February – April 2006 ...... 97 The CW’s 2006-2007 Upfront Presentation and Sales Period, May – July 2006 ...... 101 The First Schedule: July – August 2006 ...... 105 The CW’s Debut: The 2006-2007 Television Season ...... 111 v

Sophomore Slump, The Online Migration and Continued Ad Experiments, 2007-2008 Television Season ...... 115 Industrial Pressures: The 2007 WGA Strike and The CW ...... 119 Measurement Changes Impact The CW’s Success ...... 121 No Laughing Matter: The CW Eliminates its Comedy Department ...... 123 The Lasting of Kids’ WB! ...... 125 Sunday Night Meltdown: The CW Sells off Sundays ...... 125 Failing Networks: Will The CW Survive Another Season? ...... 126

Chapter 5. THE NETWORK OF “MAGICAL THINKING”: FALL 2008-SPRING 2012 ...... 129 2008-2009 Television Season: Goodbye SmackDown!, Hello ABC Family ...... 129 Rebranding, Content Changes, and Refocused Demographic ...... 130 Encroaching Competition: ABC Family ...... 134 MRC and Sunday Nights on The CW...... 136 2009-2010 Television Season ...... 139 “TV to Talk About”: Social Media and Vampire Diaries ...... 139 A Changing Competitive Set ...... 142 2010-2011 Television Season: No New Hits but a New President ...... 144 2011-2012 Television Season: Change is Coming ...... 146 End of an Era: Pedowitz Takes Control with a New Direction ...... 146 The Fizzling Legacy of The WB and UPN ...... 150 Behind the Scenes: WB Buys Alloy ...... 152 When Finances Fail, Enter ...... 153 “The Magical Mystery of The CW” Continues ...... 157

Chapter 6. AN THROUGH THE TARGET (DEMOGRAPHIC): FALL 2012- PRESENT ...... 160 2012-2013 Television Season ...... 161 Scheduling Changes and Growing Pains ...... 162 Objectifying Ollie: Reimagining the as a Teen Heartthrob ...... 164 Saying Goodbye to Teen Queens: The Cancellation of Girl and 90210 ...... 170 “TV ”: The CW Finds a New Brand Image ...... 172 2013-2014 Television Season ...... 178 Extending the Franchise ...... 180 “Pretty People with Powers”: The Failure of Tomorrow People ...... 181 2014-2015 Television Season ...... 183 The Takes the Top Spot ...... 183 The CW Gets its First Taste of Awards Recognition ...... 185 Branding for the 2014-15 “Heroes Within”: Embracing Adrenaline on The CW’s Schedule ...... 187 2015-2016 Television Season ...... 189 CBS Scores Again: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Critical Acclaim ...... 189 Becoming the Network: How Location Impacts the Arrowverse ...... 191 2016-2017 Television Season (and Beyond) ...... 193 “Defy Your World”: Uniting Teen Queens and Adrenaline Dreams ...... 193 Makes the Move to The CW (and ) ...... 195 vi

Watch The CW Now, Literally – But Only on Our Apps ...... 199 Cable’s Loss is Broadcast’s Gain: Pedowitz Fights for The CW’s Future ...... 203 2012-Present: Significance and Conclusions ...... 205

Chapter 7. THE COMEBACK KID: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA’S LEAST-WATCHED BROADCAST NETWORK ...... 207 “The Night is Young”: Why The CW Maintained Relevance ...... 207 The Little Network that Could: A Decade of The CW’s Innovations ...... 211 Limitations of this Study ...... 220 Areas for Future Study ...... 221 The Lasting Legacy of America’s Least-Watched Broadcast Network ...... 225

Bibliography ...... 228

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Broadcast television networks, their parent corporations, and their associated U.S. cable networks………………………………………………………………………………………...42

Table 2. 1996-1997 television season rankings by program (entire season)…………………..79

Table 3. UPN television program performance amongst all viewers (composite) and viewers…………………………………………………………………………………………100

Table 4. The CW’s first-ever fall 2006 schedule, as announced at its May 2006 Upfront

Presentation...... 109

Table 5. The CW’s fall 2007-2008 schedule…………………………………………………..115

Table 6. The CW’s midseason schedule, as reported on January 7, 2008……………………..121

Table 7. The CW’s 2008-2009 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2008…………130

Table 8. The CW’s 2009-2010 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2009…………139

Table 9. The CW’s 2010-2011 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2010…………144

Table 10. The CW’s 2011-2012 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2011………..146

Table 11. The CW’s 2012-2013 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2012………..161

Table 12. The CW’s 2013-2014 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2013………..178

Table 13. The CW’s 2014-2015 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2014………..183

Table 14. The CW’s 2015-2016 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2015………..189

Table 15. The CW’s 2016-2017 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2016………..193

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Television properties of Time Warner, Inc…………………………………………...43

Figure 2. Graph of Network Ratings, 1989-2010……………………………………………….55

Figures 3 & 4. Calculated CPMs for Freeform, a cable network, versus The CW, a broadcaster……………………………………………………………………………………….57

Figure 5. How a television rating is calculated by the Nielsen Company………………………58

Figure 6. “CW Green” at launch, officially Pantone 370, according to executive Rick

Haskins…………………………………………………………………………………………106

Figure 7. The CW’s logo, still in use today (in different colors)………………………………106

Figures 8 & 9. The network’s first brand-campaign print- for outdoor, using the network’s first tagline, “Free to Be.”………………………………………………………………………107

Figures 10-13. Excerpts from Troika’s work on The CW’s 2012 rebrand………………..176-177

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Chapter 1: Introduction & Methods

If the old maxim is true, hindsight is 20/20, and the turning points caused by now- momentous historical events become obvious when viewed from the rather comfortable perch of the present. This is particularly true for media in the digital age. As in many industries, the media industry has been impacted by the increasing popularity of technologies that expanded the way in which people could view and respond to content – which led to some expected as well as unexpected changes in the industry as a whole. After all, for example, when the became widely available to Americans in the early , few at the time would have been able to see the changes that would occur throughout legacy media organizations, with impacts ranging from print journalism to the recording industry.

In 2006, though, this mediated change was most likely not first and foremost in the minds of the American television viewer, who was being bombarded by serious political and societal strife on all aspects of visual media. In January of 2006, George W. Bush was president of the

United States, Samuel Alito was sworn into the Supreme Court, and the nation remained in the midst of war in Iraq and Afghanistan (Stout, 2006; Baker, 2006). By the time The CW would begin airing its first schedule in September of that year, Samsung would ship the first Blu-Ray disc player, Enron’s founder and CEO would be found guilty in a massive corporate fraud trial, and President Bush would sign a revised version of the USA Patriot Act (Costa, 2006; Pasha and

Seid, 2006; Brubaker, 2006). In this midst of these tumultuous times, perhaps it is unsurprising that, as so many other potential “turning points” in history, the development of the U.S.’s newest broadcast television network was not considered to be among the year’s most memorable moments. 2

The story of The CW Television Network seems to begin abruptly, in January of 2006, when two networks that by all traditional metrics were abject failures in the media industry announced a merger that would change the structure of broadcast television history for years to come (James & Gold, 2006; Noyes, 2006; Pergament, 2006). The history of the broadcast television industry up to that point had been characterized by the stability of the major distributors of television content, the networks. networks come and go, but broadcast networks have always been different, partly as a result of their technological differences and reliance on local-station affiliate structure, but also because there have been so few of them who have been able to maintain the infrastructure of a broadcast network for any significant period of time.

On January 24, 2006, executives from The WB Television Network, majority owned by

WB-parent Time Warner, Inc., and the United , then fully owned by CBS

Corporation, announced a merger that would broadcast realignment throughout the country (James & Gold, 2006; Noyes, 2006; Carter, 2006). By this time, Nielsen had begun rating Spanish-language networks, and both UPN and The WB had rated so low as to be kicked out of fifth place in the broadcast arena, surpassed by (James & Gold, 2006). Given the larger ratings expected from broadcast networks, this merger made sense. But from a programming and perspective, the move eschewed the industry trend of branding networks with demographically focused programming that would offer targeted audiences for advertisers. The WB – which promoted itself as “the network for young adults” and featured such programming as Dawson’s Creek and – would merge with UPN that coming fall, combining The WB’s young-adult line-up with UPN’s WWE SmackDown and

“urban comedy” content (Lisotta, 2006a). 3

But this hybridity of content (which some may have considered to be schizophrenic in orientation) was not the major innovation developed by the new network. As will be discussed, the then-new joint network belied some industry analysts through its longevity and using an adaptive programming model that often seemed to be at the forefront of industry trends. It became a survivor in a decade marked by the rise of social media, shifting media ownership patterns, the continued erosion of audiences, and the implementation of digital broadcasting and streaming television services. This dissertation endeavors to explore how a mixture of technological, social, economic, and regulatory influences on the television industry and on the media industry as a whole led to the development and historical significance of The

CW Television Network.

Why The CW is Worthy of Study

The CW, as a result, is important as a broadcast network and to television in general for several unique reasons. The first of these is its dual ownership with two major corporate parents, who, for all intents and purposes, have distinct needs and viewer demographics that they would want to fulfill through ownership of the network. Its particular partnership -- composed by two traditionally powerful media conglomerates who saw in the post-millennial era serious challenges from exhibitors like and digital companies such as and Google -- offered challenges and opportunities for the network, and arguably lessons about how such partnerships may function and change over time.

As a result of the merger, The CW is the only current English-language broadcast network to come into being as the merger of two smaller (albeit commercially unsuccessful) broadcast networks. This is integral to discussions of television network economics and 4 structure, because The CW’s dual ownership continually presents issues for the way the network is run; for example, by its 2016 iteration, most of the network’s content was sourced from

Warner Bros.-owned material – including the one-half of the network’s hours of weekly programming that is comprised of DC Comics adaptations (O’Connell, 2016). The network’s headquarters are housed in a Time Warner-rented building adjacent to the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, , with additional ad sales and marketing support at Time Warner’s locations in City (see Time Warner’s 2016 10-K report for more information;

Mascaro, 2006; Lisotta, 2006b). The lowest-rated programs on the network have largely originated at CBS, including later critical favorites but ratings disappointments and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. CBS does not provide the network with affiliates in the nation’s top- three markets of New York, , and , respectively, which account for nearly one-fifth of the nation’s total viewers, despite the duopoly of station ownership CBS holds in the top-two markets with its dual ownership of WCBS/WLNY and KCBS/KCAL (see Andreeva,

2015e, for more about The CW’s affiliate deals).

Despite this seemingly awkward structure, both CBS and Warner Bros. have publicly spoken about what they believe is their “successful” partial ownership of the network, the sum losses of which have not been fully recorded on balance sheets. Due to the 50 percent equity stake each has in the network, The CW is only recorded in consolidated 10-K reports as an

“investment,” so there is no way to know exactly what the network’s losses are, if there are any real financial losses at play at all.1 It is an efficient cost-cutting strategy, at its core, and if the

1 The possibility that the network is only experiencing paper losses is due to two major issues: 1) it has no assets of its own, including no production studio, physical location, or programming assets, and 2) the license fee structure of broadcast television is such that it allows a network like The CW to “” programming from one or both of its corporate parents, whilst, in effect, allowing Time Warner and CBS to pay itself for content it solely produced itself (Barr, 2016). 5 structure has been working for Time Warner and CBS for the last decade, it poses the for broadcast television industry structure – why haven’t more broadcast networks attempted this strategy? This text, subsequently, sets out to find out why The CW exists, from a historical and financial perspective, as well as the lessons it teaches us about television and its future as a medium.

The second reason why The CW is deserving of a history of its own is its precarious position within the broadcast television landscape and the media universe into which it was born in 2006 and the subsequent changes over the next decade in that landscape/universe. At the time it was created, English-language broadcast television consisted of four established broadcast networks and several hundred cable channels. The impact of social media and engagement was as-of-yet not a focus of any of the broadcast networks. Nor had any of them made any concrete plans to include those digital viewers as equivalent to linear, traditional TV views

(Goodman, 2012a, explains The CW’s digital strategy, and the network’s insistence that people were watching it in potentially unquantifiable ways). Add in the increasing saturation of timeshifting (recording for later viewing) through DVR in U.S. households, and then the advent of Netflix’s instant streaming, among other technological advancements, and viewers suddenly seemed to have the upper hand over television programmers and schedulers. Even the in television ratings measurement, in a virtual monopoly over the industry, has had some trouble understanding how people in 2016 are watching television; Nielsen has been forced to augment more traditional measures like timeshifted linear viewing (live + same day, live + three day, and live + seven day ratings) with video on-demand and over-the-top (OTT) ratings in addition to social media metrics like (Steinberg, 2017d; Katz, 2017; Lieberman, 2017c; Cohen,

2017). 6

Enter The CW: this is the media ecosystem into which the network was created, and the network has – in a radical departure from any other broadcaster – focused on catering to the tech- savvy, young-adult media consumer (see de Moraes, 2006, regarding the network’s new demographic). This immediately put The CW into a different category than its ratings-focused broadcast competitors, in particular, who saw (and continue to see) their audiences growing older and older each year, and thus place ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox arguably farther out of touch with the needs of younger viewers (Thompson, 2014). Despite initial skepticism and even disdain, the

CW’s focus on social media engagement through online media sources as and Twitter provided a more personalized way to view media content, and eventually all networks have had to follow a similar trend, becoming active on streaming and social platforms, and providing easier, -linear ways for audiences to view their content – and for advertisers to interact with viewers (Manjoo, 2015; Lincoln, 2015; Hsia, 2010; Stelter & Carter, 2011). As a result, The CW has acted as broadcast television’s trendsetter in new media platforms, possibly due to its youthful age and its lack of assets, making it relatively easy to be a guinea pig for new initiatives on behalf of its parent companies. As discussed below, The CW’s embrace of social media and other platforms also has implications for how audiences are measured and potentially monetized through advertising rates.

The third reason why the network is worthy of this historical investigation is its particular method of scheduling that has allowed it to specialize in areas atypical to broadcast networks.

Despite the fact that it is technically a broadcast network, The CW, after a settling-in period, has been able to schedule its content more like a cable network in its first ten years of existence.

What does this mean for the network’s content? It indicates that the network has been allowed to focus on programming for a core, niche audience: a strategy that is anathema to the other 7 broadcast television networks’ strategies – one that is even more focused than the youngest of the Big 4 networks, Fox (Steinberg, 2011a, provides more information about the creation of the

Fox Broadcasting Company). Broadcast television has been, historically, programmed for “the people,” an amorphous mass of (hopefully advertising-friendly 18-to-49-year olds) who live in every location in America with every possible career, income level, and education level.

Broadcast television, historically, does not further segment its audience to the extent that more specialized cable networks do. wants all of these people to watch it, and based on its ratings and ubiquity on broadcast network, cable network, and syndication outlets, we can safely assume that they do. As a result of the increased audience segmentation The CW has been able to undertake, the network has cultivated a younger, more targeted audience than any other broadcast network before it. This is a direct carry-over from The WB, which once proclaimed at its 1999 upfront advertising sales presentations that it was the “only network directly targeted to young adults” (see Carter, 1999a, for more about The WB’s programming strategy).

Cable’s programming strategy remains more unique than broadcast’s in another way, as well. Typically, broadcast television has reflected the “broadest” forms of television’s various genres, including both half-hour comedies and hour-long dramas on one network’s schedule.

While some cable networks have achieved both successfully (networks like Lifetime and MTV come to mind), most end up with highly specialized branding campaigns that lead them in limited directions providing, for example, solely comedies (), or solely reality- based programming that focuses on housing content (HGTV), or cooking content ( and Cooking Channel). While The CW did not begin its life in such a narrow , its programming beginning in approximately 2011 has become increasingly focused on hour-long 8 dramatic content, most of which deals with comic-book superheroes, a characteristic that again is influenced by the licensing synergy of corporate owner Time Warner. It is not surprising, as a result, that critics and even the network’s own talent can see its attempt at creating, in essence, a live-action “Justice League” on television (Evans, 2014). Gone are the half-hour comedies that filled up The CW’s inaugural weekend schedules. Left in its place is a positioning campaign that enforces to viewers that The CW is the of adrenaline junkies on broadcast TV, with its

2016 Fall Brand Refresh campaign using the slogan “Dare to Defy” (“The CW Fall Brand

Campaign,” 2016; Variety Staff, 2015). Gone, too, for the most part, are the “teen queens” and statuesque women that gave the network its initial ratings success. In a world where broadcast television’s top rated program is a traditional, in-studio situation comedy (CBS’s The Big Bang

Theory, produced by Warner Bros.), The CW is home to not a single half-hour comedy with which it can compete (the network cancelled all its in 2009, according to McNutt, 2014).

Instead, the network is airing the same Canadian-produced young-adult-oriented content that is most popular on Freeform, a top-ranked cable network amongst adults 18-49 and 18-34.

(Notably, even Freeform’s content is more varied in genre than The CW’s.) As a result, this project will also set out to discover the reasons why The CW has – seemingly by design – not been programmed to compete with traditional broadcasters. This will also require a detailed discussion of the networks that are competitors with The CW and, in turn, their own competitive sets.

This unconventional method of scheduling ties directly into the network’s fourth innovation – its focus on alternative methods of viewer engagement and viewership. The CW, since its , has sold itself on the platform that it is more connected, more familiar, with the kinds of social media and that other broadcast networks were not. When the network 9 presented these ideas to critics at various Television Critics Association press tours, it became clear that critics were not only skeptical of The CW’s content, but also the way it had positioned itself in a crowded television landscape. Tim Goodman writes in the Reporter in

2012:

It might sound harsh, but there’s very little fascination over The CW as a television

network, other than how long it can last and how it can survive as essentially a content

provider for streaming services.

And yet, both of those mysteries are, unto themselves, very fascinating. But as the

network tries to get people to believe it is popular via “aggregation,” trying to figure out

how that works can lead to aggravation.

As the above quote shows, The CW was very much not a critical darling, on the receiving end of some unfavorable comments from the wider television . (Goodman, again, would go on to dub The CW “the network of magical thinking” because it purported to redevelop television viewership around a new, social media-friendly model, in 2013.) One of the network’s early slogans, “TV to Talk/Text/Blog About,” indicates this early reliance on alternative engagement with viewers than accounted for by the traditional Nielsen measurement (Landau,

2016, p. 37, for an interview with Rick Haskins, The CW’s EVP, Marketing and Digital

Programs). Those at the network argued time and again that people were, in fact, watching its content – ways that the industry was not yet able to quantify. Critics like Goodman scoffed at the idea that anyone at all was watching The CW; in the decade since its development, the network has seen overall ratings declines each year, although this is congruent with broadcasters’ ratings in general (Smith & Shaw, 2016; SNL Kagan, 2016a & 2016b). While 10 some of those declines are industry-wide issues, the network eventually stopped selling itself on alternative ratings, and transitioned its focus to alternative streams of viewership.

In the fall of 2016, the network’s parent companies revealed that they were considering offering The CW as an over-the-top channel, available for purchase as a stand-alone channel without needing a cable subscription (Shaw, 2016). By the time of this writing, in early 2017, no official plans for this had been released. However, it appeared that the network had taken a rather unusual step, one that no other television network (broadcast or otherwise) had attempted.

Instead of selling its content for streaming rights – as had long been the suggested rationale for keeping the network alive – the network allowed its five-year deal with streaming service to end, with no new deal in sight. Without Hulu to take the network’s in-season rights to streaming content, the network would be left with ways to disseminate current seasons’ content to viewers on their own. This becomes key. If the network has no other way to provide people with the content they want, they themselves will be forced to build the streaming platforms for that viewership to occur. This is precisely what The CW did, and when their new season premiered in October 2016, the network also premiered its own CW-only viewership apps for

OTT devices like Roku and Chromecast. As Lynch (2016c) cites current network president Mark

Pedowitz: “‘When know this is the only place you have to go, that makes a big difference, and it helps our business model.’”2 How this impacts linear ratings for the network remains to be seen, but either way, The CW is at the forefront of this kind of technological change – change that cannot be ignored, regardless of its end result.

2 Lynch (2016c) explains further: The CW did not have access to Hulu’s advertising revenue as the service’s parent companies, ABC, NBC, and Fox, all did, and Hulu was not keen on maintaining The CW’s entire catalogue of low-viewed programming when the only properties they were interested in were Arrow and , two of the network’s top-rated and highest- profile programs. 11

Research Questions

The CW, then, has been a unique entity in the television industry and is both a product of its time and an industry innovator. How, then, can we understand the network? Overall, this dissertation will examine several relevant aspects of The CW’s life and times, specifically focusing on exploring the following questions:

1. What financial, programming, and regulatory changes occurred in television history that

allowed for the creation of a network like The CW?

2. What were the publicly stated rationales for creating The CW, and how did this fit with

changes in television and media?

3. How can we understand The CW’s longevity if it was not successful according to the

traditional benchmarks of television success – ratings and ad sales metrics?

4. What viewers constitute The CW’s target demographic and how has that demographic

changed over time?

5. How does The CW’s unique ownership influence its programming strategy?

6. How has The CW and its talent used social media to interact with fans, and how might

such strategies be indicative of the realities of a changing television industry?

7. What lessons can we learn from The CW about television as a medium in ever changing

contexts?

These and any other questions that have become evident during the course of this investigation into the network’s history will be accounted for in this text.

As this exploration into The CW’s creation and first decade of existence reflects the journey of a network, this text will attempt to take the reader on a journey along with it, narrating the course of events from several different perspectives. 12

One key perspective is previous work about the television and media industries that helps place

The CW in a larger context. General histories of the broadcasting and cable industries like

Gomery (2008) and Parsons (2008) and their thematic and chronological orientation will also help to develop the structure of this project and add valuable historical context. Other works such as Einstein (2004a, 2004b) offer insights into relevant historical eras and trends, such as deregulation of broadcasting. When this history engages with particular elements relevant to The

CW, such as media ownership and licensing, relevant literatures will be engaged -- for example about ownership, see Meehan (1991) and Hardy (2014).

Method

In terms of the specific method for this dissertation, several types of data will have to be utilized to offer a wide picture of what happened at The CW, when it happened, under what conditions did it occur and therefore what might be some explanations for why those events occurred. Data sources include trade and popular press accounts, interviews, digital and social media sources, promotional materials, financial documents, and the programming itself.

One primary method of piecing together this history is a systematic examination of trade and popular articles written about the network and how those articles have reflected the development and perception of a network that remains a relative newcomer to the broadcast scene. In conducting this systematic look at coverage of the network in all kinds of press, it is important to discuss how one can go about this task in relation to a television network like The

CW. First, in order to find the newspaper and other source articles written about The CW, several searches were completed, for sources dating from January 2006 to the present, in three separate databases: Access World News (NewsBank), LexisNexis Academic, and Factiva 13

(Dow Jones). Keywords included any and all CW- terms, including former network presidents, parent companies, programming titles, and key talent. In addition, one syndicated industry-specific news source was consulted: SNL Kagan. For sources about the two networks who acted as precursors to The CW, newspaper articles were consulted from the same sources, for the period from 1993, when parent companies announced they were interested in developing new networks, until 2006, when the networks combined. Network profiles for all three networks were accessed from SNL Kagan.

After articles were located via one of these database sources, they were vetted for overall relevance to the network. While this text will not constitute a quantitative study of all available articles mentioning the The CW and its associated key words, the systematic search for texts is a valuable – even critical – way of indicating how other stakeholders and outside observers perceive the network above and beyond a recounting of the events that made the network what it is today. Extensive notes were then taken on the various information about the network, but also analytical points relevant to the research questions: why the network was created, views about its viability and innovation, its management and ownership structure and monetization strategies, and its place in concurrent and future changes in television, media and society.

Sources Utilized

Subsequently, it is relevant to reflect upon the kinds of data one finds when performing this type of research. Scholar Joseph Turow (1998) argued that “advertising trade publications such as Adweek, Direct Marketing and Advertising Age are filled with discussions of society.

That is because ad people see understanding the U.S. population as one of their primary mandates” (p. x). Similarly, trade journal articles about a particular television network will use 14 often such articles to discuss television and media generally. With the increasing availability of television and Internet technologies that extended the potential cross-platform reach of the network whilst also contracting its traditional linear universe, The CW became fodder for extra discussion surrounding the future of television as a medium, largely at the hands of critics in trusted trade sources like Variety and , among many others.

Further, the inclusion of trade publication sources allows for a view at the somewhat

“mysterious” inner-workings of a television network, albeit the parts the network allows those outside the organization to see. Although trades (and smart general readership publications, discussed below) can offer unique insights, in developing the history of The CW, it is – as it is important to remember with all corporate-owned media enterprises – integral to take into consideration the network’s own press machine. Like any other corporate entity, The CW has been fundamental in cultivating its own mythology over the past decade, including its press coverage.

Trade publication interviews and recaps of marketing materials can be very much controlled by the network itself, which makes them still potentially biased by corporate influence. This corporate influence does not necessarily make trade sources inaccurate, but they do mean that trade sources alone should not provide the primary source of data for a business history. While it true that articles in trade publications are the first (and often only) source of data for industry readers, they can serve a double-purpose in histories such as this one – as an example of the primary sources that industry professionals had access to at the time when the articles were written and as secondary sources, as valuable sources of secondary data for us about the network’s inner-workings, albeit one step removed from the source. 15

Newspaper articles such as in are also essential to take into account when considering The CW’s history, because they cater not just to industry audiences, but to the everyday newspaper audience, as well. The consolidation of the networks has been meticulously covered by Bill Carter for the Times, a general readership publication that covers television extensively including something as potentially benign as the creation of a small, hybrid television broadcast network. These news articles recount the timeline and popular perception of the network, which depict how quickly it established itself in the teen scene as the successor to

The WB. It is also important to note that these same newspapers often treated the network with a mixture of confusion and derision, reflecting the common trend in the trades that The CW was banking on the wrong kinds of audiences, and that its social media focus and obsession with locating fans in their non-television lives was somehow too antithetical to the nature and goals of broadcast television. While this sounds obvious as a potential source of data for a history, it is perhaps more interesting to note how coverage of The CW declined in such newspaper sources, in later years, when it appeared that the network’s fortunes were and that their perhaps idealistic view of change that could be made in the television industry never transpired. As a result, the network remains often viewed in a negative light in pop culture outlets, mostly criticized for its perceived failure as a television business as well as its stereotypical teen- oriented “young adult” content. Nevertheless, popular press accounts of the networks, including reviews of their programs, are important documents to judge the basic visibility, or not, of a network like The CW. For this portion of the research, particularly with reference to The WB,

UPN, and The CW’s first two seasons, I gathered over 150 articles from local and national press outlets. For articles on the network’s more recent events, I also made use of over 275 web-based sources, mostly from several major trade industry outlets and popular press sources. 16

Aside from often-extensive coverage of the network in the trade and popular presses, the network’s own marketing material is fodder for history, especially when considering the history the network has constructed for itself. Marketing material including promo reels and taglines, can help to develop a vision of the network in the way that it wants to be viewed. For example, the network’s original tagline, “Free to Be Together,” indicated the connection between The WB and UPN, and welcomed viewers into the newly rebranded CW space. Today, the network is using the aforementioned “Dare to Defy” campaign, indicating its focus on high-adrenaline content and emphasizing the differences the network perceives between itself and its competitors. Since marketing material is already cleared for public examination, it is not very difficult to locate once one has established which third-party firm has been contracted to complete the work. While television networks have in-house marketing departments, work is often contracted out to third-party vendors to perform brand and concept testing and develop full-scale campaigns that in-house departments couldn’t complete on their own. In the case of

The CW, that firm is Los Angeles-based Troika, a full-service design firm that bills itself as “a brand experience company,” focused on “a fan-centric perspective that drives the way we think, create, and design to help brands transform audiences into devoted fans” (“About Troika,” 2017).

The network has maintained the same design firm since its creation in 2006, and Troika hosts current and previous CW campaigns publicly on its website as examples of its work.3 Marketing materials for The WB or UPN, however, were sourced from less-official sources, often from

YouTube, since those networks have been off the air for so long, and as a result were much more difficult to locate.

3 In another example of large-scale network ownership, network owners like to keep use of the same vendor across multiple properties. For example, Troika also rebranded Time Warner- owned HLN in 2017 and Turner in 2016, in addition to developing brand integrations for and TBS (“Work Archives,” 2017). 17

In connection with these formal publicity materials is The CW’s formal social media and that of the talent associated with its programs. This includes everyone from show producers who have reached a critical mass of a show’s fans (for example, Arrow/Flash/DC’s Legends of

Tomorrow’s and his Tumblr) to on-camera talent who have used The CW and their own influence to steer fan engagement. In fact, so strong is The CW’s focus on social media that the network’s official website has no formal “show” pages, with information about the programs and lists of actors and their credits, but rather one “social” page, linking viewers to individual actors’ Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and pages (Social Directory, 2017).

This “social directory” was the primary source of all social pages of CW talent; as a result, social data reviewed was limited to the “official” pages sponsored by individual talent rather than fan pages or any other secondary sources of social information. Social pages for individual programs would be run by The CW itself or any third-party social vendors it utilizes for tracking, and as such, I do not have a complete catalogue of this social data across platforms.4

So while there are many possible sources we can use to explore the history of The CW, as would be the case in the creation of any business history with a wealth of information available about its circumstances, none of these constitutes all the data available regarding the network. To supplement the previously mentioned data sources, governmental filings related to the network’s finances are also consulted in order to provide more context to the stories told by its staffers. In this respect, it is very possible – probable, in fact – that The CW’s losses are, as a result, solely

4 Please note that “social listening” and management platforms do exist, and most likely would be used by the network and others to push social content to viewers via many platforms. These platforms include HootSuite and other social media management systems, which help to schedule content for regular posting to multiple platforms, as well as quantifiable measures to help indicate the quantity and demographic data of those who have interacted with the material, like ListenFirst, Nielsen Social, and Shareablee. There is no centralized reporting of social data like there is with linear viewership. As I do not have access to these in the context of this paper, I cannot provide statistics from these services at this time. 18 paper losses. As CBS’s argues, The CW owns no content, and thus, it has no value as a network; all of the network’s content is actually owned by its two parent companies. This means that its corporate parents may not realize any and all potential financial losses that the network experiences. If a television network’s primary methods of revenue are advertising inventory, viewer delivery, and CPMs (cost-per-thousand viewers), The CW is failing on several accounts. This unique business model in the broadcast television landscape begs another question: if The CW’s traditional metrics don’t matter as much in the modern TV climate, then why aren’t other parent companies following Time Warner and CBS’s lead and creating more networks with the same organizational and financial structure? As a result, this history attempts to piece together the financial mystery surrounding the structure of The CW as well as to create an account of how it happened. Financial documents are thus key to addressing this dilemma.

These documents included 10-K reports for the two parent companies of The CW for the of the network’s existence, as well as CPM data and other network financial statistics as calculated by syndicated research source, SNL Kagan (now S&P Global Market Intelligence).

The latter provides network profiles comparing and contrasting networks across the television universe, broadcast and cable, as well as white papers on the industry and specific network groups. All of this available data for The CW and anything available on its predecessor networks via SNL Kagan was examined in the course of this paper.

In addition to external information about the network, I also examined the network’s programming and that of its immediate predecessor, The WB. (I did not watch UPN programming as closely, as content from that network did not air for as long on The CW’s air.) I viewed several episodes of any currently available programming that had aired on The WB, which meant that finding long-running programs with major production companies and 19 talent was fairly easy; for example, I had little trouble locating episodes of 7th Heaven or

Smallville to review, but finding an episode of the one-season Savannah (1996-1997) was more difficult. It was easier to find content that initially aired on The CW itself, primarily due to the network’s more recent history, comprehensive Netflix deals, and the array of over-the-top sources upon which one can now watch programming. Amongst The CW’s content, I focused on hallmarks of its teen drama, including and , and more recent tentpoles of its superhero dramas, namely Arrow and The Flash. The rationale behind viewing some of the network’s content was to familiarize myself with the network’s physical products; it is important to remember while doing TV research that viewers themselves (in most cases) get only the content from a given network, with none of the backstory, context, or any other information that industry insiders could provide. Viewers are not privy to, in many cases, the financial or ratings success of a given program, so it is important to give context to the individual stories told by networks when investigating their historical trajectories.

Finally, to add context and depth to the type of industry research I was aiming to find when exploring the history of The CW, I spoke with executives and management at a television network with the intent of understanding more of the inner-workings of the television industry. I was also able to utilize these industry insiders as assistance in developing my observations and conclusions and collating data about The CW from the perspective of those who are working at competitive networks within the same industry. I will provide more information about my rationale for using these sources in the following section.

20

Self-Reflection on Method

In my career, I was during much of the time writing this project a research analyst in a programming research department at a cable channel owned by one of The CW’s two corporate parents. In essence, I am a ratings analyst. In my daily job tasks, I perform competitive research, comparing and contrasting programming and networks across the broadcast and cable landscape.

I personally tracked CW programming on a weekly basis, and if the network makes a scheduling or programming move, I am aware of it. In my position, as well, I perform practical quantitative audience research on a daily basis, analyzing third-party data from several major industry datasets to provide actionable insights for every department at a network, including scheduling, production/development, strategic planning, and finance, amongst others. Subsequently, this position means that I am privy to sensitive data from third-party data providers that I cannot share here due to contractual obligations with my employer, and further, due to contractual constraints between my employer and our third-party data vendors. This means that, for example, while I am a Nielsen client, I cannot make use of any Nielsen data provided through my connection with my employer for this paper.

Despite this, the fact that I hold this position is a positive for this project for several reasons. The first is that I have at my disposal a network’s worth of executives and managers who are willing and able to explain questions I may have about the way networks operate. This means, for instance, when I needed to know about scheduling terms and methodologies relating to The CW’s recent schedules, I have been able to talk to executives where I work for context.

When I needed to be able to explain why an upfront sales period was so important to a network, I had the ability to ask ad sales, brand, and programming researchers how to describe the phenomenon. Finally, since the people I work with have themselves worked at many different 21 media companies – e.g., CBS, , NBCUniversal, and Scripps, amongst others – the people

I work with who are professionals in the field have been able to provide me with a sounding board for the types of economic and structural questions I have had in the process of writing this research. For example, in 2007, when the industry transitioned to selling advertising spots on the basis of C3 ratings versus live program ratings, I could receive stories first-hand about the impact that major change had on people who worked in the industry. In general, working in TV while engaging this project has given it richer depth than I feel I would have been able to give it otherwise.

A second reason my professional experience has contributed my research is that working directly in the television industry in my position has brought clarity and context to The CW’s place within the competitive landscape. Given the constraints of the academy, few communications programs have access to expensive Nielsen databases or other practical TV data with which television networks define their competition. Due to my job, I have developed an in- depth industry literacy that has helped me to understand incentives and rationales for network decisions. For example, when I read that trade industry journalists were questioning, in the spring of 2006, why from The WB was not a part of The CW’s inaugural schedule

(instead, the network chose to pick up another season of the lower-rated ), I knew before reading the network president’s comments that the reason was a demographic choice, rather than a play for larger ratings. (Everwood’s audience was older than One Tree Hill’s, and the network was aiming for a younger, more targeted viewer base). The reason I knew this is because these are the kinds of insights I provide to my network clients on a daily basis using ratings data. As a ratings analyst, I am on the frontlines every day providing information about 22 where a show should be scheduled, how many viewers we anticipate it will have, and after it airs, who were the people who watched it.

However, due to the fact that I work at a network that is ultimately a competitor to The

CW, and the nature of the media industry, it constrained my ability to conduct official interviews of either trade industry personnel or executives at The CW. Not only would this provide an awkward situation for both the interviewee and myself due to our various corporate connections, it would be potentially troublesome due to contractual constraints. (My company is, however, aware that this is my dissertation topic, and that it has been my topic prior to my connection with their company.) Some of this is because of The CW’s longevity. Since The CW is still a functioning network as of the fall of 2017, I do not have the benefit of a retrospective account of what happened; unlike Munk’s (2004) book about the failed AOL-Time Warner merger, this network is still in business, and what happens to it is privileged information.

Other constraints had to do with pending business deals: due to regulatory and structural issues surrounding a hotly contested merger, Time Warner, one-half of The CW’s parents (and to be discussed with publicly available data in later chapters), is on further lockdown regarding any information centered on how their networks function. Unfortunately in this situation, The CW functions under the auspices of Time Warner, not CBS. While I knew when I chose this topic that there would be unique challenges to the writing of recent history, I had no way of foreseeing that this company would undergo an attempted corporate merger with the largest telecommunications company in the world (AT&T) in October of 2016. Due to a myriad of circumstances, Time Warner and AT&T are still awaiting word, one year later, that the merger will or will not be approved by the U.S. Department of Justice. In the meantime, this has meant that all departments at Time Warner are more conservative than ever, and the company’s already 23 siloed structure (also to be discussed later) is even more stringent. Again, I could not have seen this coming at exactly the moment it did, and while it has made it more difficult to get information about the network, it only re-establishes the importance of writing about The CW and its corporate parentage at this point in time.

While I understand that this means this dissertation will lack the primary research and trade journalist interviews that could have made it a richer discovery of the network’s history, I am confident that my informal “sounding-board” conversations with those with whom I worked, and my own immersion in the television industry and its workings, helped contextualize the data

I was able to collect, and to separate the wheat from the chaff in this data.

The Structure of This Dissertation

In sum, this history aims to compile the first academic history of The CW Television

Network from its inception to the present, incorporating economic, programming, and industry materials in order to develop the most complete picture of a struggling network in times of immense change in the television landscape. Most importantly, this history attempts to create a holistic view of the network, taking into account more than any one element of the network’s image, from its marketing to its programming to its profitability.

In a world where broadcast networks are working harder than ever before to maintain viewers – and their cable counterparts are beginning to dwindle under the competition from streaming and on-demand services – the media landscape is changing faster than ever before.

The CW was born into this world, and as this history aims to show, The CW’s adolescence as a network has been and will continue to be a facet of the wider television ecosystem into which it 24 was created. The future of The CW, simply put, is the future of all low-performing networks surviving under corporate parentage. As this history will show, the future is now.

As will be shown in the following chapter listing, the chapters of this history will be organized in such a way as to highlight both chronology and thematic approaches to the network.

Each chronological period has been chosen specifically because it outlines several themes in the life of The CW.

In the next chapter, I will outline a relevant history of television’s economic, regulatory, and financial issues that pertain both to the creation of The CW itself and its predecessor networks, The WB and UPN. This chapter places The CW in the context of its medium, describing how a specific set of influences and events needed to occur so the network could come to exist. Further, chapter 2 situates The CW in the kind of middle-ground in which it now exists – as a broadcast network with a unique financial model, corporate parentage, and in the midst of industrial change and corporate conglomeration.

In chapter 3, I will briefly explore the two networks who would become The CW, expanding on the financial and regulatory concerns of chapter 2 in the context of Warner Bros.’

The WB and Paramount/Viacom/CBS Corporation’s UPN. This chapter will also visit the programming and demographic goals of both networks, explaining why the merger of the female, drama-heavy, white-skewing WB and the male, comedy-heavy, black-skewing UPN further helped to confuse critics when the networks combined in January 2006. Perhaps more importantly, I will, in chapter 3, describe how The WB and UPN’s ownership and their low- ranked status amongst the other English-language broadcast TV networks directly led to the creation of their similarly low-ranked successor. 25

Chapter 4 explains, in detail, the first two seasons of The CW’s life as a network, from

January 2006 to May 2008, taking us through the network’s first upfront presentation for advertisers, its first hybrid schedule comprised of WB and UPN programs, and the failures of its ratings. In the network’s first season, it found itself unable to launch a new program outside of

WB and UPN content, and experienced critical and popular press derision for everything from its choice of logo, color, name, and brand. In the network’s second season, it launched a tentpole show it would come to be known for, but even that program – Gossip Girl – did not provide ratings successes for the network. However, the business innovations of the network that foreshadowed later industry trends, including advertising-oriented initiatives and an attention to the digital lives of desired viewers, began to take root during this time. But this chapter is mainly a story of a new network that struggled. Between its unsuccessful content, a 100-day

WGA writers’ strike, and an industrial transition in the metric advertisers use to purchase airtime, predicted the network would shut down at the end of the 2007-

2008 television season. How could a network continue to exist if it was unsuccessful by all traditional metrics?

The answer to that question would persist, as the network moved into the 2008-2009 television season, covered in chapter 5. Why would The CW’s corporate parents continue to bankroll a network that was rumored to be losing $40-50 million per year? As a result of its mixed ownership, The CW was allowed to innovate in ways that other networks could not, and its small value to its corporate owners meant it was allowed freedoms that larger networks could not have undertaken without significant financial risk. These become apparent during the network’s next four seasons. Publicly, executives like CBS’s Les Moonves argued that the network had value, but not as a venue for top-dollar advertisements; rather, the network provided 26 a way to reach socially savvy young adults and a first-run outlet for content that could then be sold into syndication. Regardless, The CW persisted, focused on its narrow 18-34 female demographic and premiering teen-queen content like The Vampire Diaries. Chapter 5 will explore the next four seasons of The CW’s existence, from fall of 2008 to spring of 2012. In this time period, the network gains a new brand image, and loses most vestiges of its predecessor networks, including its president, , who was replaced by Mark Pedowitz in the spring of 2011.

How Pedowitz influences the network in the ensuing four television seasons (2012-2016) will be explored in chapter 6. One of the hallmarks of his reign atop the network is the extensive and integrated use of DC superhero content throughout the network’s schedule, partially because it is some of the network’s most successful viewership-wise but also because of new leadership at Warner Bros., which made DC characters more available to the network. The network’s brand shifted to a more male-focused, older-skewing audience, shedding most of the youthful teens and expensive surroundings of Gossip Girl and 90210. During this time, The CW began to prove that it did have viewership, some of which was outside the confines of linear TV, and that the innovating that it had started relatively early in its existence was about to pay off with critical successes and proof of the network’s non-linear viewership.

Chapter 7 concludes this dissertation with a discussion of the ways The CW’s innovations have impacted the world of television, from its ability to develop a mature, stable brand to becoming an early “multi-platform network,” interested in attracting viewers to its non- linear platforms in addition to its standard channel. In ten years, the network has cultivated an audience that it can monetize both on traditional television and on alternative platforms. This chapter will argue that, in the context of a fractured televisual environment, The CW is at the 27 forefront of network innovation, even if it doesn’t have CBS’s high quantities of traditional viewers to show for it.

28

Chapter 2:

A Brief History of Television Regulation and Programming as it Pertains to The CW

Sometimes, when we watch media from the past, we get the innate feeling that we’re watching remnants of a bygone era, relics from a period long gone and perhaps, even forgotten.

Every television network and every piece of content, then, is a product of the time and place in which it was developed, where everything from talent to technology has been influenced by those particular historical moments. More than what airs on television screens, though, are the regulatory and economic structures that have allowed for them to exist in the first place.

Nowhere are these rules more restrictive – and more apparent – than in the history of broadcast television. Several regulatory policies both in the recent past and in television’s more distant history have influenced the creation of a network like The CW, including the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules and the Dual Network Rule. These regulatory issues, paired with economic concerns like the increased consolidation of ownership and increased reliance on corporate-owned intellectual property assets, became the basis for The CW’s existence and content choices. Finally, with demographic changes especially from the 1990s-2010s and generational changes in traditional television viewership, all networks experienced a decline in overall viewership, especially amongst younger viewers (Parsons, 2008; Eastman & Ferguson,

2013, 2009). As of this writing, the core of ad-supported television’s profit model is at risk.

FCC Regulatory Influences in Television History

Regulatory changes have, throughout the history of television, had an extremely influential role on the content of television networks as well as network structure in general. In fact, the regulation of the broadcast television industry began with its precursor, the 29 industry, which had been initially guided by the Radio Act of 1927, and then by the

Communications Act of 1934 as the medium became more pervasive in Americans’ lives

(Douglas, 2004; Einstein, 2004b; Gomery, 2008; Hilmes, 1990). Especially pertinent

(inadvertently) to the creation of The CW are regulations designed to prevent standardization and uniformity of programming. Fearing the overall power and monopolizing influence of broadcast television, the FCC has set regulations on networks that would promote “diversity” of content.

These regulations recognize that the FCC is not in the business of making financial constraints on networks but rather on assuring that content is as diverse as possible, coming from a variety of sources and, ideally, depicting a variety of viewpoints (“FCC’s review of the broadcast ownership rules,” 2016). By the time television was cemented as a stable, consistent medium that had realized high saturation levels amongst the American public -- around the late 1950s -- three broadcast television networks had established themselves as the face of television: NBC, CBS, and ABC (Gomery, 2008). A fourth network – Dumont, which will be discussed later – had been established, but had not been able to sustain itself as long as the other three. For , three broadcast networks made up the majority of the television universe for the millions of households who owned a television set. Because of the high barriers and cost of entry into the television market, it was presumably impossible for any potential network to compete with the

Big 3, as they were known at the time. Further, those three networks had all established themselves as radio networks first, meaning that they had time, and more importantly, connections, in the affiliate marketplace – they were able to acquire the strongest local stations as affiliates and keep as business partners in their networks for long periods of time, and subsequently, advertisers (Sterling & Kittross, 2002; Socolow, 2016; Weinstein, 2004; Gomery, 30

2008). Providing content is one major way in which networks achieve this (Gomery, 2008;

Sterling & Kittross, 2002).

How Networks Disseminate Content

Understanding affiliate structure, as a result, is an essential prerequisite to a history of any broadcast television network in the . Affiliates, or stations in local markets that agree to air the national network’s content during specific times of the day and “affiliate” themselves with that particular national network, have traditionally been provided content to air in local markets on behalf of their national brand, but also may “pre-empt” national programming if that programming may be deemed as objectionable to local audiences or if local programming has greater appeal. Networks, with the notable exception of Fox, have paid affiliates to carry their content (Biagi, 2013; Carter, 1999b).

In addition to compensation fees, affiliates also generate revenue by selling local advertising spots during network programming, as well as during syndicated programming and their locally produced programming. With the introduction of cable, the affiliates developed an additional revenue stream. Affiliates also are paid by cable providers (e.g., Comcast, or other multichannel video programming distributor), for the right to carry that affiliate and its content on their cable systems, some of which is national network content; these are called

“retransmission consent” fees, often chosen by affiliates in lieu of an alternative, known as

“must-carry” (Hiltzik, 2011; Cable carriage of broadcast stations, 2015; Parsons, 2008). As a result, although affiliates often stay for many years with a network, they also can change networks, and in periods of broadcast realignment, stations in markets across the country switch their affiliations from one national network to another or from an independent station to an 31 affiliated one. High-profile affiliate changes have occurred in television history, even in some of the largest markets. For example, Littleton (2016g) writes of the creation of NBC

(WBTS), which took over as the city’s NBC affiliate after network owner NBC wanted to own its affiliate in that market, which it had not for the past two decades.

This discussion of affiliates has to be further refined, though, as not all local stations have the ability to switch affiliations. Those that are O&O stations, owned-and-operated by the national network, cannot change their network associations unless the national network sells them (Disney even considered selling theirs in 2013, according to Ramachandran & Hagey,

2013). In the life of a new broadcast network long after broadcast television’s dominance was over, finding and keeping affiliates without parental ownership would become even more of an issue than ever before. Further, new models of compensation as implemented by Fox, which would require affiliates to pay for the privilege of airing network content, will become of particular relevance to The CW and its primary predecessor, The WB.

Fin-Syn and PTAR – FCC Regulation to Protect Diversity

Realizing that the networks would act in their own best financial interest, which, subsequently, meant limiting their content to property they could own outright, the FCC in 1970 established a series of related rules entitled the “Financial Interest and Syndication Rules,” shortened to “fin-syn” (Einstein, 2004a; Einstein, 2004b). In association with the Prime Time

Access Rule (PTAR), which took the prime 7p hour away from broadcasters’ financial interests -- typically operationalized as their network’s programming -- and forced them to carry

“independent” content in its place, the regulations were, as expected, hated by the networks

(Eastman, Head, & Klein, 1985). These rules would, in the minds of broadcast networks, 32 interfere with two major aspects of their business model. The first of these dealt with “financial interest” in programming, meaning that networks were not able to own all of the content they aired on their networks in prime time. Again, the FCC’s regulatory mission was not to interfere with the way TV networks made money; rather, they meant to enable the creation and distribution of content that was made by “independent” sources (Einstein, 2004a; Einstein,

2004b). In the idealism of the FCC in 1970, this would mean that independent production companies – Mary Tyler Moore’s MTM Productions was one of these, notes Hesmondhalgh

(2007) – would take over as major producers of content. The “little guy,” however metaphorical that would turn out to be, would have his/her voice heard on hegemonic broadcast television.

In reality, what fin-syn and PTAR did was allow for a group of content-makers and producers who had found it difficult before then to get into the television business to gain the so- called “independent” status that would garner them serious entry into the industry. One such group of syndicators specialized in first-run syndication, which exploited regulation like PTAR to establish long-term moneymakers like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! that came to fill up schedules in the 7-8pm daypart. Among these independent production companies and syndicators were and Enterprises (Littleton, 2015a;

Yoshihara, 1986). But more relevant to this discussion is the second group. That group was the major Hollywood studios, which had no majority ownership stake in the currently existing major networks or much of their content, and had spent decades trying to get their claws into the

TV pipeline (Einstein, 2004b; Einstein, 2004a; Hesmondhalgh, 2007). (DuMont had had a 40% stake from , but the network was long gone by 1970; for more on DuMont, see Weinstein’s (2004) comprehensive text). Now, with fin-syn increasing the “diversity” of network content by limiting the networks’ production capabilities, the film studios found their 33 big break. No longer a walled garden, fin-syn impacted the television industry in more influential ways than it would seem in 1970.

The second half of the rules, dealing with “syndication,” were designed in tandem with those relating to financial interest, limiting how much impact broadcast networks would have once the initial runs of their programs were over (Gitlin, 2000). If broadcast networks could have ownership of all their content, as the FCC feared, they would be motivated not by increasing diversity on their networks but rather by what they felt they could sell into syndication later

(Moore, Bensman, & Van Dyke, 2006). Essentially, the second life of all television programs, for networks, is where their programming airs after its initial run. If the network owns its own content, produced via its related production companies, it alone reaps the proceeds of any sales of content on other stations or networks. For someone else’s content, the network’s long-term rewards aren’t nearly as great. For example, Warner Bros. TV, producer of top CBS comedy The

Big Bang Theory, has benefited greatly from the program’s success, which “has generated well north of $1 billion in syndication revenue since its off-network debut in 2011” (Littleton, 2016f).

While both CBS and WBTV get proceeds from the sales, WBTV’s payoff is greater; at the end of the day, WBTV owns the show, not CBS. If CBS had produced the show in-house, via their

CBS Television Studios , they would have reaped all rewards from the show’s massive success. Syndication sales would become even more important once audiences would disperse themselves between cable networks and streaming services, as viewers came to have the expectation that they could access content in many places, on their schedules.

Ownership itself was also under particular regulatory constraints during the 1970s. Not only were networks initially bound by how many O&Os they could own, but the ownership of networks themselves was also under the purview of the FCC. Using a similar rationale relating to 34 maintaining diversity, none of the Big 3 networks could purchase each other, ensuring, in their view, that the market would not end up a monopoly of one network, thereby limiting consumer choice to the offerings of one corporation (“F.C.C. repeals network rule,” 2001; “FCC’s review of the broadcast ownership rules,” 2016). At least with three big networks, the FCC could ensure the diversity of three distinct corporations in charge. With the Big 3 busy fighting fin-syn and the dawn of popular cable networks providing viewers with alternate content, this opened the door for another broadcast network to enter an increasingly crowded marketplace.

A New Network, New Affiliate Structures, and the End of Fin-Syn

In 1986, the first new broadcast network in years would program its first primetime schedule. was born out of the Twentieth Century Fox Group, Rupert

Murdoch’s media , which included the Twentieth Century Corporation. For in that era, one of the broadcast networks would be directly owned by a parent company that was primarily a . Fox craftily used FCC rules and guidelines to develop itself as an edgier, younger-skewing “programming service,” that was not bound by fin-syn because it wasn’t yet classified as a full “network” (Kaplan, 1985). A “network” designation constituted a service that programmed 15 hours of content to at least 25 affiliated stations over a coverage area of at least 10 states (Kaplan, 1985). Fox, from the start, intended on using Fox assets for its TV network and after the development of cable channel FX in 1994, took fully owned assets and placed them on FX; early on, Fox realized the difficulties in developing cost- effective content for FX and for several years, the network subsisted on a schedule of Fox repeats (see Hettrick, 1997, for the example of The X-Files; see Wen, 1995, for a description of early FX content; Huff, 2001, discusses FX’s history, programming, and entrance into the NYC 35 market). While the Big 3 were initially skeptical at the power of the newest broadcaster, they saw that Fox had a big advantage by being able to own its own programming, integrate it with its film assets, and take that content to program a wholly owned cable network. By 2000, Fox had established itself as an edgy brand willing to take chances, cementing its status as a force with which to be reckoned (Steinberg, 2011a). The Big 3 became the Big 4.

One of the ways Fox achieved dominance as a broadcast television network was its reliance on network-owned affiliates, part of a wider attempt by film studios to enter the television industry at long last. One of ’s strategic moves in the lead-up to the creation of the network consisted of the acquisition of the station group of six networks that would form the basis of his new network. The rest of the network’s affiliates at launch (reaching 80 percent of the country) were independent stations signed on by Fox

Broadcasting Company’s first president, . Programs reached affiliates by satellite

(Harmetz, 1986). Further, Fox’s independent affiliates were primarily UHF stations, but 4 of the top 10 markets – with the highest market share – were VHF stations, with low dial placements likely to garner substantial viewership (, 1986). Because of Murdoch’s (and

Kellner’s) proactive stance on acquiring networks both by ownership and through affiliation, the

Fox network started out on solid footing with regards to coverage area and the possibility that viewers would be able to locate the new channel.

Subsequently, this is one of the key innovations developed by the Fox network, and its existence is owed in large part to FCC changes that allowed for easier access to affiliates for new national networks. As an illustration of this drastic increase in potential affiliates, the FCC reported that in 1970, there were 691 commercial television stations in the U.S.: 183 UHF channels and the remainder VHF. By the end of 1990, when Fox had just begun to take off as a 36 network, that number had grown to 1,117: 564 UHF and 553 VHF commercial TV stations. This increase would only continue into the 1990s and early , and by the month The CW began broadcasting, at the end of September 2006, the FCC reported that there were 1,373 commercial stations, the majority of them UHF (“Broadcast station totals,” 2016”).

The drastic rise in UHF stations over that 35-year period was aided by several FCC regulations that made it easier for viewers to find stations that at earlier times in television history would have been difficult to help build audiences for national networks. The first of these changes was the All-Channel Receiver Bill of 1962, in which the FCC undertook legislation to mandate that all television sets sold in the U.S. would have to provide viewers with access to the frequencies utilized by UHF stations (Longley, 1969). The goal was to level the playing field between the more desirable, lower-dial-placement VHF stations and the less popular, but technologically advanced, UHF ones. The underutilization of UHF channels was, in part, the

FCC’s own doing, when in 1945, it decided that 13 VHF channels would be enough for all of

TV, assuming that when UHF technology was available, it would be able to supplement those initial VHF ones (Longley, 1969). By the time that happened, in the early 1950s, established

VHF stations protested the competition of UHF ones, and this left the FCC in the midst of another quandary – how could they make UHF stations more popular, and thus provide able to provide more diverse content to viewers? The All-Channel Receiver Bill of 1962, as a result, was their answer to a worsening divide between the success of VHF and UHF stations. While this legislative ruling also came along with other legislation that called for VHF and UHF stations to be deintermixed in several markets, so that stations of both frequencies could compete more equally, the impact of the technological innovation, the tuners, was perhaps the most profound. Despite being initially protested by the television manufacturing industry as an 37 impediment due to the increased costs of TV sets, the bill that mandated UHF tuners was ultimately successful. In the early 1960s, 5.5% of television sets sold in the country were able to receive UHF signals; by 1967, that number had already increased to 42.1%. UHF was becoming a viable option for commercial television stations (Longley, 1969).

Further, in 1985, the FCC undertook an administrative decision commonly referred to as the “UHF discount,” whereby ownership of UHF stations counted less towards national station ownership caps than did VHF stations. The initial thinking behind the policy was this: since UHF stations had, historically, worse analog signals than VHF ones, UHF stations were “worth less” to station owner groups (a technological factor which is not an issue in digital TV). As a result, the FCC allowed these station groups to only count half the reach of their UHF stations towards the nationwide coverage cap (Johnson, 2017a). (Under the Obama administration, this policy was briefly eliminated by the FCC, but was reinstated in April 2017 under the Trump administration, a change in the best interest of station groups. For more on recent innovations regarding this policy, see Johnson, 2017a.) If UHF stations counted less towards an ownership group’s national maximum, there was a much greater appeal to make commercial use of them, and for station owner groups to purchase them. Those UHF stations needed content, if they were to become commercially successful, and networks like Fox would step into that role.

The institution of the UHF discount would be among several 1980s’ innovations that relaxed ownership restrictions on television stations. In 1984, the FCC raised the limit on the formerly “7-7-7 rule,” which limited both individuals and companies from owning more than 7 broadcast TV stations (5 VHF and 2 UHF), 7 AM and 7 FM radio stations, to 12 of each.

Significantly, “The new 12-12-12 rule makes no distinction between UHF and VHF ownership.

As a result, broadcasting companies are likely to pursue VHF stations, which are often larger” 38

(Jones, 1984; Benjamin, 2004). Jones (1984) also cited analysts’ speculation that the change in regulation would drive down the value of UHF stations, which would seemingly open them up to purchase by emerging network chains in the next 2 decades. Along with the expanded 12-12-12 rule was a stipulation that ownership could not cover in excess of 25% of the country’s national television audience (e.g., a company could not own stations that covered more than 25% of all of

America’s potential TV viewers) so as to allow for greater diversity of perspective in media

(Benjamin, 2004).

The most striking deregulation, however, that would impact broadcast stations and their owners came with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In this sweeping piece of legislation, which impacted almost every area of the media sector, the aforementioned 25% nationwide cap on ownership was expanded to 35%, including the “UHF discount,” and the 12-12-12 rule was eliminated (Benjamin, 2004). Fox itself even sued to have the FCC reconsider its 35% cap; the court made the FCC reconsider the rule and the agency settled on an astonishing 45% cap until agreeing upon the current 39% in place today; see Johnson (2017a), Benjamin (2004), and Fox

Television Stations, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission (2002). The impact of these changes transformed the local television market in the past three decades – this was the world into which the Fox network was born, and in which The WB and UPN would become The CW.

In the same period of time, partially due to the influence of Fox’s strong affiliate structure and the encroaching position of cable networks gaining popularity with viewers, the FCC also repealed all the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules in 1995 (Eastman & Ferguson, 2009).

Broadcast networks were again free to program as they pleased. This meant that film studios needed an alternate method of entry into the television market once again, which also meant that companies whose business had previously existed of producing content could acquire or develop 39 businesses that could distribute that content. In the ensuing years, ABC would be purchased by the Company; CBS would be acquired by Viacom, then-owner of Paramount

Pictures; and NBC’s parent, General Electric, would merge with ’s Universal Studios

(Fabrikant, 1995; Mifflin, 1999; Gilpin, 2003). By the mid-2000s, all four major broadcast networks would be associated with film studios by ownership. At the same time, they would also be developing and purchasing cable networks that simultaneously cannibalized their own viewers whilst creating new markets for content.

Regulation Allowing for the Creation of “Emerging Networks”

In the meantime, the FCC paved the way for the creation of new, “emerging” networks.

One of these was Time Warner and its Warner Bros. studio, who as of yet had not owned a broadcast network, developed emerging network The WB in 1995. More complicated was

Viacom’s Paramount creation of the United Paramount Network (UPN) in the same year (Carter,

1995a). When Viacom acquired CBS in 2000, it appeared the company would be in violation of the Dual Network rule, which had long prevented two broadcast networks from consolidating ownership. The FCC literally changed the rule for Viacom, which became able to own both CBS and UPN on a technicality – that UPN was classified as an “emerging” network (“F.C.C. repeals network rule,” 2001). But since the FCC does not make rule changes for specific networks, it had to change the rule for emerging networks in total, allowing for one of the Big 4 to own The WB if so desired, as well.

This change allowed for the creation and sustainment of smaller broadcast networks since there was no stipulation against ownership. For example, UPN could afford to be a failing network – the last-ranked network in English-language broadcasting for the entire period of its 40 existence – because its corporate parents would bankroll it regardless. A large enough company owned the majority of The WB – despite the fact that one of the Big 4 networks never purchased it – that it never needed to perform well ratings-wise to justify its existence. For reasons that will be discussed in the next chapter, neither network experienced the kind of successes that Fox saw after a decade in business. But due to this regulatory change in the Dual Network Rule, it became clear that the “emerging” networks – e.g., the networks that had no hope of competing with the hegemonic and economic power of the Big 4 – could be bought up and made a smaller asset of one of those larger networks. This thinking – that one of the Big 4 could and would purchase a smaller emerging network competitor merely for the sake of buying up broadcast air – directly leads to the development of The CW.

These regulatory issues, though, also gestured at wider changes within the media and its corporate lineage. The aforementioned amendments to the Dual Network Rule depict larger consolidation amongst the few media corporations that already existed; for a critique of the consolidation of media ownership occurring at this time, see Bagdikian (2000), and earlier editions of his seminal text, The Media Monopoly. By allowing larger networks to purchase emerging ones, it can create a two-fold point of contention for television as an industry: in one reading of the situation, it could allow for the creation of more diversity within network groups, whereas if networks were in true competition with networks owned by other firms, they may have chosen other platforms and forms of content. An example from cable TV is the content- differentiated TBS and TNT networks, owned by Turner (Time Warner) and managed together, with the former now specializing in comedy, the latter in drama. If TBS and TNT were external competitors, e.g., not members of the same network group ultimately distributed by cable providers in one package bundle, there would be less impetus to create networks that 41 complemented each other, but rather acted as direct competitors that aimed to cannibalize each other’s prospective audiences rather than add to them. In another reading of network consolidation, however, the prospect of fewer network owners creates more opportunities for networks already in power to extend the life and longevity of their own corporate brands, further excluding independent voices from entering an already exclusive industry with high costs of entry and, sometimes, extended periods without financial reward.

While consolidation is generally assumed to be negative by telecommunications industry observers, the FCC, Department of Justice, and SEC continue to allow consolidation of media ownership, and this organizational structure allows for several issues to arise within the industry

(Bagdikian, 2000; Baker, 2007). One of these impacts is very simple: when media companies are allowed to horizontally and vertically integrate, they create fewer separate corporate entities for media creation, distribution, and exhibition, and, in an already limited industry, fewer employment opportunities for future television professionals. There is extremely limited ownership at the present in all forms of television, as Table 1 and Figure 1 show. Table 1 categorizes cable networks by their associated broadcast networks, and is current through

February of 2017. Figure 1 expands upon one of these companies, one of The CW’s parents,

Time Warner, Inc., and its high-level current television ownership structure.

42

Table 1. Broadcast television networks, their parent corporations, and their associated U.S. cable networks, February 2017.

ABC NBC CBS FOX The CW (Walt Disney (Comcast) (CBS (21st Century (Warner Company) Corp./Viacom)5 Fox Group) Bros./CBS) USA As CBS Corp: FX From Time Disney XD Bravo Showtime FXX12 Warner: Oxygen Smithsonian FXM HBO Freeform CBS Sports CNN ESPN6 Esquire TBS ESPN 2 Network9 As Viacom: 1 TNT ESPN 3 CLOO10 ESPN U Chiller Nick Jr. National Cartoon A&E Networks7 E! MTV Geographic Network (Lifetime, A&E, Sprout MTV2 MyNetworkTV Boomerang FYI, Crime & MSNBC VH1 Hulu TCM Investigation, CNBC Logo truTV13 History, LMN, Hulu Comedy Central Hulu Viceland) BET Hulu8 TV Land CMT Spike11

5 After Viacom and CBS split in 2006, most of the cable networks remained with Viacom, but as of this writing, rumors abound of CBS Corp. merging with Viacom again due to Viacom’s poor financial health (Lee, 2016). 6 Disney owns 80% of ESPN. The remaining 20% is owned by Hearst (but the company is operated by Disney; ESPN, Inc. Fact Sheet, 2016). 7 A&E is a 50-50 partnership of Disney and Hearst, after Comcast sold its minority stake in 2012 (Flint, 2012a). 8 Disney, Comcast, and Fox each own 30% of subscription video on-demand service Hulu. Time Warner purchased the remaining 10% in 2016 (Ramachandran & Beilfuss, 2016). 9 NBC announced that would be shutting down in the summer of 2017 (Holloway, 2017). 10 CLOO shut down in February 2017 (Umstead, 2017). 11 In February 2017, Viacom announced that Spike would be rebranded as the Paramount Network, set to in 2018 (Andreeva, 2017a; Andreeva, 2017b; Andreeva, 2017c). 12 FXX was formerly . The sports net was rebranded due to low ratings in 2013 (Andreeva, 2013b). 13 Court TV was wholly acquired by Time Warner in 2006 (Karnitschnig, 2006). It was rebranded as truTV in 2008 (Eddy, 2015). 43

Figure 1. Television properties of Time Warner, Inc., as of late 2017, a practical example of the positive impact on variety caused by consolidated media ownership (Time Warner, Inc., 2017).

Time Warner, Inc.

HBO Warner Bros. Turner

HBO Kids/Youn HBO WBTV DC Ent. News Ent. Channels g Adults

TBS, TNT, The CW CNN TCM, (50%) Cartoon Network, truTV Adult Swim, Boomerang

44

Economic Influences on Television Networks – Consolidation and Differentiation

But now for the good news: some media economics scholars argue that media consolidation, contrary to popular belief, actually increases variety for consumers, to an extent

(Berry & Waldfogel, 2001).14 In fact, this argument provides the very rationale given for the merger of the Sirius and XM satellite radio companies: that a combination of the two networks would provide wider consumer choice (Boucher, 2007). This is certainly the case in the television industry, whereby major parent corporations are able to own a wide variety of networks that provide customers with a variety of genres of content, but which perform to varying degrees of success. In essence, the corporation’s larger, more commercially successful networks hold up the less-successful smaller networks, the latter of which typically provide niche content to small, dedicated audiences. Without the major corporate parentage backing those smaller networks, they would not all be able to survive on their current carriage fees and advertiser revenues, thereby limiting consumer content choice; this is also the argument against à la carte cable pricing (Nocera, 2007).

This was consistently the case in television history, particularly in cable television, where channels proliferated at staggering numbers starting in the mid-1980s, increasing the amount of content available exponentially15. As FX and other networks of its ilk began developing their

14 Not all media scholars feel this way regarding the positive effects of media consolidation. Bagdikian, in The Media Monopoly, disagrees with it, as does Baker (2007). Compaine (1995) and Gomery (2008), in contrast, do feel that consolidation can create diversity. However, from a purely economic standpoint, consolidation does provide the positive effects elucidated by Berry and Waldfogel (2001). 15 This is not to say that the new content provided is necessarily differentiated content, or that the content provided is at its core “different” from that already provided, particularly in a political economic reading of the situation. However, the addition of cable networks, which came to include network owners bundling their network properties for carriage by cable providers, increased the amount of content that was available in sum. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission (1994, “Turner I”) and Turner v. FCC (1997, “Turner II”) 45 own new programming, networks became more and more niche, less “general programming service” than targeted at, in Turow’s (1998) words, specific “image tribes,” determined not only to keep certain viewers in, but also to keep certain viewers away. MTV is for young, hip lovers (at least originally), CMT is for family-oriented, Southern country-music lovers, and

Freeform (formerly ABC Family, Fox Family, and the Family Channel) is for young-adults who loved soap-opera-quality drama full of heartthrobs and (Shine, 2015, explains the history of Freeform). As choice became abundant, cable networks in particular found themselves required to take a stance on their desired consumer, and networks with several re-brands under their belts – like Spike and truTV – have found it difficult to shed their past identities with audiences not keen on finding new television homes after their preferred networks have chosen to evict them whilst redeveloping their brands. The CW, subsequently, finds itself in a precarious position. As a broadcaster, the network should, if logic persists, act like its peers in terms of programming. What has happened to the network in reality is quite the opposite. Instead, for a myriad of reasons that this history will attempt to discuss, The CW has formed its own image tribe by programming like a cable network, one that celebrates the fanboy/fangirl through the teen queens and adrenaline dreams of its content.

Economic Benefits of Owned Intellectual Property

But The CW has not been able to develop this niche programming strategy all on its own.

The majority of the network’s schedule today is the culmination of Warner Bros.-owned

help to establish the fight that cable network groups undertook as they fought for more space on cable operator head-ends. The cases stemmed from Cable Act of 1992, defining “must-carry” regulations, wherein local cable operators were required to carry local broadcast channels. Implementing must-carry meant that there was space for fewer cable channels to be delivered to a given region. Pliska (1998) discusses more about the implications of the Turner cases. 46 intellectual property, which is a fate that often befalls networks operating under a consolidated media enterprise in a post fin-syn broadcast television environment. Like Meehan (1991) described in her seminal article, “Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!,” IP owned by one corporate parent can experience multiple usages across corporate entities. Although not specifically addressed by Meehan, what this means for viewers is that they should expect to see more of corporate IP assets as the value of linear television dwindles. This can seem relatively nefarious in works like Meehan’s, and from a political economic perspective generally, this integration of IP across TV business units brings up issues similar to the FCC’s concerns about diversity – the underlying rationale for fin-syn.

The economic benefits of utilizing parent corporation-owned IP are evident. When networks make use of their own IP instead of licensing other content, they reduce their overhead expenses on content that has no guarantee of good performance and further promote their own product lines and content as it is adapted in other contexts. Of further concern to political economists like Meehan, though, is the threat of continued consolidation primarily to acquire IP that can then be used at a reduced rate in the corporation’s other media entities. Warner Bros. led the way in this process, acquiring DC Comics before it had even designed a consistent strategy regarding what they planned to do with the comic-book-maker’s content, especially as it pertained to live-action television programming. Originally housed with Warner Bros.’s film assets, WB had made films based on DC content (to varying degrees of success), but the company had not yet figured out a solid strategy for feeding DC’s work to the already strong

WBTV development pipeline for live-action content (Littleton, 2015b). As this history will illustrate, decades after it first acquired the comics publisher, Warner Bros. finally integrated

DC’s owned and licensed IP into its own production structures – which included feeding DC 47

Comics characters directly into The CW’s content (Littleton, 2015b). The impact of owned IP cannot be overstated enough, in the case of The CW, as the network has literally rebranded its entire image around the superheroes that now call the network its home.

Consolidation and Increased Ownership of IP

A more extreme example of acquiring content for its valuable IP in addition to pre- existing production resources portends more consolidation yet to come in the media industry. In

2009, Comcast began the process of formally acquiring NBCUniversal (former parent: General

Electric), a combination film-TV studio with broadcast and cable television assets as well as several theme parks (Peers, Jannarone, & Linebaugh, 2013). By 2013, the FCC had approved the merger and Comcast purchased the remaining 49% of NBCU from General Electric – with some hefty stipulations meant to protect consumers from predatory pricing and from Comcast limiting distribution of NBC and its cable networks from other cable operators (Steel, 2016b; Peers,

Jannarone, & Linebaugh, 2013). This was the first instance of a telecommunications provider being allowed to purchase major entertainment assets, and effectively owning not just MVPD

(“multichannel video programming distributor,” as described by Eggerton, 2012) services but video content and exhibition since the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States vs. Paramount

(1948), which forcibly called for the end of the . Further, the increasing power of telecommunications companies like Comcast brought forth memories of the original AT&T and its forced breakup into “Ma Bell” and the “Baby Bells” officially undertaken in 1984 (Pagliery,

2014, describes the breakup of the original AT&T).

As it turns out, Comcast would not be the last cable provider to try to get in on the content creation and distribution game. In October of 2016, AT&T announced that it wanted to 48 acquire Time Warner, Inc. for $85 billion, after a previous failed takeover bid by 21st Century

Fox Group in 2014 (Peers & Hagey, 2014; de la Merced, 2016). Time Warner, having already divested itself of Time Inc.’s magazines, Warner Music, and ’s telecom infrastructure, currently has no business overlap with AT&T. The FCC announced in February

2017 that it is not expected to review the merger (Shepardson, 2017). The Trump administration did not appoint an antitrust official to review the merger terms until the Senate confirmed Makan

Delrahim, in September of 2017 (Johnson, 2017b). By October 2017, all countries impacted by the merger had approved the deal, but it was revealed that the Department of Justice was preparing litigation against AT&T, which would force the company to divest itself of DirecTV or for Time Warner to divest itself of its Turner unit in order for the deal to be approved

(Spangler, 2017b; de la Merced, Steel, Sorkin, & Kang, 2017). How this merger evolves, if it does at all, and its impact on The CW, if any, will be investigated in the course of this history. In the life of a network with already confounding corporate parentage, the importance of a possible

AT&T merger on this Time Warner-run network remains of issue.

Declining Viewership and the Impact of Cable

This FCC-approved consolidation of ownership was not the only driver of momentous changes within the television industry that eventually led to the CW, though. Changing tides in viewership trends also contributed to the state of TV networks in 2006 – and these are issues that continue to drive discussions of the medium and its business focus today. By 2000, it had become clear that overall broadcast ratings – the percentage of viewers with broadcast TV access that watched the network at any given time – were declining, indicating that fewer people were watching broadcast television in general (Smith & Shaw, 2016; SNL Kagan, 2016a & 2016b). 49

Broadcast networks, at the time, attributed this decline to the increase in popularity of cable networks and, by the mid-2000s, cable’s initial forays into original scripted content solidified their stance as real contenders in the marketplace of content (see on HBO

(1998-2004) and on FX (2002-2008), as two high-profile examples of this; Parsons,

2008, discusses the structural and regulatory issues surrounding cable’s content during this period; Lotz, 2007, discusses the content of these networks). Ironically, as the discussion of consolidation shows, most of these channels were owned by the same corporate parents as their broadcast counterparts, and as such, media conglomerates, in essence, cannibalized their own sources of revenue by funneling content to their owned cable channels.

Once cable channels like premium cable’s HBO and basic cable networks like FX entered the market, audiences found themselves with more choice than ever before. With the exception of HBO, many cable networks early in cable networks’ history were largely playing repeats of cheap films or broadcast sitcoms of decades past. But from the 1990s, they were no longer at the mercy of broadcast scraps, only getting to air shows years after they were created.

Now, cable was a force with which to be reckoned, and audiences quickly caught on to the edgier, often scripted dramas that celebrated what broadcasting couldn’t do – foul language, nudity, violence, and other explicit content. In addition to the aforementioned Sex and the City and The Shield, other “edgy” cable dramas went where broadcast wouldn’t dare tread. The early- to-mid 2000s saw a litany of these programs, from (1999-2007) and

(2002-2008) on HBO to Queer as Folk (2000-2005) on Showtime, and from Rescue Me (2004-

2011) on FX to (2007-2015) on AMC. These may not be the first-ever premium and basic cable scripted dramas, but they were the first to set off the wave of “edgy” programming that cable networks like TNT and USA would still try to emulate a decade later (Lotz, 2004 & 50

Mittell, 2006, discuss “quality” cable drama; Villarreal, 2014, discusses USA’s move from “blue skies” to edgy programming; Steinberg, 2014, discusses TNT’s move towards FX-like content).

The CW would get into dramatic television in a major way, and its intermediary territory between the standard procedural crime dramas and brash cable drama have made it further inhabit a young-adult middle-ground that has solidified its place in television history, even if it doesn’t have the ratings to show for it.

Economic Concerns Impacting Content: The Rise of Reality TV

Concurrent with the fragmentation of the cable audience is the rise of the genre on both broadcast and cable television in the U.S. Hallmarks of this genre include so-called “real-life” talent, doing activities that were meant to be “unscripted.” In academic literature, the content of reality television is covered frequently, including analyses of its advertising content via (like Deery, 2014), the format’s history (see

Bignell, 2014), and how reality as a genre impacts and reinforces lifestyles and Hollywood’s star system (see Wilson, 2014; Grindstaff, 2014, amongst others). Cops, long believed to be one of the medium’s earlier reality formats in the United States, premiered to popular acclaim on the then-fledgling Fox network in 1989 (Schneider, 2013). Before its cancellation, it was the longest- running show on the network, and “was one of the programs that established the Fox brand”

(Andreeva, 2013c).16 The CW would fill its schedules not with crime reality, but with lifestyle reality, but the importance of the genre practically established by Fox.

16 Cops itself is the format that keeps on giving; the show itself aired for 25 seasons on Fox before moving premieres to Spike (Schneider, 2013; Andreeva, 2013c). In syndication, the show aired across broadcast and cable, and has been syndicated for over 20 years (Albiniak, 2013). A+E, in the fall of 2016, ordered a new, live, in-real-time version of the format, Live PD, for 4 51

For networks and production companies, the popularity of unscripted formats translated into many positive benefits, like lower upfront production costs, from cheaper talent to non- union “story editors,” avoiding most of the pratfalls of scripted programming – longer lead times for production; union talent including WGA and SAG-AFTRA members, leading to more expensive talent fees and increased monetary payments for the replaying of content (repeats); and the inevitable challenges of creating new storylines in an ever-saturated marketplace. As a result, unscripted productions have often been plagued with “dangerous working conditions with few regulations” as well as “workplace abuses by employers” (Nolan, 2014). Soon, both cable networks and broadcasters alike would fill up their programming days with unscripted or

“alternative” content, saturating the market making it even more difficult to compete in either enterprise. In 2017, reality producers argued that it was becoming more difficult to make content in the industry (Schneider, 2017; Robb, 2017).

The unscripted “reality” genre would eventually diverge into several more specific genres throughout the late 2000s, including lifestyle-reality (Keeping Up with the Kardashians on E!,

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on Bravo, Jersey Shore on MTV), occupational-reality (Pawn

Stars on History, Ice Road Truckers on Discovery), hidden-camera reality (Punk’d on MTV,

Impractical Jokers on truTV), and – a particular specialty of broadcast networks – the /talent show reality program ( on Fox, Big Brother and Survivor on CBS, and

The Bachelor on ABC), amongst others. As reality programs rose in popularity, they made up larger portions of both broadcast and cable schedules. The most obvious answer for this is apparent: reality programs are not “written” and do not star “actors,” thus making them extraordinarily inexpensive to produce. This genre has particular relevance to The CW and its

hours per week, and the program ranks amongst the network’s highest-rated shows, to-date (Andreeva, 2016e; Stanhope, 2017). 52 space as an emerging network, for reasons that will become apparent later on in its programming history.

New Technology and Declining Traditional Viewership

By 2007, cable wasn’t the only televisual medium encroaching upon broadcast’s position atop the content throne. In this year, just one year after The CW was developed, Netflix began its instant streaming operations, providing subscription on-demand content via its desktop platform and, later, through applications for mobile devices (Helft, 2007).17 In addition, DVR (digital video recorder) viewership had already began to make a noticeable influence on the way viewers were watching and interacting with television content, in particular advertising, and VOD (video on-demand) provided through individual cable operators also offered another way for viewers to watch television content on their terms.18 Later, SVOD (subscription VOD) and AVOD

(advertising-supported video-on-demand) services in addition to Netflix also popped up, once mobile data and Wi-Fi saturation provided fast enough internet to support streaming content; services like Amazon Prime and Hulu provided on-demand catalogues of streaming content for viewers outside of the traditional television universe. So powerful are these three that Variety dubbed them the “super-aggregators,” because they collate and curate content for many audiences (Wallenstein, 2015). (Netflix, in relation to the other two services, is a “killer app” in the SVOD marketplace; comScore VP Mike Rich said, in April 2017, that 75 percent of all over-

17 Prior to its instant streaming operations, Netflix existed only as a mail-order DVD service, which began its operations in 1997 (“About Netflix,” 2017). 18 Though, it should be noted, the quantity and quality of VOD viewership can be influenced by the individual user interfaces provided by cable operators; for example, after the deployment of Comcast’s X1 platform with cloud DVR and voice-activated remote control, the cable provider’s CEO claimed, “it's improved video on-demand purchases… People are purchasing more services because they are available and easy to use” (as quoted in Snider, 2016). 53 the-top users had access to Netflix.) What broadcast television didn’t know yet – as if the example of cable’s impact on ratings wasn’t enough – was that audiences would now come to expect content on their terms: whenever, wherever they so desired. The newly formed CW would be growing up in a television landscape littered with more viewer choice than ever before.

Along with this new technology and increase in content options came a decrease in traditional viewership amongst younger audiences, who spurned linear television in favor of its new technological competitors. This may not have been such a major issue, had the television industry (particularly broadcasters) not mirrored the at the height of its Napster- related woes. Much like the later-struggling record industry in 1999 at the debut of the online music-sharing service and others of its ilk, the television industry largely ignored the encroaching threat of the internet to its linear, traditional viewing business (Schechner & Efrati,

2010, provide just one example of Google TV). Perhaps it is the norm for large media businesses to remain out-of-touch with newer technological innovations until they are forced to make major changes; perhaps, rather, this is the case with major industrial change in many businesses. Either way, broadcasters made even less of an effort than cable channels to adapt to these changing technologies by any means necessary, largely ignoring a push to create narrower programming styles, to appeal to younger audiences, and to provide content in ways more congruent with those desired by these new, technologically savvy viewers. For example, CBS has never participated in

SVOD (subscription video-on-demand) streaming services, where younger viewers not watching linear CBS may have interacted with CBS content, and is still working to bring interest to its own SVOD service, CBS All Access. When asked about the audience of CBS All Access in

April of 2017, CBS Interactive president Marc DeBevoise remarked that the average viewer age 54 was still in the 40s; just over 30% of all subscribers were in the 18-34 demographic (Adalian,

2017).

Maybe because of – or in spite of – the continued existence of broadcast television in the wake of cable (and even ) challenges of years past, it can be understood that broadcasters imagined themselves largely immune to these struggles. As broadcasters, they kept their programming strategies “broad,” continuing to produce the same mixtures of procedural dramas (often police, medical, military, or firefighter-based) and in-studio situation comedies that they had been producing for literally decades. This meant that programs remained episodic in nature, where a viewer could tune-in to any episode of a season and follow the general storyline regardless of whether or not he/she had ever viewed the program prior. Cable networks, in divergence from this model, moved in a more serial direction with their scripted content, requiring the attention – and repeat viewership – of the audience member, and rewarding him/her for his/her continued loyalty to a program (Mittell, 2006). A new network like The CW would be forced to straddle this line, though it wouldn’t fully get there until years into its existence.

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Figure 2. Graph of Network Ratings, 1989-2010, total grossed for all broadcast networks (as printed in Eastman & Ferguson, 2013).

The decline in linear viewership itself (see Figure 2) was enough of an issue for broadcasters, even without the underlying technological issue. It may beg the question: so if there are fewer viewers – so what? The issue with declining linear viewership lies in traditional television’s business model, based on CPM (cost-per-thousand viewers) and estimates of who will watch a program, all of which are meant to attract advertisers. In essence, in political economic literature, the product of television is not programming but audiences, bought and sold by networks and advertisers; the programs provided for viewers’ entertainment, rather, are the

“free lunch” through which viewers focus on the entertainment of plots and characters whilst advertisers commoditize their preferences and purchases (Smythe, 1977). Ratings, then, as a 56 commodity themselves, contribute to the quantification of audiences, determining not just how many viewers are watching, but providing measures of audience “quality,” e.g., their value to advertisers. Further, these ratings are neither adequate nor precise measures of human behavior, because, in Meehan’s (1984) view, they serve broadcasters’ interests as a commodity themselves, in which case ratings are the commodity produced by television rather than audiences or content. This is why the network’s “upfront” advertising presentations are integral to the business of ad-supported television: because the majority of a network’s national advertising inventory should be sold at that time, literally “upfront,” before the new television season begins (Steinberg, 2017c; Wang, Stabler, & Mukherjee, 2009). This time of year has often become synonymous with the large-scale, often lavish, celebrations networks put on in

May, which are meant to woo advertisers into pre-purchasing ads for all the network’s upcoming programs – even those which have not aired yet. As with so much of the television business, there are equal parts art and science, as estimates of not-yet-aired programs cannot be fully accurate. The upfront sales period has wavered in recent years, as advertisers decide which of the myriad media options available today are most likely to garner the most exposure to people likely to make purchases of their products/services. Advertiser pressures on the television industry, including the impact of the upfront sales period and the need for networks to monetize content viewed on non-linear platforms, will be further discussed in chapters 4 and 6.

What is much clearer, though, are demographic and socioeconomic data about who watches existing programs in the late 2010s. Audiences are weighed and measured by the quality of their viewer bases: what gender they are, how young they are, how much education they have, how much money they make, and what part of the country they live in, among other defining characteristics – and increasingly advertisers are requesting more specificity in the audiences 57 they buy (Steinberg, 2015a). Broadcast television audiences are often larger, richer, and more educated than their cable counterparts, which is one reason why CPMs for broadcast TV are so much higher than for cable (Wang, Stabler, & Mukherjee, 2009). Figure 3 shows the gap between a demographically rich cable network, what one would assume would be a lucrative

CPM, compared to the cable industry average. Figure 4 shows how well arguably the weakest broadcast network, The CW, compares to that industry average.

Figures 3 & 4. Calculated CPMs for Freeform, a cable network, versus The CW, a broadcaster.

Graphs prepared by SNL Kagan, 2001-2014. Industry average is for cable and/or broadcast.

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Broadcast TV, too, is more likely to appeal to older viewers in America’s , rather than just their younger, coastal counterparts, due to the networks’ goals of reaching all viewers rather than targeted ones. (Palmeri, Sakoui, & Piper, 2017 present the example of ABC). When overall viewership declines, though, so, too, do the universe estimates of networks – how networks keep track of approximately how many households/persons have access to view them with numbers provided by Nielsen (Lynch, 2016b). When universe estimates go down, and viewership also goes down, the rating number is not highly impacted. In fact, when viewership remains constant and the number of households with television declines, ratings can actually increase, a fact that can be confusing to the casual industry observer. Figure 5 shows the metric for a rating as calculated by the Nielsen Company.

Figure 5. How a television rating is calculated by the Nielsen Company.

푁푢푚푏푒푟 표푓 푣𝑖푒푤푒푟푠 푤푎푡푐ℎ𝑖푛푔 푎 푝푟표푔푟푎푚 = 푅푎푡𝑖푛푔 퐻표푢푠푒ℎ표푙푑푠 표푟 푃푒푟푠표푛푠 푤𝑖푡ℎ 푇푉푠 (푈푛𝑖푣푒푟푠푒 퐸푠푡𝑖푚푎푡푒)

푁푢푚푏푒푟 표푓 푣𝑖푒푤푒푟푠 푤푎푡푐ℎ𝑖푛푔 푎 푝푟표푔푟푎푚 = 푆ℎ푎푟푒 퐻표푢푠푒ℎ표푙푑푠 표푟 푃푒푟푠표푛푠 푈푠𝑖푛푔 푇푒푙푒푣𝑖푠𝑖표푛 (퐻푈푇/푃푈푇)

푁푢푚푏푒푟 표푓 푣𝑖푒푤푒푟푠 푤푎푡푐ℎ𝑖푛푔 푎 푝푟표푔푟푎푚(𝑖푛 000푠) = 퐷푒푙𝑖푣푒푟푦

Changes in Viewer Measurement

Combined with this traditional viewership decline is the way in which ratings are counted in the first place. If – as early CW arguments go – the viewers networks so desire are, in fact, watching television programming, but not in ways that Nielsen is able to count, how can networks monetize those viewers? In effect, how can networks sell their currently uncounted 59 eyeballs to advertisers, hungry for youth viewership? To address the viewership that occurs outside the watchful eyes of traditional Nielsen measurement, the company has invested years into the creation of a system called “Total Audience Measurement,” which would help to account for some of these discrepancies (Steinberg, 2017a). Formerly reliant on self-reported diaries in the 100+ markets, some of the smallest demographic market areas in the United States,

Nielsen has attempted to institute more technological advancements to account for viewing of programs on Netflix (which notoriously does not share data on its viewers), social media related to a program, out-of-home measurement (in bars, restaurants, and other locations), and video on- demand viewership older content with static advertising that is not directly monetized by networks (Hagey, 2014; Lieberman, 2017a; Lieberman, 2017c; Lieberman, 2017d; Lieberman,

2013; Patten, 2016). So far, years into the announcement of such an endeavour, the company has not been able to fully implement this strategy. Meanwhile, competitors like Rentrak (itself an amalgamation of two data services when comScore merged with it) base their information on

VOD transactions, providing numbers to networks of how many overall persons have started to view their programming on participating VOD cable systems (Steinberg, 2016a; Friedman,

2014). Instead, networks like The CW (the first broadcast network to do this) have been forced to build their own over-the-top applications for users and, most importantly, pull in-season programming from SVOD services like Hulu – all in the effort to drive traffic back to their own websites rather than let a third-party host their shows. For a smaller network like The CW, with several low-rated shows that don’t hold the interest of the third-party SVOD service (as discussed in Lynch, 2016c), this also allows for all programming to be given the chance to be viewed equally. As this history will show, some of The CW’s main programming issues deal 60 with its hybrid ownership, and when one owner’s content performs better than the other’s, challenges can present themselves when it comes time for those third-party deals to arise.

Trends in Viewership: Increasing Viewer Age

What is most disturbing about this shift, though, is the kinds of viewers who are now watching television, in general: at least through the early 2010s, they were older than ever before

(Thompson, 2014). Particularly in the broadcast space, where the median age of the CBS viewer gets one year older every year – at last count, the network’s median age was 59 – an older viewer means a less lucrative advertising space (Kang, 2014; Hewitt, 2015). Advertisers, historically, have been interested in one demographic of people, since they comprise the majority of employed people at the peak of their careers, and hopefully, make up the majority of consumers due to their expendable income. This demographic is persons 18-49. While it is not true that once a person hits 50 advertisers are no longer interested, it does mean that audiences 50+ are considered less valuable in a monetary sense. The CW’s median age, while the youngest in broadcast television, is still relatively high given the 18-49 target of most broadcasters. In May of 2017, at the network’s upfront presentation, president Mark Pedowitz claimed the network’s median age on linear television was 45, but 36 on video-on-demand (VOD) platforms, and 26 on

“digital” platforms (Andreeva, 2017e).

With median viewer ages increasing at a rapid pace, many cable networks in particular have begun trying to reach the most lucrative of even the 18-49 demographic: the even narrower persons 18-34 demographic (Molloy, 2013; Consoli, 2016). This group of young adults are expected to be at the prime of their working years, with money to spend on consumer goods, like home goods, cars, and products for children. As a result, many cable networks in particular have 61 attempted to reach this group, to varying degrees of success. The CW would attempt this demographic change from the start in 2006, while the rest of television decried it for this then- ludicrous goal (Goodman, 2012, 2013). From the start, the network has argued that younger viewers are, in fact, watching its content, but that they are not doing so in ways that traditional

Nielsen measurement can account for. So set on this belief was The CW that the network’s president, Mark Pedowitz, called for new methods of measurement to count these viewers when he was put in charge of the network in 2011; by 2013 he had admitted this was perhaps a foolish argument but that the importance of video-on-demand (VOD) and SVOD were integral to the network (Guthrie, 2013). While the network’s own success at achieving this demographic has been questionable – the network’s median age on linear TV is still over 34 according to Pedowitz

(as discussed in Andreeva, 2017e) – The CW has instituted other non-linear programming strategies which have attempted to (more successfully) reach the younger viewers the network so desires.

Thus, reaching the 18-to-34-year-olds in the mid-2000s would not be easy for The CW, nor would it be for any other television network at this time. By the time networks realized the full extent of the hemorrhage of youth viewership, other technologies (some of which they themselves funded) would step in to take the place of their traditional cash cow: linear viewership. The competition was on, not just to get Millennial viewers, but to get Millennials with jobs; in essence, television searched (and still seeks today) for the high-income, young adult viewers that are the lifeblood of high CPMs and catnip to advertisers.

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Where Did All the Millennial Viewers Go?

But where did all the young adults go? Certainly, they did not all go to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. By 2016, Millennial viewers were also watching television on their videogame consoles, through services like PlayStation Vue; through virtual MVPD services, like

Dish Network’s Sling TV and AT&T’s DirecTV Now; through TV Everywhere authentication on apps and desktop computers via cable subscriptions (sometimes not their own); and finally, through more traditional means of circumventing payment for services received – good old fashioned piracy on sites like YouTube and others.

Potentially more disturbing for industry insiders, though, was some highly publicized

Nielsen research from December of 2015, highlighting three Millennial “life stages,” and categorizing today’s 18-to-34-year-olds by the ways in which they progress through adulthood

(Steel & Marsh, 2015). Stage 1 Millennials, Nielsen explains, are those who live with their parents or with others, meaning that they may have access to television but they may not watch it, have anything to do with the financial contributions associated with it (e.g., cable subscriptions) or even contribute to calculations of household median income (which gets into issues of Millennial unemployment/underemployment, neither of which is the focus of this chapter). Millennials in the second stage, in contrast, live alone. This group of young adults is the least likely to have access to television. The final group of Millennials tends to be older, as they are Millennials who have their own families. Nielsen argues that, once these people have children, they tend to have again, and are more likely to have cable subscriptions.

However, Nielsen goes a step further, perhaps to soothe the concerns of their industrial clientele: they argue that once Millennials currently in stage 2 (dubbed “on their own” young adults) settle down with spouses and children, they will most likely go back to watching linear television. 63

Again, it is important to remember that this is Nielsen research, and as such, research that is bankrolled by the very corporations that fund Nielsen’s massive enterprise; for some perspective,

Nielsen’s revenue is, as of February 2017, reported to be $6.31B and the company has approximately 43,000 employees worldwide (Nielsen Media Holdings PLC Key Statistics,

2017). It is, therefore, in Nielsen’s best interest to keep television networks and their parent corporations happy, lest they realize the value of upstarts like TVision that are challenging the

Nielsen monopoly over the TV ratings industry (see Maheshwari, 2017, for more information on

TVision). Whether or not Millennials will ever come back to television, as a result, remains more in question than ever before. Nielsen itself has been forced to change and widen the data offerings it provides networks, finding ways to measure video on-demand viewing, time-shifting

(DVR) viewing, and internet buzz surrounding a show that has no bearing on the program’s viewership at all (Steel, 2016a).

The television industry itself – and all who are forced to deal with it on a daily basis, from advertisers to talent – will have to adjust in some way, shape, or form that is, even in 2017, as yet unknown. The future of television, alas, much like the future of many industries ripped apart by the internet, remains uncertain. If the beginning of television represented a “wild west” of ideas, content, and programming strategies, it appears the eventual conclusion of linear TV will come in the same fashion.

The final point of television history that is relevant to The CW is the value of upstarts, of the little guys who tried to succeed, in an industry where big networks and small networks are often owned by the same people, but given unequal value and attention by those corporate parents. It is, like so many great media stories, the story of an underdog.

And as we all know, everybody loves an underdog. 64

In the next chapter, I will explore the life and creation of the two networks that came before The CW, UPN and The WB, including how these regulatory and economic influences impacted those networks and their eventual transition into The CW.

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Chapter 3: UPN Meets The WB, pre-January 2006

Ten years after the demise of two of America’s smallest English-language broadcast networks, the question remains: what is the legacy of UPN and The WB, precursors to today’s much-maligned fifth network, The CW? What is the place in history occupied by the two networks, whose programming inadequacies and financial failures were well documented in both the popular and trade press? Why even bother recounting their legacies?

Of course, like parents and their children, it may appear obvious that addressing the parents of a network like The CW would be of particular relevance, in some way, shape, or form to the way the network eventually came to be. In perhaps television’s most awkward marriage,

The CW comes about in an already contentious space – as the hybrid of two networks that experienced little success and almost no obvious viewing overlap, resulting in massive realignment shifts in local affiliates across the country. This is not, admittedly, an auspicious start to a network’s life. But as The CW enters its adolescence, it is important that we remember where it came from, and the unique set of circumstances that made UPN and The WB what they were.

“2 Would-Be Networks Get Set for Prime Time”

In the early 1990s, in general, life in the broadcast television industry was – while not as glorious as it had been just ten years prior – at least not as ridiculous a proposition as it would become in the new millennium. It was still so lucrative, in fact, that in August of 1993, the New

York Times reported that Time Warner was considering the development of its own network, in addition to the content it already acted as distributor for to local independent TV stations nationwide. As the report noted, “One executive pointed out that the owners of independent 66 television stations had seen the benefits reaped by the independents that carried the Fox network.

Another network would enable more independents to insure their own programming supply”

(“Warner Weighs Formation of TV Network,” 1993). As with so much of The WB and UPN’s stories, the development of Fox one decade prior would pave the way for so much motivation for content providers to enter the network industry in the mid-1990s (Holston, 1993).

In October of the same year, the Times reported that an additional content provider would compete with Warner’s hopes at developing a fifth national broadcast network (Carter, 1993).

Paramount Communications, Inc. – then independent of other media ventures – had announced a plan to develop the Paramount Network in 1993, with the help of Chris-Craft Industries, a relatively minor player in the broadcast industry that at the time owned several affiliates in markets across the U.S. At the time of the announcement in 1993, Chris-Craft did own two independent affiliates in the top two markets in the country: WWOR in New York and KCOP in

Los Angeles, which would help to buoy the new network to greater coverage nationwide. From the perspective of Chris-Craft, the partnership made complete sense; Carter (1993) cites media analyst John Tinker: “‘In the future, it is going to be vital to control your own distribution system.’” It certainly would be.

So inextricable would be the histories of the two networks that in the same Times article, dated October 27, 1993, Carter announces that Time Warner would be announcing the creation of their network imminently, likely headed by Jamie Kellner – one-time president of the Fox network.19 In the Associated Press article carried by the Press of Atlantic City (NJ) in November

19 Kellner, a long-time media executive, was integral in the creation of the Fox network and its initial 140 affiliates, becoming Fox Broadcasting’s president and COO from 1986-1992 (“Affiliate architect: Jamie Kellner,” 1993). He then went on to help Warner Bros. with the creation of The WB, personally owning about 11 percent of The WB along with several other WB executives (Arango, 2002). In 2001, Kellner added chairman of the Turner Broadcasting 67

1993, the headline proclaimed: “Warner Network to Debut in ‘94/Says No Room for

Paramount.” The article quoted Kellner as remarking in a press conference announcing the new network: “‘There is only room for one more network…There is no way there is room for two.’”

In the same conference, Robert A. Daly, then chairman and chief executive officer of Warner

Bros. and formerly an executive at CBS, remarked, “‘I know how much profit can be made on television programming…I think we feel we should share in that profit” (Elber, 1993). He continued, commenting that the new network would buy the best content regardless of provider.

In the fall of 1993, when UPN and The WB were being developed, UPN was not yet owned by

Viacom or CBS, and Time Warner had not yet acquired WTBS and CNN through Turner

Broadcasting; neither had any successful experiences developing and sustaining a broadcaster.

Even so, the pieces were falling into place, and Kellner would be among them.

The two networks debuted in the same month and year, during the middle of the 1994-

1995 television season. On January 11, 1995, The Warner Brothers Network began programming its first primetime line-up, just one night a week. The network’s original

Wednesday-night lineup consisted of The Wayans Bros. (1995-1999), The Parent ‘Hood (1995-

1999), Unhappily (1995-1999), Muscle (1995). The United Paramount Network began just days later, on January 16, 1995, with two nights of primetime programming per week to start, debuting : Voyager (1995-2001), (1995), (1995), Marker

(1995), The Watcher (1995), Legend (1995). The odds would be against the two emerging

System to his duties, in place of in the wake of the AOL Time Warner merger, effectively reorganizing The WB under Turner Broadcasting’s purview (Arango, 2002). In 2003, after an unsuccessful stint running that company, Kellner left Turner. Upon the conclusion of his WB employment contract in 2004, he cashed out his shares in the network, receiving approximately $65 million (“Kellner out at Turner Broadcasting,” 2003; Flint & Peers, 2003). After Turner, Kellner retired, but maintained the position of chief executive for Acme Communications, a 10-station network group providing affiliates for The WB Network (Flint & Peers, 2003). 68 networks from the beginning. Neither had the kind of affiliate reach their broadcast competitors had across the country, and both were forced to use alternate means of reaching viewers – UPN as a “secondary affiliate,” sharing space with other networks; The WB through cable transmission via ’s WGN (Carter, 1995a). UPN’s initial schedule was anchored by Star Trek: Voyager; The WB’s was devoted to half-hour comedies

(Richmond, 1994; Hall, 2005).

While it is important to note that neither UPN nor The WB were their respective parents’ first forays into the television industry, none of their ancestral programming services – the original Network from the late 1940s, the potential Paramount Television

Service from the mid-1970s that never made it to air, and the more recent Prime Time

Entertainment Network (PTEN) from the early 1990s – were directly responsible for the development of The CW in 2006 (Vespoli, 2010; Wasko, 2012; Donlon, 1993; Feran, 1993;

Miller, 1983). Nevertheless, both networks were connected to well-known media brands, in particular film companies, a connection that was triggered by the collapse of the traditional star- studio system of classic Hollywood cinema and the vulnerability of the major studios to corporate acquisition in the 1960s. Both movie studios involved were especially storied, with

Paramount being tied to the development of the star system and Warner Brothers to sound film.

The two networks were also created in a context of giant media corporations and synergy. And both experienced major turmoil as traditional media corporations were challenged by the dawn of digital communications and therefore faced massive debt. But both also set the stage for defining new audiences for broadcast television and new economic models that preceded the

“magical thinking” of the merged CW.

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“The Night is Young”: The WB’s Programming Strategies

In contrast to UPN, while The WB began its life programming affordable half-hour comedies, it quickly found its niche was not in garnering a traditional “broadcast” television audience. Broadcast audiences, which on average were at the time younger than they are now, still represented an older demographic, one that The WB realistically knew it would be difficult to draw from the Big 4’s established grasp. Subsequently, the network chose to focus in a way that only cable networks do – and in a way its successor would in 2006. The WB became, in its own words, “the network for young adults.” A presentation reel from 2000, complete with the requisite beautiful young stars in club settings that would be so associated with The CW, pronounces: “Established and creatively strong series. WB stars and series continue to prove: the night is young.”

The WB’s most notable facet as a network, from a programming perspective, was not the beautiful 20-to-30-year-old stars that graced its image pieces, but rather the idea that a broadcaster would even bother to cater to such a narrow demographic: teens and young adults. In its 11 years in existence, The WB was an even narrower broadcaster than UPN, aiming so specifically at such a minute fraction of potential audiences that few knew how successful such a limiting strategy would become. Mifflin (1998) writes:

WB has focused relentlessly on attracting people aged 12 to 34. Though that audience

may seem narrow, it is also elusive, even fickle. Scores of shows will reach older

viewers, but relatively few can be counted upon to draw the under-30 crowd, so

advertisers will overpay to reach it. Advance bookings of advertising time on WB for the

fall season are double what they were last year [1997-1998 television season]; more than 70

two-thirds of that revenue [WB president] Kellner said, came from advertisers seeking

the 12-to-34-year-old audience.

In the same article, Mifflin would go on to discuss the derision The WB faced from its competitors because of the way it acted like a cable network, in its niche programming strategies and focus on a small target demographic. The rationale for this argumentative stance towards the network was this: that it encouraged children to watch different programming than their parents and, as a result, assisted with the dissolution of communal family viewing amongst children and their parents. Co-viewing, the official Nielsen terminology for two demographics viewing television together, of parents (assumed to be between ages 18-to-49) and their children ages 2- to-17 would be most desired by broadcast networks, since their business model emphasizes reaching the widest number of people with the broadest forms of programming. Kellner responded to those claims with the argument that his network remained a family network; in another show of competition between UPN and The WB, UPN’s then-president Dean Valentine argued the contrary – that Kellner’s focus on specific segments of audiences to the detriment of others was too targeted and would help to fragment the American viewing public (Mifflin, 1998).

Valentine’s stance may represent the classic assumptions of broadcast television, including television as an “electronic hearth” (Tichi, 1991), but what Kellner succeeded in creating, in practice, was an image tribe of The WB, in the ultra-stratified audience “image tribes” described by Turow (1998).

By 1999, Kellner would continue to argue that broadcasting was becoming more and more fragmented, and that the key to success in this kind of marketplace was picking the right demographic for advertisers. Carter (1999a) writes: “As WB sees it, what advertisers want is youth, and the network is searingly focused on giving them exactly that. Far from looking to 71 expand its reach, to compete for wider segments of viewers, Mr. Kellner said, WB would stick to its youth orientation.” To this effect, Kellner continued, he wanted The WB’s median age to stay below 30, an excruciatingly low median age for any broadcaster.

Some of the ways The WB went about creating the cultivated image that “the night is young” include a focus on the kinds of glossy teen-driven dramas that have made their way to today’s CW and Freeform networks. Programs that originated on The WB included the popular family drama 7th Heaven (which featured future Hollywood star ); mother-daughter drama ; teen feminist sensation Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff, Angel; relationship dramas like Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill, and Felicity; the story of young

Superman in ; and the only program to have made the jump from The WB to The CW that lasted past the mid-2010s: cult fan hit Supernatural. The WB was, much like its successor, filled with beautiful young people in circumstances both ordinary (Felicity) and extraordinary

(Buffy, ).

Apart from the obvious visual similarities between The WB’s content and The CW’s programming (in particular, its Warner Bros.-produced content), The WB was not designed as a hub solely for the content of its parent corporation (Elber, 1993). It wasn’t until 1999, when the network was “the only broadcast network to develop ratings growth this season,” that The WB suggested that it might consider programming more Warner Bros.-produced content – but only if, as Kellner remarks, Warner Bros. could produce shows that fit The WB’s “youthful skew”

(Carter, 1999a). None of the network’s top programming was actually provided by Warner; instead, Buffy was produced by Fox, Dawson’s Creek came from Columbia, and Felicity came from Disney (Carter, 1999a). 72

Echoing Daly’s earlier sentiments, Warner Bros.’ own executive vice president in 1999,

Barry M. Meyer, when asked about the network’s future relationship with the studio, remarked that he “could not envision a time when a network would be totally vertically integrated, locking out shows from any other studio” (Carter, 1999a). In the same article, Kellner specifically remarks that the studio had a difficult time working with the network, gesturing that they apparent did not understand the value of airing Warner content on a Warner-owned network.

Kellner, the former Fox executive, would have understood this perhaps more than anyone, coming from a network whose was the literal purpose of its existence. This part of the vertical integration business model neither The WB nor its related studio understood completely; it would become a hallmark of the programming on The CW, as the other broadcast networks and their cable counterparts followed suit, in the attempt to own as much of their own programming as was absolutely possible. Ownership of content, and further, the right to replay or sell streaming and other syndication rights, would be essential to the television business in the next decade. Perhaps hindsight has made this picture more clear – Hall (2005), in his ten-year retrospective of The WB, argues that WB executives purposefully developed the network to take advantage of the departure of fin-syn rules and to create an outlet for Warner’s “prolific television product.” But this was never fully maximized in with The WB.

As will be shown with The CW, Warner Bros. the studio remained incapable of fully exploiting the value of true television integration with the studio’s wider assets, both IP and otherwise, until several years into the new network’s existence. Perhaps this is the result of

Meyer’s reign over the studio, ending in 2013, one in which film and television operated at Time

Warner as two completely separate businesses; in 2013, became the studio’s

CEO (Finke, 2013). Today, The CW functions as a sub-unit of the wholly owned of 73

Warner Bros., but during the creation of the WB and its early time in existence, Time Warner had little experience as a broadcast network owner.20 Time Warner owned no national broadcaster, and except for The WB and the 50 percent it owns of The CW, it appears unlikely that the opportunity to do so will present itself whilst Time Warner remains an independent company.

On the Shoulders of Giants: The WB’s Parent Company, Time Warner, Inc.

Time Warner’s own story, much like Paramount’s, is tied to companies that had little if nothing do with media production, but established themselves as major players in the industry nonetheless. Developed through the aforementioned merger of Time, Inc. and Warner

Communications that was completed in 1990, the company quickly became the world’s largest media at the time (Clurman, 1992; Bruck, 1994; Norris, 1989).

Before all of that, though, the visual media legacy of Warner was owned by Warner

Communications, a company that itself had non-media-related origins. Much like Gulf and

Western, the Kinney National Company owned many properties before it acquired Warner Bros.-

Seven Arts in 1969 (Bruck, 1994). Kinney National had become notable for its ownership of a parking-lot company, in addition to a construction company and homes, amongst other seemingly unrelated businesses (Kunz, 2007, p. 28-29).

Under CEO Ross, the company had begun to acquire more and more entertainment-related assets, including a talent agency (Ashley Famous, now ICM, a Big 4 talent agency) and (famed motion-picture camera- and lens-maker) before acquiring

20 Time Warner did not acquire Turner until 1995, with the transaction not completed until 1996. Even then, Turner existed in a much different realm than The WB, with its cable networks and the TBS superstation/local station WTBS; Landler, 1995. 74

Warner-Seven Arts in 1969 (Siegel, 2010; Harris, 1985; Oliver, 2002; Kunz, 2007). One notable additional business Kinney acquired prior to Warner-Seven Arts was National Periodical

Publications, now known as DC Comics, which merged with the Kinney in 1967 (, 2000).

For business reasons, including supposed financial impropriety in the company’s parking operations, Ross spun-off all the entertainment assets in 1972 to create Warner Communications

Inc. (Bruck, 1994).

Despite the fact that Ross had not been the CEO of a media company before, he was able to make Warner Communications (WCI) into a competitor that combined these acquired media assets with entrepreneurial ideas to break into new facets of the media industry. One of these major innovations was a partnership between WCI and credit-card powerhouse, American

Express. Warner-Amex Cable Communications Inc. developed basic cable networks for national distribution, namely MTV Networks. Time Warner would come to acquire Amex’s stake in

MTV Networks (including Showtime) in 1985, and then subsequently sold them to their current owner, Viacom, where they remain integral networks and part of the company’s core brand

(Fabrikant, 1985; Hiltzik, 1985; Parsons, 2008).

Also with Ross’s help, Warner Communications grew into its own media powerhouse. As mentioned, in 1989 Time, Inc. and Warner Communications formally began merger procedures, and in 1990, the new Time Warner was born (Norris, 1989). Its included

(magazines and books), recorded music, comics, amusement parks, television production, film studios, and cable television. This, then, would become the Time Warner that created and managed The WB Television Network.

Similar to many corporate giants though, Time Warner was not without its own Achilles heel. The company’s continued quest for control in all aspects of the media industry extending 75 into online distribution and online content resulted in the 2000 merger of Time Warner with

America Online, a “walled-garden” internet provider, a “strategy [that] attempts to turn users of networked communications into customers of a proprietary environment” (Aufderheide, 2002, p.

518). The walled garden model, subsequently, makes it easier to corral and monetize consumers, by physically cutting them off from the branded environment developed to maintain users within it unless they paid the internet gatekeeper. So commercially successful was the internet boom in the U.S. that AOL was worth more than Time Warner at the time of the acquisition; technically,

AOL acquired the legacy media corporation (Johnson, 2000). The new company, AOL Time

Warner, was a failure from the start, and many have considered the merger to be the worst corporate merger in history. In fact, so maligned is the merger that it remains a case study in business school textbooks, a warning to companies both present and future (Weston, 2002). To provide some perspective, The WB was just a few years into its young-adult-serving mission at the time its majority parent company decided it wanted to move into younger forms of media – the internet chief amongst them. Time Warner reverted to its previous name in 2003, admitting defeat in what Sorkin and Kirkpatrick (2003) deem a “troubled marriage” between the two media corporations. Sorkin and Kirkpatrick continue:

The decision will carry a cost for changing signs, including those at the company's nearly

completed headquarters at Columbus Circle in . But it will also increase the

potential risks to the Time Warner brand name. The Securities and Exchange

Commission and the Justice Department are investigating the company's accounting from

the time of the merger. If the inquiries tarnish the company's reputation, it will no longer

have the ballast of the AOL name to throw overboard. 76

Time Warner clearly had more important issues than a failing broadcast network. Just like UPN with Viacom and CBS, in the midst of this tumultuous corporate change, The WB saw its own death just three years after the corporation rebranded itself in its former image. The company that initially owned half of The CW was in the midst of its own corporate meltdown.

AOL and Time Warner formally split up in 2009 (Steel, 2009). Since that time, the company has fought off a hostile takeover bid from Group’s Rupert Murdoch, which would have valued the company at billions less than its present value (Peers & Hagey,

2014). It also seems safe to say that Time Warner had, in years subsequent to its AOL merger, learned its lesson, at least as far as acquiring other businesses unrelated to its core business: video content production and distribution. In the years following the AOL debacle, in 2014,

Time Warner spun-off a number of those “unrelated” businesses – chief amongst them Time,

Inc. and Time Warner Cable – under current CEO Jeffrey Bewkes (Hau, 2007; Stelter, 2014;

Ariens, 2016). Bewkes was former CEO of Time Warner business unit HBO, which remained with Time Warner despite originally being owned by Time (Hau, 2007). Neither the company that owns Time Warner Cable (a property in 2017) nor the company known as Time Warner actually owns Time, Inc.

Now, in mid-2017, it appears that The CW will have a new corporate master, at least in the Time Warner half of its ownership. As mentioned in the previous chapter, AT&T announced in October 2016 that it would be acquiring Time Warner, at a value of $85 billion (de la Merced,

2016). The merger set off shockwaves in the media community. Would the Department of

Justice approve the merger? How would the SEC react? Would the FCC have jurisdiction – and decision-making – over this commercial enterprise? Final answers to most of these questions remain up in the air, but it is possible that changes in ownership in this case may, in fact, have 77 recognizable implications for a network such as The CW, due to the very nature of AT&T’s core business: providing access to content via internet, cable, and wireless devices. The impending merger of Time Warner and AT&T may be the largest single event with the potential to impact the carriage and dissemination of CW content that the network has ever seen. As is the nature of recent history, the ownership of the network is as contentious as that experienced by the former

WB Network in the early 2000s.

Trekkies and SmackDown: UPN’s Programming Strategies

It is important to recognize that neither network knew in any exact form what it needed to do to survive in the television environment into which it was born. Kellner may have brought his unique business savvy to The WB’s boardrooms, and his bevvy of Fox-culled leadership (as discussed in Hall, 2005), but both networks innately understood that the value of good content could bring viewers away from their loyalties to other networks.

For this reason, UPN knew from the beginning that it would anchor its lineup with one of

Paramount’s biggest name-brand properties: a new series of Star Trek in Star Trek: Voyager

(Graham, 1994). For years Paramount sought to exploit the surprising popularity of the original series in television syndication, a series that cultivated strong fan loyalty (Jenkins, 1992). Using its movie studio divisions, the movies were continual (if uneven) presences throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The syndicated Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) and Star Trek: Deep

Space Nine (1993-1999) were examples of scripted first-run syndication at the time; Baywatch

(1989-1999, syndicated beginning in its second season), Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

(1995-1999) and Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001) were others (Lowry, 1997; Herbert, 1990;

King, 1994). Such programming took advantage of the new strength of local stations such as 78 recent Fox affiliates (but with more limited schedules compared to the Big 3 affiliates), and independents made more viable by cable coverage (Meehan, 2005). With the possibility of a

Paramount-owned network, Star Trek was ready to be exploited even more as a synergistic product via a corporate television distribution arm that would accompany its production.

Paramount saw the strong demographic appeal of a new network Star Trek series both to publicize the infant network and to appeal to a key advertising-friendly audience: “‘We’re trying to target an underserved demographic,’ says Kerry McCluggage, chairman of Paramount’s TV division. ‘The other networks tend to program for women, so we’re counterprogramming for men.’” (as quoted in Graham, 1994). Richmond (1994) further elucidates that target demographic as men ages 18-49. Still, UPN had trouble building a schedule that cultivated viewership beyond just their program.

As a broadcaster, as well, UPN found itself doing whatever it could to gain viewers.

Similar to The WB, it picked up shows the major networks rejected, especially ones that targeted potentially underserved audiences. UPN picked up several African American comedies in its second season on air, simultaneously increasing its number of days on the air to three, but not helping to develop a cohesive lineup by adding comedies to the already differing audiences of

Star Trek (Carter, 1996a, 1996b). Several of these comedies would experience moderate success

– among them, and Malcolm and Eddie – but the rest of UPN’s lineup at this time remains largely forgotten (e.g., the string of one-season programming it ordered in the 1996-

1997 television season, including Nowhere Man, , Minor Adjustments, The Sentinel, and , none of which returned the following season). Moesha, which was passed over by CBS before UPN picked it up, was initially described by its creator as a way to, “‘capture in 79 somewhat of a realistic fashion what the African-American middle-class family is about’”

(Brooks, 1996).

Subsequently, this attempt to target the presumably neglected and/or untapped audience of African American viewers placed UPN in yet another point of contention with The WB. de la

Vina (1996) remarks that both networks were aiming for this set of viewers; at the time, ad agency BBDO reported that Fox’s (produced by Warner Bros.) was the top show amongst black households. Viewers had, in a form of “social segregation,” separated themselves out into shows clearly aimed at their own races – on NBC for white viewers, Living

Single on Fox for black viewers.

Table 2. 1996-1997 television season rankings by program (entire season)

RANK NETWORK PROGRAM

1 NBC ER

2 NBC

3 NBC Suddenly Susan

4 NBC/NBC Friends/The Naked Truth (tie)

6 NBC Fired Up

7 ABC

8 NBC The Single Guy

9 ABC Home Improvement

10 CBS

For context, Table 2 shows the top ten programs on broadcast television in the 1996-1997 television season in order of ratings success (compiled by Brooks & Marsh, 2007). Upon viewing of top ten programs, it is readily apparent why UPN and The WB thought it 80 prudent to cater to diverse audiences. Only one of these programs (Touched by an Angel) featured a primary African American character played by top-billed actors, and even in this case, the character (played by ) is in support of the first-billed Roma Downey’s (white) character. Unfortunately, focusing on appealing to black audiences would never provide either network with lasting ratings success outside of several notable programs.

UPN would go on to attempt to reach another niche audience underserved by broadcast audiences: young adults. Looking again at the above list, they target young professionals (such as

Friends, Suddenly Susan) or even older demographics such as adults with children (Home

Improvement). However, UPN would never fully undertake the youthful identity that drove The

WB. Teens, the group of viewers 12 to 17, were largely ignored by broadcasters, leading UPN to

“add an hour of shows specifically for teen-agers each weekday afternoon, as part of a strategy to build its audience by snaring young viewers” (Mifflin, 1996). Again, this would not present any major successes for the network, and the young adult/teen focus would not be associated with the network in the long-term, outside of a few teen drama successes – e.g., , debuting in 2004 and later making the transition to The CW but itself was not a ratings success, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 2001, after it was cancelled by The WB (for more about the latter, seen

Rutenberg, 2001).

UPN’s one blockbuster in 11 years of programming was an unexpected choice for the network, and appears to be just as unfocused as the rest of the network’s schedule: WWE

SmackDown, premiering in 1999 and running until the network’s demise in 2006 (Flint, 1999).

SmackDown, a professional wrestling program created and produced by World Wrestling

Entertainment (then the World Wrestling Federation) is the companion program to Raw, which premiered on cable on the USA Network. Even as late as 2017 SmackDown was still a top cable 81 telecast every week and has solidified itself as a ratings performer, but at the time, SmackDown was the only WWE program to air on broadcast television. While a national network broadcast version of professional wrestling was not unheard of in the history of television -- for example on the Dumont Network in the early 1950s (Beekman, 2006); more recently 1995 (Fox, just one special) and before that, the 1980s (NBC, on Saturday nights) (“UPN pins some hopes on wrestling…,” 1999) -- it was certainly unusual for the mid-1990s.

As will be discussed when UPN finally merges with The WB, The CW retains UPN’s license to transmit SmackDown, but issues of audience demographics arise – much as they did when the program aired on UPN. SmackDown’s audience was not congruent with the other segments of viewership to which the network was trying to cater; amongst them, African

Americans and teens. This put the network in a precarious position, one that it would never fully escape. However, the significant ratings of SmackDown and its male-centered demographics

(appealing to advertisers) were tempting for the new network: “Broadcast networks and network advertisers once thought the pro wrestling audience unappealing; the perception has changed,” wrote an industry analyst in the late 1990s (, 1999). CNN quotes UPN Entertainment president Tom Nunam as saying upon the network’s pick-up of the program: “‘This is a mainstream, middle-class, oftentimes college-educated audience that sees it (wrestling) as sort of the cartoon, comic-book adventure, that it is’” (Michael, 1999). This factual information, however accurate it was, could not fully rid the network of the stereotypical connotation of the pro wrestling viewer. Despite all the education then-president Nunam claimed wrestling viewers had, wrestling remains a male-skewing program, along with Star Trek, and it would skew the entire network in that direction (Carter, 2002; Levesque, 1999). When a network’s programming so insularly makes up such a large proportion of its overall viewership, 82 its viewer profile becomes less that of a general UPN viewer and more of a SmackDown viewer, as sheer statistics and gross ratings points would prove. By 2002, UPN was slightly more than 52 percent male; at the same time, The WB was approximately 66 percent female (Carter, 2002).

Perhaps to counteract the impact of professional wrestling on the network, when CBS

President Leslie Moonves was given control of UPN, he gave the network’s programming leadership to a former executive at Lifetime – Dawn Tarnofsky-Ostroff, who would later go on to become The CW’s very first president. This was an interesting choice, given the male skew of the network and Ostroff’s extensive experience at a majority-female network (Carter, 2002). At the time, though, Moonves insisted that UPN was maintaining its long-standing demographic focus – persons 12-to-34, an atypical demographic on all accounts, but particularly amongst the older-skewing broadcast networks (Carter, 2002). When UPN shut down, its parent company never gave up the program; instead, SmackDown outlived its network, and moved on to life on

The CW in the fall of 2006 (Stelter, 2008a).

“We’re the Network, Baby” : The Musical Chairs of UPN’s Namesake, Paramount

Unlike The WB, though, UPN’s tumultuous programming strategies and executive leadership were accompanied by changes in the network’s overall ownership. Whether or not this was a preeminent deciding factor in the network’s financial failures is debatable, but given the tenuousness of a new broadcast network, such turmoil at the ownership level likely was not a stabilizing factor. UPN would be amongst those young networks that experienced the brunt of media consolidation in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.

When Paramount Communications, Inc. announced the creation of UPN, it was not yet associated with CBS. As a modern corporate owner up to that point, Paramount Communications 83 itself was a company likely better known for a corporate law court case that, perhaps ironically, involved its unsuccessful attempt through a cash buyout of shares to prevent Time, Inc. from merging with Warner Communications (Paramount Communications, Inc. v. Time Incorporated

Fed Sec L Rep (CCH) 94, 514; affd 571 A.2d 1140 (Del. 1989)). Despite the outcome of the corporate case against Paramount, the particulars of which are irrelevant to the company and the network upon which it would bestow its name, as a modern history of the company illustrates,

Paramount remained an industry player through its involvement in another of far greater importance in UPN’s story than Time Warner.

At the time, in 1989, Paramount Communications was born out of the renamed remnants of the former Gulf and Western (branded as Gulf+Western), who had originally bailed the studio out of financial ruin in 1967 (“A ‘Paramount’ idea – Jackpot on the rise,” 1989; Blair, 1983).

Gulf and Western – much like the Kinney National Company that would become Warner

Communications – also was a diverse owner of assets, such as the Madison Square Garden music venue and Simon & Schuster book publishers, in addition to a cane grower, a financial services group, manufacturing and consumer products assets, amongst other seemingly unrelated enterprises (, 2000, p. 61). However, in the 1980s, the company began to focus its corporate profile, with media as a key element. Prince (2000) writes: “Within the Hollywood industry, the most striking cases of deconglomeration were undertaken by Gulf and Western

(Paramount) and Warner Communications, Inc. (Warner Bros.)” (p. 60). Television and film assets, as a result, became targets for acquisition. As a foreshadow of their partnership that became The CW, the Gulf and Western Building where Paramount was located, at 15 Columbus

Circle in Manhattan, is adjacent to the current headquarters of Time Warner, at Time Warner

Center (Dunlap, 1994). 84

In 1994, Paramount the film studio, via Paramount Communications, was acquired by

Viacom and its family of brands (Fabrikant, 1993). The new company gained Paramount

Pictures (and its associated physical studios) and Simon & Schuster, among other assets. It is this period in Paramount’s life that is most relevant to the creation of UPN. Viacom itself was developed out of CBS syndication entities, and this would remain relevant to both UPN and CBS in the period in which UPN exists as a network. Viacom’s history begins as CBS Films in 1952.

In 1970, CBS was forced to spin-off the company, as network ownership of syndication assets was no longer allowed under the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules of 1970 (a policy discussed in chapter 2; see Johnson, 2016, for more on Viacom’s predecessor). In 1971, Viacom debuted for the first time (more about the company’s early history at “Viacom Timeline,” 2017).

In 1983, it joined into a partnership with Warner Communications and Warner-Amex Cable, and in 1985, it acquired the remaining 50 percent of and all of MTV Networks from Warner-Amex and public shareholders (Hiltzik, 1985). In 1987, of

National Amusements, Inc., a movie-theatre chain, acquired 83 percent of the company, and it has been under his control ever since (Fabrikant, 1987; Rainey, Maddaus, & Littleton, 2016).

This is the company that acquired Paramount in 1994 for $10 billion (Rainey, Maddaus, &

Littleton, 2016).

Under the Viacom heading, UPN was developed as Paramount’s sole television network, and was thus gifted with the best IP Paramount then had to offer – the aforementioned Star Trek franchise. However, the company’s acquisitions did not end with Paramount, and in fact a later corporate buyout had significant implications for UPN and its centrality to its corporate owner.

Just a few years into UPN’s existence, Viacom would come to acquire one of the original Big 3 networks, CBS, in 1999. As discussed in Chapter 2, it is this very acquisition that required the 85

FCC to reconsider its own regulations limiting ownership of multiple national broadcast networks, amending the Dual Network Rule to allow specifically for the ownership of a primary network of substantial reach and influence, like CBS, and an “emerging” one, such as UPN. It is at this point that UPN comes under the control of CBS leadership, namely long-time CBS chairman Leslie Moonves.

Despite Moonves’ best of intentions, he could not steer UPN and its leadership in a direction sufficient enough to become profitable by the time the network had been in business for a decade. Soon enough, it became clear that the financial detriments to running a conglomerated legacy media firm were evident in Viacom’s financial statements: the company was forced to take an $18 billion write-off on radio assets (Higgins, 2005). Adding insult to injury, most of the company’s other divisions were experiencing only minor growth, with the notable exceptions of its basic cable assets and CBS, the latter of which experienced major benefits from political advertising in the 2004 election (Higgins, 2005). Perhaps the major lesson to be learned from

Viacom’s losses in the mid-2000s is of the length of time it took legacy media firms to understand and respond to the encroaching threat of the internet to traditional business operations. The corporate losses that ensued often led to sell-offs in the industry, either of whole firms, or of spin-offs consisting of pieces of those larger firms (with even more relevance to the

Time Warner half of The CW’s ownership). Either way, with its consistent losses throughout the decade it existed, UPN was not contributing to the company’s growth stories, but more likely to the company’s vast losses.

The loss triggered by Viacom’s radio assets in part contributed to another major ownership shakeup for UPN. Viacom spun off CBS in 2005, becoming two technically separate corporations, with each maintaining majority ownership by Sumner Redstone. As old Viacom 86 became CBS Corporation and beget a new, reorganized Viacom bearing its predecessor’s name which contained Paramount and some top-quality cable networks, it is CBS that maintains control of UPN and the stations it owned and operated (see Bloomberg News, 2006, for more about Viacom completing the transition into two separate companies; Fabrikant, 2006). UPN was again the recipient of the shifting tides of media conglomeration, a smaller, albeit unsuccessful, piece of a company undergoing technological and societal change around it. CBS Corporation would become UPN’s new owner – for most of the next six months, at least.

Shortly after the companies officially went their (somewhat) separate ways, still under the control of Redstone, and CBS Corporation was no longer officially one company with

Paramount or Viacom. Shortly thereafter, in January of 2006, CBS Corporation under Moonves decided to shutter the network. On January 24th, UPN and The WB made their announcements to merge. The new corporation had officially owned UPN for approximately 23 days before dumping it in favor of the new CW venture. On creating the new venture, Les Moonves remarked: “‘Looking down the road, this was much better than keeping UPN alive” (Sutel,

2006a).21

21 It is interesting to note, at the end of this reflection upon UPN and the generally regarded failure that it was, that the life of the Paramount Television name is not over; in fact, new life has been bestowed upon the name again – this time as a cable channel. In February 2017, Viacom – still the owners of Paramount – announced that in early 2018, it would rebrand men’s network Spike into a general entertainment network to be known as the Paramount Network, focused on scripted original content (Andreeva, 2017a). As Spike president Kevin Kay announced to his staff on February 9, 2017, “The Paramount Network will take Spike’s already strong programming mix and amplify it with the Paramount brand” (Andreeva, 2017b). Further, Kay remarks in an interview with : “The brand of Paramount Network for TV is about stories worth telling. We live in a world where premium scripted is what the audience wants, we’re in a golden age of storytelling. Paramount represents that” (as quoted in Andreeva, 2017c). Whether the third time’s the charm for a Paramount-branded television network remains to be seen, but perhaps this is not the last we’ve heard of the Paramount name levelled upon a television network property. 87

The Beginning of the End: 11 Years, > $1 Billion in Losses

As one analyst predicted in 1994 when comparing the two new networks, “‘The fact that

Paramount has a ‘franchise’ program in Star Trek: Voyager makes them a favorite…But Warner

Bros. has excellent programming skills. I don’t see either one of these guys failing miserably, although both are going to eat a lot of money” (Richmond, 1994). Despite UPN’s successes with

WWE SmackDown and The WB’s designation as a home for teen drama, it was apparent to industry insiders and the networks’ leadership that neither was financially capable of being a long-term survivor of a changing media industry. Even after CBS took over control of UPN and

The WB found a modicum of success with teen dramas like Gilmore Girls, the economic model of broadcast television did not support the networks in their current state. UPN’s final years in existence, especially, came at a much different point in the life of a network than did The WB’s.

Despite existing for the same number of years, UPN experienced much more ownership and leadership upheaval than its competitor in a similar period of time. Further, UPN never established itself as broadcast TV’s go-to network for any one genre or niche. From Star Trek to

WWE SmackDown, UPN’s brand image – despite its name – did not present a singular united destination for viewers from its inception to its demise. By acting like a broadcaster in its programming strategies in the late 1990s and early 2000s, UPN faced a core issue for all broadcast networks at the time: the increased need to specialize. As the rest of television became more decentralized, requiring that networks decide which segment of many in which they would choose to compete, UPN took the strategy of its related CBS: the status-quo of older, more established broadcast networks. Its monetary losses, at over $1 billion for UPN alone, were just too great (James & Gold, 2006). As a result, the network’s legacy remains less associated with its goal of reaching African American viewers than its competitor does with teen dramas. UPN 88 would give its most successful content to the new network – several urban comedies and, in perhaps the most bizarre scheduling move to befall The CW, the right to air WWE SmackDown and finish out UPN’s contract with the wrestling organization.

Yet some elements of the networks’ respective structures were innovative, and these innovations can be seen in logics of The CW. For example, The WB’s use of reverse compensation financing to supplement what they knew would be minimal advertising revenues if viewership never amounted to the kinds of numbers needed to make up for their programming and other costs was needed to assist a partial network facing massive competition from the Big 4, cable networks, and increasingly other outlets such as, eventually, digital. In fact, by 2006, The

WB and UPN were competing to be America’s sixth broadcast network, after Nielsen began rating Spanish-language network Univision (James & Gold, 2006).

While the individual content differences that separated The WB from UPN are definitely of interest and merit investigation detail, it is The WB’s unique financial strategy that has withstood the test of time. In sum, “reverse compensation” is the process by which a network’s affiliates pay the network a fee for the privilege of carrying the network’s content on their local stations. This is in stark contrast to the model used by the Big 3 – each of whom, at the time, paid affiliates to carry their network content (Biagi, 2013; Carter, 1999b; Hall, 2005). (Fox does not pay affiliates for carriage of network content. More on this will be discussed in later chapters with reference to the way The CW structures its relationships with affiliates.)

In an article that feels almost too detailed for the popular press, Bill Carter (1995a) explains that the funding model, developed by Kellner, is more similar to cable’s subscriber fees

(paid by cable operators for the privilege of carrying individual networks on their cable systems), and provided The WB with a built-in source of funding on top of advertising. UPN, which used a 89 more traditional funding system, would only be getting revenue from advertising. In Carter

(1995a), Kellner is reported as saying that this “reverse compensation” model made The WB a more palatable financial model than its competitor. In what would be the first of many competitive moments between the two networks, despite the acknowledgement that neither would have it an easy go of it in a mid-1990s television environment, Kellner effectively declared war on what he perceived as his newfound competitor, UPN.

In 1998, The WB would even launch The WB 100+ Stations Group using reverse compensation financing that would serve just the markets in DMAs 100-210. On September 21,

1998, 80 stations joined the new group simultaneously, an event the network called “the biggest- ever simultaneous launch of a station group” (“The WB 100+ station group hits 8 million...,”

2002). In these markets, The WB was carried over cable, since there were often not enough broadcast stations to carry it in smaller markets. In 2002, when the group had reached 8 million cable households, The WB even touted that it was using state-of-the-art technology to allow for insertion and custom, localized branding – all of which would make The WB in those markets feel like a local broadcast station, even if it was not one in those markets, technically

(“The WB 100+ station group hits 8 million...,” 2002).

The WB’s ability to act more like a cable network in terms of its finances impacted its programming strategies as well. In contrast to the kinds of multi-targeting strategies undertaken by the Big 4 and UPN, The WB knew what it wanted relatively early in its existence: the coveted, young adult and teen viewer, who would be loyal to the network’s brand by lifestyle association with the mostly white, mostly affluent, and entirely beautiful young people in its programs. Paired with a youthful image, The WB took what it already did best – teen lifestyle drama and new financial models – and handed it over to its successor in late 2006. 90

While neither The WB nor UPN seems to have experienced as much derision as its successor, these networks provide an important lesson to the television industry regarding the nature of business failure, issuing early warning signals about the state of broadcast television that remain of value today. In the next chapter, I will explore The CW’s first two poorly performing seasons in further detail, including an in-depth look at the creation of the network between January and August 2006.

91

Chapter 4:

Come for the SmackDown, Stay for the Teen Drama: Fall 2006-Spring 2008

In the life of a television network, viewers perceive networks as arbiters of content, as outlets through which they can view shows they enjoy. The reality is that selecting content for a television network is far more complicated than it may seem. Broadcast networks, in particular, are stuck in a kind of endless limbo – fighting to develop content that will draw the youngest

(and most profitable in terms of value for advertisers) crowds, but also programming content that will not offend or disinterest other segments of the potential audience (e.g., more conservative viewers). This makes it virtually impossible for broadcast networks to appeal to everyone, and as a result, the content programmed therein can be described as “lowest common denominator” content: appealing to the widest set of eyeballs whilst developing the lowest number of detractors. While Richard Reeves of Esquire (1978) accused acclaimed programming executive

Fred Silverman – famous for making ABC a ratings powerhouse in the mid-1970s – of making television appeal to the lowest common denominator, the programming of the 1970s was not, in many ways, significantly different from what broadcast networks were airing 20 years later.

As a result, 2000s broadcast TV in the United States, from a programming perspective, had cultivated an image of middle-of-the-road generality, filling television sets with hour-long ripped-from-the-headlines crime-solvers (CSI, Law & Order, NCIS) and half-hour situation comedies focused on workplace or family themes (, Everybody Loves

Raymond, ). While Silverman was vilified for making broadcast content more explicit (see Cooper, n.d.), this is in fact what made Two and a Half Men, about a debauched bachelor and his unlucky brother, a long-running CBS hit. In broadcast network scheduling, even by the mid-2000s, the consistency of Law and Order is tempered with 92 comedies about the inanities of everyday life, from workingman family comedies (Grounded for

Life, 2001-2005; The War at Home, 2005-2007; to name a few) to gruesome crime dramas (Law

& Order: SVU is a particularly heinous example). Apart from a mutual interest in plastering

American TV screens with beautiful people, teen-themed television and the Big 4 broadcasters in

2006 did not have much in common. The notable exception to this is Fox’s The O.C. (2003-

2007), a WB-produced primetime soap opera about teens growing up in wealthy Newport Beach,

California, that would have made a strong addition to The WB’s own schedule in the 2003-2004 television season; O.C. creator would go on to create The CW’s first long-running original program, Gossip Girl, in 2008 (Bell, 2016). For context, shows that premiered for the first time in the 2006-2007 television season included dramedy (ABC, 4 seasons), multi-camera Rules of Engagement (CBS, 7 seasons), reality competition program Hell’s

Kitchen (Fox, 16 seasons), and single-camera comedy (NBC, 7 seasons). America’s top two broadcast programs in total viewers were both American Idol on Fox, a program that had garnered approximately 30 million viewers per night, multiple nights per week, which at the time equated to a rating of approximately 17 (Brooks & Marsh, 2007; Kissell, 2016, provides a retrospective of the series). In comparison, the highest-ranked television program airing on The

CW that season ranked 112th – it was America’s Next Top Model, with 5.4 million total viewers; a program with a similar number of total viewers in its first season, Drive, tied for the 112th- ranked program of the 2006-2007 television season, was cancelled by Fox after airing just four episodes (Schneider, 2007a). While a show performing to those standards on the other English- language broadcasters might have been cancelled immediately, Top Model, which originated on

UPN, would run for nine more years on The CW, and was considered one of the network’s big successes. 93

The CW would have a long road ahead of it, if it ever hoped to compete with the likes of the Big 4. But first, before it could even get off the ground as a network, The CW would have to merge all the departments that it had as UPN and The WB, as well as their local affiliates nationwide, and attempt to make one cohesive brand image out of two disparate entities. On top of this, the network would have to deal with its two corporate owners, who, as described in

Chapter 3, had undergone some organizational changes of their own in order to get to that point.

From the day the network was announced, the new emerging network, affectionately referred to as a “netlet” like its predecessors, would have just 9 months to figure out how it was going to function – and who, if anybody, would be watching it.

The main purpose of this chapter will be to expand upon the events that went into the formation of the network, from the network’s announcement through its first two seasons. The major themes that characterize this part of the network’s history are its required ties to its predecessor networks, made more complicated by those networks’ vastly different viewer demographics, as well as the new network’s desire to be an innovator from the start, focusing on new methods of advertising and online viewership. This chapter specifically focuses on The

CW’s underwhelming performance in its first two seasons (2006-2008), which would lead to major changes to the network’s programming and scheduling in its third season.

The Merger Announcement, and the Closure of The WB and UPN

When the new network was formally announced on January 24th, 2006, CBS and Warner

Bros. released a detailed press release highlighting some of the most important details of the merger. In it, the network owners revealed that they had decided on leadership and already lined up some affiliates for the new network. Dawn Ostroff, of UPN, was made President of 94

Entertainment, and John Maatta, of The WB, could continue his role as at the new network. Maatta would take on all business and sales functions; Ostroff would take on all network day-to-day operations, including oversight of the programming, scheduling, and marketing department. The first station group to sign on: Tribune, naturally, a former part-owner of The WB. As the official press release states: “The combination of Tribune's 16 major market stations and the 12 CBS-owned UPN major market affiliates give The CW instant coverage in

48% of the country. The remainder of the network's distribution system will be a combination of selected current UPN and The WB stations. The full distribution of the new network is expected to exceed 95% of the country” (“CBS Corporation and Warner Bros. Entertainment form new

5th broadcast network,” 2006).

Also included in the release: the new network’s programming hours. The new network would follow The WB’s programming strategy, “a 6 night-13 hour primetime lineup” including two hours of prime programming on weekdays, a weekday afternoon block, a weekend morning block, and extended prime programming on Sunday evenings (“CBS Corporation and

Warner Bros. Entertainment form new 5th broadcast network,” 2006).

After the announcement of January 24th, CBS and Time Warner were tasked with the formal steps required to create the national network. Despite the fact that both companies had done this before, albeit not in a partnership, this would still pose a formidable task in the coming months. Most of the issue was at the local level - the new network’s access to the nation’s viewers, and which half of the two prior networks’ affiliates would become members of the new network. One dilemma was the lack of warning about the merger, and the stations that were left behind. After the announcement – which was not reported to UPN and The WB’s affiliates prior to January 24th – affiliates of the two networks, and owned by the different station groups, all 95 over the country were left scrambling, unsure which content (if any) they would be given to program come September (Pergament, 2006; Richgels, 2006; Toby, 2006). Simply put, some of the two networks’ prior affiliates would be left with no content by the time the next television season began – unless another company were to step in and snap up affiliations for the leftover remnants of UPN and WB stations nationwide.

One of those station groups faced with having several homeless stations due to the merger was Rupert Murdoch’s . Nine of the company’s former UPN affiliates were to have no content in the 2006-2007 television season, as the WB affiliates in those markets, not the UPN affiliates, had been designated to carry the new CW signal. Fox, never a company to back down, decided it would have to take radical measures to find content to air on its stations. This took the form of increased competition, an unintended consequence of the merger. By February of 2006, Fox had developed a new broadcast network: MyNetwork TV

(Gold & James, 2006). When The CW was announced, “Due to the sensitivity of negotiations,

CBS and Time Warner didn’t inform certain business partners of their plans until just before they held a press conference. Mr. [Roger] Ailes, who added oversight of Fox’s TV station group to his control of Fox News Channel last year, was only given 20 minutes notice” (Barnes, 2006a).

MyNetwork TV would provide “a pared-down programming service that will offer two hours of prime-time shows six nights a week” attempting to bring the format popular amongst

Spanish-speaking countries to U.S. broadcast television (Gold & James, 2006).

Another complication was the financial state of The WB. As written in Time Warner’s

2006 10-K annual report of consolidated financial statements, “On September 17, 2006, at the end of the 2005-2006 television season, Warner Bros. and CBS ceased the stand-alone operations of The WB Network and UPN, respectively, and formed a new fully-distributed 96 national broadcast network, called The CW. Warner Bros. and CBS each own 50% of the new network and have joint and equal control” (p. 82). The document states that The WB’s financial position at the time of closure was not promising and unsatisfactory, requiring the company to undertake a $200 million “goodwill impairment charge.” The company attributed this poor economic performance to “actual ratings levels being lower than had been previously estimated and a projected increase in certain programming costs,” since with lower ratings comes lower advertising dollars flowing back to the network. Time Warner also incurred costs of $114 million to shut down the old network, including the costs required to terminate now-redundant employees and to cancel “programming arrangements” that involved the right to air films from other Time Warner business units.

Finally, the report states that “The Company’s net investment in The CW is classified as

Investments,” meaning that it would not be required to take financial responsibility for the network individually on its consolidated SEC filings. Since both companies have an equal share, and both companies account for the network under the equity method of accounting, there is no externally available information regarding the network’s exact finances, except for the calculations of syndicated services like SNL Kagan. Thus, it is impossible to know from an external position whether or not any losses incurred by The CW are, in fact, realized by either parent company, or whether they are merely “paper losses,” whereby the parent companies write off the network’s poor performance under other general “investments” or through other business units. This complication means the network’s financials are not transparent; since the network does not release financials even as a part of a consolidated business segment, industry observers would not be able to tell exactly how the network was continuing to subsist, especially when it seemed as though it was not garnering the ratings its parent companies had hoped. 97

As the next section details, other issues of merging the networks emerged, including the name and brand of the new combined network, how to reduce the programming, and refocus the audience, from two networks into one.

Early Days: Before the Upfront Presentation, February – April 2006

In the time immediately following the January 24th announcement, the popular and trade industry press had had time to process the switch – and to pick on the new network’s choice of brand. In early February, trade industry magazine TelevisionWeek “challenged its readers to come up with a better moniker for the new CBS-Warner Bros. joint network, whose name, The

CW, landed with a thud in the minds of many” (Gilbert, 2006). In an article dated the day of the announcement, entitled, “From the Ashes of UPN and WB, a New Little Network to Arise,” then- Post critic Lisa de Moraes writes that the network was “named in tribute to

CBS and Warner Bros., and if you think that’s lame you should see the network’s new logo,” a retro-inspired connected “C” and “W,” that could be described as a series of connected pipes (de

Moraes, 2006a). In March, Fernandez (2006b) quotes CBS president Les Moonves as saying that the name was but one of 120 possible candidates for the rebranding, including “NOW, REV, and

JO.” Moonves claimed the new name tested well with young people who would be the target audience, but “[i]ndustry veterans who have joked about the country-western or the Can't Work implications are a different matter” (Fernandez, 2006b). The CW was also preparing to carry a youthful audience throughout the nation, as well, developing its small-market service for the smaller, 100+ markets, dubbed The CW Plus, as early as February of 2006. This service was a direct successor to a similar one developed by The WB that reached every U.S. market by cable 98

(The WB 100+ Stations Group), and, if joined, required that stations either paid The CW for the privilege of carrying their content or turn over 30% of net revenue (Romano, 2006).

Some worried that the merger of the two companies would, by necessity, create fewer production opportunities for TV creatives. Fernandez (2006a) wrote in February about the new shows announced as being picked up for production on the two previous networks. Would those new shows have a home on The CW? With less schedule time to spare, it looked less and less likely that some of those new shows would make the cut, especially when they were competing with The WB and UPN’s classics. Fernandez (2006a) quotes producer Tom Fontana: “‘It's like when the Titanic is going down, you can either swim to the shore or you can sing along with the band,’ he said. ‘Well, I'm singing along with the band. My attitude is that this is business.’”

Schedule shelf space wouldn’t be the only issue for producers. One such issue had significant racial implications. Prior to the merger, in 2002, UPN programs had the highest percentage of black characters in broadcast television – at 31 percent, it was double-digits above the next-highest percentage, held by Fox, at 18.9 percent (study by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, 2002, cited in Smith, 2006). The WB, in contrast, had the lowest percentage of black characters on its air in 2002; just 8.3 percent of WB characters were black. After the two networks announced their merger, some in the industry worried that

The CW would neglect black viewers and cancel shows that had become valuable assets for

UPN. In the Morning News, Ed Bark writes in reaction to the network’s initial press conference, “The CW clearly will be searching for wider audiences via fewer predominantly black shows. Not that UPN executives ever felt comfortable with the notion that programming for black viewers had become part of the network's ‘business plan.’” Bark goes on to cite Ostroff 99

– the white, female former UPN head – as saying that she chose scripts that had the best quality writing, not that catered specifically to minority viewers.

As the year went on and the launch of the new network got closer, The CW’s diversity- crushing potential was not forgotten. In the Sun, television critic

(2006) writes that, in the lead-up to the network’s upfront presentation, “industry insiders” were remarking how unlikely it would be for UPN’s black sitcoms to make The CW’s initial fall schedule. The comments were based upon the relative lack of success those programs had experienced as part of UPN’s schedule, with the exception of , the Chris

Rock-inspired and voiced sitcom that was an explicit contrast to the more traditional and white- oriented on CBS, a Big Three network. As Table 3 indicates,

Everyone Hates Chris would, in fact, go on to become part of the new network’s inaugural lineup. Two more programs that would also see renewal were Girlfriends, with a young, female viewership, and , which had the name-value of producers Will and .

(To The CW’s credit, the network does pick up CBS-produced Girlfriends spin-off The Game, which went on to air on the network for three seasons before substantially increasing its viewer base on BET; see Yahr, 2015, for more about The Game’s life on The CW.) For the 2005-2006 season, Zurawik cites statistics to compile the following list of black-led

UPN sitcoms and their performance versus the rest of broadcast television.

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Table 3. UPN television program performance amongst all viewers (composite) and black viewers.

Program Nielsen rank: All Viewers Nielsen rank: Black Viewers Girlfriends 165 3 All of Us 166 4 Everybody Hates Chris 146 5 Half & Half 167 7 One on One 170 11 178 17 Cuts 171 18 Love, Inc. 169 22

Note: Nielsen uses the designation “black” to account for African American viewers. Shaded cells represent those programs that would air on The CW in the 2006-2007 television season.

Meanwhile, executive onlookers had their own thoughts about potential success of The

CW, some of this being upbeat. Jamie Kellner, who had long since left The WB Network he helped to create in 1995 and went on to lead an independent station group called Acme

Communications, had squarely placed his on The CW for his stations. In an interview with

Barnes in the Wall Street Journal in April (2006b), Kellner had clearly placed his hopes with

The CW, but admitted that the rumors around the two networks’ merger had been present since they both began. He also argued that it should have happened years earlier and that the new network, whose name had been much maligned by the press, should not be judged by its name –

“If they do a good job with that, then it will be a great name.” Finally, Kellner had a lot of positive remarks for the little network, responding that its new joint ownership leveraged the strengths of both companies, including the business savvy of WB and the programming skills of

CBS. On The CW’s new schedule, he remarked: “The programming strategy so far is great ­­ they have too many good programs for the available time slots. They'll have to try pretty hard to 101 screw this up.” As will be discussed later, by the end of the network’s second season, some would argue that it had.

The CW’s 2006-2007 Upfront Presentation and Sales Period, May – July 2006

The CW’s very first upfront presentation to advertisers would come before it even had an official fall schedule and before it had ever aired a minute of content. The upfront presentation is the most important presentation a television network can make all year, because it informs advertisers about what programming will be returning to and debuting on their networks that coming fall. itself is also the official start of the upfront sales period, when networks hope to sell the majority of their upcoming season’s available advertising air space literally upfront, before the season begins (Steinberg, 2006). A disastrous take in the upfront can, subsequently, cause major ramifications for the network as the fall season begins and the remaining advertisements are sold at different rates (“scatter” sales) (Lafayette, 2006, explains scatter sales in the context of the 2006-2007 television season). On May 18, 2006, the new network held an upfront presentation where it highlighted 12 total shows that would comprise the fall schedule, six from each previous network (Kronke, 2006). The CW also left space for two completely new shows, so the network could begin to develop its own brand identity with viewers. Discussions of the new network’s upfront were intimately intertwined with another broadcaster – MyNetwork TV – which was considered the network’s main competition for advertiser dollars in 2006; neither would receive much acclaim as the new season started.

Upon learning about the network’s planned content for the 2006-2007 television season, industry analysts were enthused. “‘It looks like they put together a strong lineup. The network should do better together than UPN and WB did separately,’ said Mark Fratrik, vice president 102 with BIA Financial Network, a strategic consulting firm for the media and communications industries” (as quoted in La Monica, 2006). The ability to cherry-pick the best of both prior networks’ schedules was seen as a major positive; The CW President of Entertainment Dawn

Ostroff likened programming for the new network to the choices made in a fantasy football team

(La Monica, 2006). Further, by May, the network had reached over 90% coverage in the country, including all 50 of the top 50 markets, ensuring that the majority of U.S. TV viewers would have access to the network at launch (“The CW announces 11 new long-term affiliation agreements,”

2006).

A merged lineup of known hits wasn’t the only innovation the new network developed before it hit broadcast airwaves. The network also announced its desire to create immersive advertising experiences for marketers, who were beginning to despair at the prospect of viewers fast-forwarding through their sales content on their DVRs. These were to be called “content wraps,” which would be story-driven, telling small vignettes of a wider story (with product placement) that would create linear narratives for viewers; hence, so argued the theory, viewers would not be so likely to hit the fast-forward button on their DVRs (La Monica, 2006). These sponsored segments, airing during the commercial break, would be hybrid versions of commercial and content and also included online tie-ins (Gillian, 2011); they showed the network’s willingness to try new ways to attract advertisers to the new venture, and foreshadowed later web-based commercial-content hybrid trends such as “native advertising” and “content marketing.”

Finally, the network announced its intention to program to the 18-34 demographic, and that it would be the only broadcast network that season to do so. Another analyst, Brad Adgate, then of Horizon Media, argued, “‘The CW should do very well in the upfront. There are a lot of 103 advertisers that want to go after 18-34 year olds." He added, "But I don't think the CW will necessarily double its ratings because of the merger’” (as quoted in La Monica, 2006).

Just over one month later, once advertisers began making their buys in the upfront market, the entertainment press analyzed the networks’ progress. It was not optimistic. In early

June, James (2006a) cites the example of healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, which had decided against purchasing network television advertising at all during the upfront sales period; the previous season, the company spent $450 million on TV adverts. Essentially, J&J – as well as many companies of their ilk – questioned the long-held logic of buying into network ad space inventories in advance of the season, deciding instead to wait out the upfront period until scatter started. Partially in response to massive increases in CPMs requested of advertisers during recent upfront periods and partially in response to the desire to buy in multimedia environments, the upfront season was not performing to the expectations of any broadcaster. Declines were to be expected in the overall proceeds of the upfront for broadcasters anyway, as the merger of The

WB and UPN caused a decrease in the available inventory to buy into (James, 2006a).

By late June, nearing the end of the upfront sales period, things weren’t looking much better for all of broadcast, let alone the nascent CW and MyNetwork TV. On June 28th, Brian

Steinberg writes, “Neither [The CW nor MyNetwork TV] has had an easy upfront,” and notes that the projected $625-640 million in advertising for The CW’s debut year pales when compared to the combined $1 billion brought in by the two pre-merger networks the year before.

While The CW’s spokesman responded with a positive quote – that the network achieved what it wanted to regarding sales goals – this would not be a positive indicator for the network’s performance before it came to air. 104

By early July, it became clear that the upfront sales market for all the English-language broadcasters would perform significantly below expectations, by at least 2 percent in total. In an article entitled, “TV's 'upfront' ad-selling season limps to a close,” Sutel (2006b), for the

Associated Press, writes that The CW ended up with about $650 million in commitments by the end of the upfront sales period, and that advertisers were moving into more targeted cable channels and Internet avenues to spend their budgets. Despite the decreases, James (2006b) views this as a positive for The CW, who finagled “rate increases of 1 to 3 percent” over CPMs of its predecessor networks and “scored more with advertisers than its two predecessors,” primarily because the new network was aimed at a narrow core audience of difficult-to-reach 18- to-34-year-olds. While her analysis is correct regarding the network’s rate increases, what she overlooks is also relevant: in a year where advertisers requested more and more targeted audiences, a network with a built-in audience of known programming and the most narrow demographic of any English-language broadcaster couldn’t even match the previous year’s take from just one of its parent networks. In July of 2006, the future of the network was largely unclear, but soon this underwhelming upfront sales period would come to be one of many bad omens for the network.

For the Big 4, for whom their brand was solidified in the marketplace, a poor upfront did not spell immediate danger for their business. For a network who had not yet aired a single minute, this reticence on the part of advertisers was an ominous sign. Instead of coming in under the estimate of former network The WB, the new network had hoped to garner more advertising dollars by taking the best of both networks and combining their highest-rated content. Further,

The CW had also made a big gamble by reviving one of their oldest – and also one of their most 105 expensive – programs in 7th Heaven, a show whose cancellation had been earlier announced, and a gamble that would not pay off with a decreased take in the upfront sales period.

The First Schedule: July-August 2006

In the late summer of 2006, pieces of the network were still being put together. At the

Television Critics Association Summer TV Press Tour 2006 in July, de Moraes complains on behalf of her fellow critics about the network’s choice of branding, particularly the topic of its

“CW Green” logo coloring (see Figures 6-9). She writes: “Critics… feel there is enough sadness in the world without having new broadcast networks going around plastering CW Green -- a melange of baby-puke green and Jolly Rancher apple green -- on billboards, magazines and TV ads. And they said so in no uncertain terms during Ostroff's &A at Summer TV Press Tour

2006 here Monday.” However, upon hearing the criticism about the network’s impending name and logo, Ostroff remarks that network executives had considered changing the name, but when they learned that 48 percent of target 18-34 viewers had already become familiar with the new brand, they decided against paying millions of dollars to make the change.

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Figure 6. “CW Green” at launch, officially Pantone 370, according to executive Rick Haskins

(Elber, 2006).

Figure 7. The CW’s logo, still in use today (in different colors).

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Figures 8 & 9. The network’s first brand-campaign print-ads for outdoor, using the network’s first tagline, “Free to Be.” prefaced these New York-affiliate ads with the title, “The CW’s new billboards: Free to be mocked” (Sullivan, 2006).

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The CW’s first-ever schedule consisted primarily of choice programs from both networks. See

Table 4 for the network’s fall 2006-2007 schedule. The majority of the prime weekday slots were handed over to shows formerly airing on The WB. Amongst these are 7th Heaven and One Tree

Hill. The former, a family-focused drama, had been on the air for 10 seasons, and had become so expensive for the network that The WB remarked it was losing $16 million per year for the network to continue airing it (Associated Press, 2006). This is why The WB officially cancelled the show, in November 2005, prior to the formal decision to merge with UPN. Rice (2005) writes that the show cost more than $2 million per episode, including some $100k+ cast salaries that kept production costs high, especially on large ensemble casts. The show, produced by CBS, would provide the new network its first taste of the sweet rewards of producing owned content – as CBS was able to finagle the costs down to an appropriate amount, giving the show an 11th season (de Moraes, 2006b). Although the renewal of the program did not deliver a demonstratively successful upfront season, the show had been a consistent performer, one that would be important in maintaining The WB’s visual influence in the new network’s first season, to viewers as well as to advertisers.

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Table 4. The CW’s first-ever fall 2006 schedule, as announced at its May 2006 Upfront

Presentation.

TIME SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

Everybody Hates Chris 7:00p All of Us

Girlfriends America’s Next 8:00p 7th Heaven Gilmore Girls Top Model/Beauty Smallville The Game and the Geek Friday Night America’s SmackDown Next Top Veronica 9:00p Runaway One Tree Hill Supernatural Model Mars (repeats)

Midseason: (new); November: Reba (WB) In October, the network would switch its Sunday and Monday night programming. Red highlighting indicates a show formerly airing on UPN. Blue highlighting indicates a show formerly airing on The WB. Green highlighting indicates a show new to The CW. Purple highlighting indicates programming in this timeslot aired on both previous networks.

One Tree Hill, in contrast, was not a top-performer on The WB of its third season. The hour-long drama about two half-brothers and their high-school experiences in a fictitious North Carolina town would run for six more seasons on The CW, despite experiencing further low ratings there. Many critics’ first choice for Hill’s spot on the schedule was a different

WB show, Everwood, another hour-long drama centered on a moves his children to a rural Colorado town after the death of his wife; the program that did not make the cut to the new network (de Moraes, 2006b). (The show was so well received amongst critics that the New York

Times even reviewed its series , lamenting the end of the “beautiful, funny, tenderhearted family show” that was put to death “at the hands of cruel network forces” (Heffernan, 2006).

Ostroff argued that Hill audiences had more overlap with those of its prospective lead-in,

America’s Next Top Model, than Everwood would have (de Moraes, 2006b). Warner Bros. 110

Television produced Everwood, which received good ratings for The WB, under the control of executive producer . Berlanti would not produce television for Warner Bros. or The

CW again for five years, but his return was to prove significant. When he left his deal with ABC

Studios for WBTV in 2011, it was to develop and executive produce The CW’s stable of superhero programming (Marechal, 2013b).

7th Heaven was not the only program the new network would un-cancel before going into the 2006-2007 season. Reba, a half-hour comedy starring and country music performer

Reba McEntire and produced by 20th Century Fox Television, formerly aired on The WB. Due to the terms of the deal with Fox, The CW was forced to air another (final) season of the program

– or else, pay the $20 million to buy The WB out of its contract (Ryan, 2006a).

The previous contractual obligations of the two networks (as with Reba) and the logic of hedging their bets with proven program brands like 7th Heaven meant that the network’s demographic focus in its first years was not as tight as it could have been. And there was one other very notable and visible anomaly. The network’s first schedule also meant that, for the first time, the network that billed itself as the arbiter of affluent teen content would be airing professional wrestling, a move that appeared completely out-of-line with the new network’s branding. The obvious answer for an outside observer in this situation might be to cancel wrestling, devoting The CW more fully to its 18-34 female-skewing demographic. However, the network would need to keep male viewers happy, as well as advertisers, for whom they would owe significant money if the new network’s primetime ratings were not as successful as network executives had hoped. Thus, the contract controlled by UPN is transferred over to The CW, and the network debuted Friday Night SmackDown as part of its new schedule in the fall of 2006.

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The CW’s Debut: the 2006 – 2007 Television Season

In September 2006, as the network prepared to launch its first programming, the network’s new marketing chief, Rick Haskins, undertook some unique marketing campaigns in order to alert the network’s targeted younger viewers of the new network. One of these brand activations consisted of a mall tour – similar to the way 80’s pop stars played shows in malls and, in the 2000s, similar to the tours undertaken by Fox’s to build hype around the show’s music. But a mall tour for a television network was quite a different undertaking. The point of the network literally taking to the streets was to help make the valuable 18-34 viewers more aware of the new brand, and thus, to urge them to connect with the brand “where they live – in the digital world” (Elber, 2006). Each tour stop was centered on a multi-media “CW Lounge,” which was “outfitted with laptops, so consumers [could] log into www.cwtv.com and join the

CW Lab Online Community” (TVNewsCheck, 2006). The network’s in-person attempts to garner name recognition amongst its new demographic prior to going on the air were secondary to its online presence. Partially due to its low budget and partially due to its desire to appeal to younger viewers, The CW found it essential to promote itself as an arbiter of not just a linear, television space, but also as a brand able to compete in the digital space. This would become crucial for the network as it entered its nascent inaugural season.

Affiliates switched over to The CW Network on Monday, September 18th (Littleton,

2016a), and on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006, the network began programming its new content for the first time. The first-ever new episode to air on the network was America’s Next

Top Model, a special two-hour season premiere episode (Elber, 2006; Aurthur, 2006). Over two weeks, the network premiered new seasons from its stable of WB and UPN content in addition to its two new programs, The Game and Runaway. 112

As the season began, it became evident that the viewership trends that had hit the entire broadcast (and, in fact, the entire television) industry had found their way to The CW. For as much as Rick Haskins wanted to create new and different business models for its programming and brand image, the network’s content – and its ratings – were underwhelming from the start.

One of the biggest failures as the season began was an untested, new-to-CW content: the hour- long, Fugitive-esque drama Runaway. The show was the lowest-rated amongst all English- language broadcasters, and after two weeks on Monday nights and one on Sunday, the network cancelled it on October 18, 2006 (“'Runaway' in shuffle as CW axes first drama,” 2006). The show, produced by Pictures Television (significantly – not a parent company), was the network’s first cancellation, as its last episode averaged just 1.8 million viewers ages 18-49. The

Game – the network’s other new original program – survived the season, but as a spinoff of a successful UPN show, it had more of a built-in audience than Runaway. The CW therefore ended its first season completely resting on the laurels of its predecessor networks, unable to create any new content that would draw the new, younger audience base.

Perhaps part of The CW’s failings in its inaugural season came from its desire to do too much too soon; not only did its creation cause massive broadcast realignment amongst its affiliates, but its new brand, name, and programming identity mixed with a new style of advertising all helped to make it the target of industry snickering. The only interesting part about the creation of The CW, in the eyes of many critics, was its focus on new advertising strategies that would help to keep the coveted 18-34 viewers in their chairs during commercial breaks, including the “content wraps” mentioned earlier. One of the network’s partnerships in the 2006 season was with restaurant chain Chili’s, which appeared in scripted drama Veronica Mars, and importantly included a web presence, an element seen as increasingly important to both 113 advertisers and young audiences. Atkinson (2006) in Advertising Age elucidates the details of the sponsorship deal below:

Chili's will also be included on the network's website in an area called The CW Lounge,

which features chat rooms and message boards. In a "Free to Be Famous" promotion,

supported by Chili's, viewers are asked to post their own photos which will be used in

promotions for the CW on the air.

In return for all that, Chili's will hang artwork from the CW in 1,000 restaurants, servers

will wear "Free to Be Saucy" and "Free to Be Friendly" aprons while coasters -- labeled

"Free to Be Icey" -- will be placed on tables and bar counters.

However, all the unique advertising content in the world wouldn’t be able to make up for poor viewership – the fewer the viewers, the less likely anybody would be to see those ads. This was the concern of advertising agencies going into the network’s first season. Unfortunately, one network season does not provide enough time to judge whether or not these changes in advertising strategies could impact users’ experiences with those ads; test for the network in terms of success in all avenues would come in its second season.

It is important to note that The CW’s willingness to experiment with commercial strategies, however successful it was considered in its first few seasons, foresees other experimental initiatives regarding the ad load of programming hours. For example, nine years later in 2015, Turner Broadcasting announced it would reduce the amount of commercial minutes in its premiere programming on its smallest network, truTV, and then extended the tactic to TNT drama originals like Animal Kingdom (Lafayette, 2015; Schneider, 2016).

At the end of the 2006-2007 season, Nielsen compiled and released its year-end ratings, leaving media outlets to rank and comment on the networks and their programming. The title of 114

Vulture’s coverage explains the network’s predicament: “The Final Nielsen Ratings: A Litany of

Horrors for the CW.” The article explains that the bottom-ten programs ranked by Nielsen that season were all on The CW. As mentioned in this chapter’s introduction, the network’s highest- rated program (America’s Next Top Model) was in just 112th place, and tied with programs other broadcasters had cancelled almost immediately. One positive for the new little network, and an important one for its current and future broadcast niche: it performed slightly higher than both of its predecessors in the adults 18-34 demographic, the narrower target goal it had chosen for itself. Gough (2007) writes, “…Both of those former networks averaged a 1.4/4 in the demo for the 2005-06 TV season, while the CW this year averaged a 1.5/4, an increase of 7%.” Otherwise, the network is largely omitted from press coverage of the broadcasters’ year-end statistics; after all, the network was so new that it was unfair to compare its performance after just one season with the Big 4 and their heavy-hitters. In 2006, those programs were shows like Grey’s Anatomy

(ABC), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS), and Heroes (NBC).

By the end of the season, it became clear that The CW was still in last-place amongst the

Big 4, as the same content that didn’t appeal to viewers on The WB or UPN continued not to appeal to them on their new network home. This was, in essence, a rather mild opening season for the network. What The CW and industry observers had not yet realized was that things would get a lot worse for the network before it could begin to find its audience.

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Sophomore Slump, The Online Migration, and Continued Ad Experiments: 2007 – 2008

Television Season

“And who am I? That's one secret I'll never tell! You know you love me. XOXO, Gossip

Girl.” – The mysterious introduction to The CW’s first long-running original program,

Gossip Girl.

The network’s second year programming – the fall 2007-2008 schedule as shown in

Table 5 – did not exactly inspire confidence amongst industry observers about the network’s longevity and creativity. With the exception of known quantities like Everybody Hates Chris,

Smallville, and America’s Next Top Model, the network was premiering several new programs in addition to some middling returning ones (e.g., Supernatural). The schedule was without successes like 7th Heaven and Gilmore Girls, the long-running fan favorites that were cancelled at the end of the prior season.

Table 5. The CW’s fall 2007-2008 schedule.

8-830p Everybody Hates Chris 830-9p MONDAY 9-930p Girlfriends 930-10p The Game 8-9p TUESDAY 9-10p Reaper (New Series) 8-9p America’s Next Top Model WEDNESDAY 9-10p Gossip Girl (New Series) 8-9p Smallville THURSDAY 9-10p Supernatural FRIDAY 8-10p WWE Friday Night SmackDown! 7-730p CW Now (New Series) 730-8p (New Series) SUNDAY 8-9p (New Series) 9-10p America’s Next Top Model (Encore)

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The marquee premiere was a buzzy new show titled Gossip Girl, a series designed to mimic the basic narrative dynamic and audience of Fox’s youth-oriented The O.C., and was in fact co-created by Josh Schwartz who had also created the earlier Fox program. Gossip Girl was, notably, a book adaptation – from young-adult book publisher and film/TV packager Alloy

Entertainment (Andreeva, 2006, discusses more about Alloy’s relationship with WBTV and

Schwartz’s creation; presciently, this article also describes the project that would become ABC

Family’s , to be discussed in chapter 5). Alloy – then an independent publisher

– would later become integral to The CW, and its content would help to save the network when it seemed it did not have the success to continue broadcasting.

It appeared in fact that the network had banked their efforts on Schwartz’s Gossip Girl, which premiered all newcomer acting talent but catered to what was soon becoming the network’s brand identity: a redux on The WB’s white teenagers of means and privilege, finding themselves in some unlikely situations. In addition, Gossip Girl was produced by CW parent companies. Still, the show presented something of a mystery to advertisers, who wondered whether the younger, higher-income viewers the network needed to stay competitive would show up for such a program. Two years before programming contemporary Pretty Little Liars would appear on competitor network ABC Family, Gossip Girl was entertaining a whole new generation of teens and young adults with its beautiful, wealthy, stock characters and their teenage intrigue.

Almost immediately, the network’s new season didn’t seem to appeal to many viewers – sometimes, almost none at all. By October, the network had already cancelled its first new program of that season, Online Nation, a clip-show of internet content that foresaw such omnipresent schedule fodder as Tosh.0 (2009-present) on Comedy Central and Ridiculousness 117

(2011-present) on MTV (Nordyke, 2007). The CW’s audience at that point was down 25 percent, compared to the year before. In February, it would go on to cancel CW Now, a 30-minute entertainment newsmagazine program that received several 0.00 Nielsen ratings that season

(“'CW Now' canceled,” 2008).

Perhaps worst of all, by conventional ratings standards, the key new program in the schedule, Gossip Girl, performed relatively poorly (Learmonth, 2008). The show had started strong, but by December, had shed almost half of its viewership. Perhaps due to the overall poor performance of the network or pressure from advertisers, the network may have overreacted – or, at least, applied old thinking to a new trend. In retrospect, what seems to have been happening was a collision of newer viewing patterns with older audience measurement systems. With

Gossip Girl, online viewing by young audiences was draining viewing from television, a ratings migration that the network later embraced, but was a new (and largely unmeasured) phenomenon in 2007. In fact, the network’s response with Gossip Girl was to discourage or even prevent on- line viewing: the network pulled the most recent five episodes of the show from the network’s website in April, attempting to force their valuable 18-34 viewers to watch on linear television

(Learmouth, 2008; “CW keeps new ‘Gossip Girl’ episodes off web,” 2008), an indication that the new network (and perhaps television generally at the time) did not understand or at least was not ready for shifting television use patterns by their most desirable audience, the young. Pressler and Rovzar (2008) write of the show’s unique successes, outside of linear TV:

And yet, the numbers were bad. Really bad. New episodes pulled in an average of 2.5

million viewers, just over half of what The O.C. had the season it was canceled.

Teenagers just weren’t gathering around the family tube to catch the show during its 9

p.m. slot. But that didn’t mean they weren’t watching… Even executives at Nielsen threw 118

up their hands and admitted that Gossip Girl appeared to be speaking to an audience so

young and tech-savvy they hadn’t really figured it out just yet… But this is the first show

that seems to have succeeded primarily on the Internet. There’s something about the

combination of the show’s premise, the viewers’ age, and the available technology that

has given Gossip Girl a life of its own online.

The experiment to remove the program from the internet for five episodes was met with mixed success. The show still performed relatively dismally in relation to the bigger broadcasters with which The CW was competing, and it was clear from the beginning that Gossip Girl would not muster the strength of Fox’s teen zeitgeist The O.C. The CW had a problem, and it appeared that its youthful viewership wasn’t helping it to gain linear viewers in a world where a show has a life of its own on the internet. Further, the network couldn’t manage to keep what little audience it did have throughout the course of a week’s schedules. By the end of its second season, The CW still lacked the viewer brand loyalty it needed to keep people returning to its programming throughout the week, so it was no wonder that industry insiders and observers alike wondered how long the little network would be in existence. The CW didn’t appear to have much going for it by the spring of 2008.

In fact, the second season of The CW’s existence was so terribly received that the Wall

Street Journal released an article about its serious lack of viewership in May of 2008. In the article, “It’s No Gossip, Ratings Slip Threatens CW Network,” Dana stated that “the network’s hopes of surviving are looking increasingly bleak.” Considering the severity of the article, other news outlets covered The CW’s assumed-to-be-soon demise. Gawker labelled its coverage of the

WSJ article, “Network Death Watch Underway as Viewers, Advertisers Flee the CW,” going on to say the latter publication “[couldn’t] help but scoop the world on [the network’s] obituary.” 119

However, the network continued to experiment with different hybrid forms designed to cultivate advertisers – and also further blur the distinction between advertising and content.

McClellan of AdWeek spoke with Bill Morningstar, then EVP, National Ad Sales, for The CW

(formerly of The WB) who explained these ad-friendly initiatives. The low-rated CW Now, for example, was “advertising-free” and paid for via sponsorships and product placement. Another of the network’s ad initiatives in its second year was the use of a format dubbed the “cwickie,” where “we have the same sponsor airing three 10-second shorts leading into a long-form commercial, like a two-minute spot” (Morningstar, as quoted in McClellan, 2007). On the

“content wraps” developed in the previous season, Morningstar argued that they were “proven and successful,” and helped to reach the otherwise fickle CW young adult audience. Unique advertising strategies would remain a part of the new network’s identity and, again, foreshadow similar moves in media formats generally, but especially later in the online environment.

Industrial Pressures: The 2007 WGA Strike and The CW

Not all of the network’s issues during this season were specific to decisions made internal to The CW, though the network’s small size may have made it disproportionally impacted by these external elements. In November of 2007, just after the start of the 2007-2008 season, the

Writers Guild of America (WGA), the union that represents all entertainment writers of scripted programming, went on strike. The strike lasted 100 days, from November 2007 through February

2008, leaving networks that relied on scripted content (including late-night talk shows) reeling from the inability to produce full-season orders for their programming. Scripted broadcast television programs typically go into production during the summer months, so while most whole seasons were not wiped out by the strike, networks were unable to receive scripts for 120 undelivered episodes from the striking writers. Subsequently, networks had to drastically reduce their season-orders for some of their most popular content. What filled schedules during that time consisted primarily of unscripted “reality” content, which is not written by “writers,” but rather by “story editors” and a host of other positions not credited with the title “writer,” making those staffers unable to join the WGA.

Ten years after the strike, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers

(AMPTP) estimates that writers lost at least $287 million in potential compensation during those

100 days (Lowry, 2017), in addition to the tens of millions of advertising dollars lost by networks as they struggled to hold on to viewers in the wake of their missing premiere content.

In December 2007, NBC, in a rare occurrence, was forced to pay back advertisers millions of dollars of leftover liability from the previous television season, because with the advent of the strike, there was no way the network would be able to reach its goals in the 2007-2008 season, let alone the goals they did not reach in the prior one (Kang & Dana, 2007). Almost all of The

CW’s programming, and all of its big-banner programming, was impacted by the strike. Because of the delay in production, several CW shows would be unable to complete their full order, typically 22-24 episodes per year; for example, Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill both finished the season at 18 episodes and had lengthy midseason hiatuses (Verhoeven, 2017). In January of

2008, the network announced the following mid-season lineup (see Table 6), heavy on reality/unscripted lifestyle programming, to begin early that year (“The CW Network announces midseason schedule,” 2008). This lineup would do no favors to the network as it entered its second midseason.

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Table 6. The CW’s midseason schedule, as reported on January 7, 2008. The network did not air premieres on Fridays or Saturdays during prime.

8-9p Gossip Girl MONDAY 9-10p : Girlicious 8-9p Reaper (beginning Jan. 15) TUESDAY 8-9p Beauty and the Geek (beginning Mar.11) 9-10p One Tree Hill 8-9p America’s Next Top Model WEDNESDAY 9-10p Pussycat Dolls Present (Encore) 8-9p Smallville THURSDAY 9-10p Reaper (beginning Feb. 28) 7-730p CW Now 730-8p Everybody Hates Chris (Encore) 8-830p Everybody Hates Chris SUNDAY 830-9p Aliens in America 9-930p Girlfriends 930-10p The Game

Measurement Changes Impact The CW’s Success

Technological and measurement changes also negatively impacted the network. Amidst the tumultuous industrial backdrop of the WGA strike, new developments in Nielsen measurement contributed to some networks’ woes. Beginning in the 2007-2008 television season, Nielsen began measurement of commercial ratings, meant to provide advertisers with information about how many viewers were viewing the commercial content of a network’s programming. This meant that not only were The CW’s program ratings down almost immediately going into its second season, but it also had to deal with the impending change in the ratings with which they could sell their advertisements. These ratings, called C3 ratings because they indicate how many impressions an advertisement received within three days of a program’s initial airdate (and include views via DVR playback), provided new and different statistics to networks. Some networks, like ABC and Fox, immediately saw increased ratings 122 using the new calculation; The CW, in contrast, saw the largest drop amongst broadcasters heading into the new season. The network went from a 1.06 live program rating in persons 18-49 down to a 1.02 C3 rating amongst the same demographic in the first week of the 2007-2008 season (“Nielsen commercial ratings show drop from live numbers,” 2007).

While this may sound minor, it is important to note that advertisers prior to the 2007 season bought time on the basis of live program ratings – regardless of how many viewers watched the advertising airing during that content. With the new system, advertisers had more precise information about who was (or wasn’t) watching their ads, and since deals were conducted in C3 ratings during the May upfront sales market for the 2007-2008 season, The CW was in a worse situation than it might have been just a year before. When a program does not deliver the promised ratings to national advertisers who have already bought time in those programs, the network is required to provide payment or placements in return (referred to as

“make goods”); as a result, delivery of just a few percentage points below the promised ratings could mean millions of dollars of liability for the network. At the same time, The CW saw some of the highest percentage increases in viewership in program viewing within 7 days of initial airdate, now known as the live-plus-seven-day (L+7) rating, assumed to be from its younger viewing base, who would be more likely to watch recorded programming at a later date and

“timeshift” previously aired content. However, advertisements are not sold in L+7 ratings, but rather in the aforementioned C3, in which The CW’s performance was less stellar going into its second season in existence (see Carter, 2008a). How C3 ratings would impact The CW’s later iterations of content will remain of importance in the network’s subsequent seasons.

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No Laughing Matter: The CW Eliminates its Comedy Department

By midseason, the impact of the network’s declining viewership and the aforementioned writers’ strike had led to layoffs at the already-small CW staff. In March, Variety reported that

The CW was the first network forced to undertake changes in executive structure due to the strike (Schneider, 2008a). The layoffs were focused in two different departments, including the elimination of the whole comedy department as well as the staffers behind the WB kids’ animation block that had been airing on Saturday mornings, carried over from that network’s programming. Schneider (2008a) writes, “As for the comedy cut, CW execs noted the netlet isn’t out of the laffer game, having just renewed ‘Everybody Hates Chris.’ But just like predecessor the WB, the CW has struggled with introducing new laffers, and is now opting to focus most of its attention on developing more signature dramas in the vein of “Gossip Girl” and alternative entries a la ‘America’s Next Top Model.’” In reality, the network came to focus on two distinct genres of programming: scripted drama and reality, the latter of which is referred in the industry as “alternative” or sometimes even “unscripted.” The CW wanted to remain an arbiter of all kinds of broadcast dramatic, comedic, and reality content, but it was not able to achieve that broad focus. Hibberd (2008), for the Associated Press, provides more context:

The CW has struggled in the ratings this year. The network's sophomore season faced

tough competition in the fall, with increased DVR penetration impacting broadcast

ratings across the board and modest overall viewer response to the CW's latest freshman

efforts.

Once such scripted shows as "Gossip" and "Smallville" went into repeats because of the

writers strike, the CW's viewership sank further. The financial impact of the writers strike

is said to have been a contributing factor in the layoffs. 124

The CW, as a result, experienced some of the same issues as the rest of broadcast TV, including sinking ratings, increased timeshifting, and an increased proportion of repeats due to the strike, but impacted in greater measure due to its age and size. The CW, in essence, was not yet enough of a brand, enough of a known quantity, to withstand external pressures influencing its industry as a whole. In a television season where family-friendly juggernaut CBS was forced to borrow sister network Showtime’s serial-killer drama to fill up programming hours, The CW’s relative lack of support from its parent companies was evident (“CBS to borrow ‘Dexter’ from

Showtime,” 2008). Neither Warner Bros. nor CBS seemed interested in providing its new little network with content to fill its schedule when the strike took it out of premieres during the season.

The wholesale elimination of the comedy department was particularly striking; it allowed the network to merge its dramatic programming/development and current programming departments into one, all-scripted department. Significantly, the network’s “alternative” (e.g., unscripted) programming would remain untouched, as that department was already managed outside of the network, by executives at CBS (Schneider, 2008a).

The dismissal of the network’s comedy staffers came along with a major programming change for the network: the cancellation of the majority of half-hour comedy programming at the end of the 2007-2008 television season, with the exception of Everybody Hates Chris and The

Game, both of which would have short future lives on the network. This would mean that the network’s content at the end of its second season would come one step closer to being full of the hour-long dramas that are now its hallmark. The announcement of the layoffs and corporate restructuring came as the network also announced a second-season pickup for a show that became iconic for the CW brand: Gossip Girl. While the show’s renewal was overshadowed at 125 the time with the news of the network’s financial woes, Gossip Girl was about to become one of

The CW’s trademark programs, and a necessary tentpole of its schedule.

The Lasting Legacy of Kids’ WB!

It was clear in the network’s second season that other areas of its programming were also underperforming. In addition to the aforementioned Saturday morning children’s animation block that the network had planned to forfeit at the beginning of its second season, the network was having issues with its Sunday prime programming, as well. Kids’ WB! was the title of The

WB’s animation block for children, leftover from the network that originated the content. When the cost of developing original kids’ content for the block outweighed the benefits, according to then-CW COO John Maatta (formerly of The WB) in October 2007, it made more sense for the network to follow the lead of the other broadcasters, all of whom had licensed out their Saturday morning blocks to outside companies to reduce overhead. The network chose 4Kids

Entertainment as the recipient of the 7a-12p block, with 4Kids handling all national advertising and receiving a share of advertising revenue for the period (Schneider, 2007b). 4Kids would program the block for several years for the network, under the names TheCW4Kids and Toonzai, and The CW, in turn, would get to relegate the content, programming, and ad sales functions for the block to the outside vendor whilst continuing to receive ratings for the content.

Sunday Night Meltdown: The CW Sells off Sundays

While the release of Kids’ WB! from The CW’s lineup was planned, its selling of its entire prime Sunday block was not. Unlike the Saturday morning block, which other broadcasters had been leasing out for years, leasing out or selling time during prime is virtually 126 unheard of. While cable networks have been leasing out daytime space for years to alternate networks (e.g., Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club of the Christian Broadcasting Network airing on the channel position occupied by the Family Channel), and others have split their programming day by the content and audiences provided (a la Cartoon Network/Adult Swim and

Nickelodeon/), it is extremely unusual for any content provider to programming hours during the time of day when the most viewers are statistically able to watch

(Collins, 2014, explains the rationale behind the creation of niche network Adult Swim; Suddath,

2014, explains the success of Nick at Nite).

In May of 2008, at the end of the 2007-2008 television season, The CW’s parent companies agreed to sell “a financial interest in a three-hour block of Sunday nights on the CW beginning in the fall [of 2009]” to Media Rights Capital (MRC), an independent production company partially funded by major British advertising conglomerate, WPP Group PLC

(Schechner, 2008). MRC decided to focus away from The CW’s target demographic in favor of ones with which advertisers are more familiar: persons 18-49. The night would start out already incongruent with the rest of The CW’s week, perhaps an ominous bit of foreshadowing for what would come for the network’s Sunday programming. Either way, the network did not end its second season on a positive note, and industry observers – like the Wall Street Journal and media critics – were taking notice.

Failing Networks: Will The CW Survive Another Season?

At the end of the 2007-2008 season, the question for The CW remained: how does a network come back from sudden death? In 2008, it seemed as though there were no certain hopes for the success of The CW; in fact, the network’s new logo, unclear name, and social-media- 127 friendly brand strategy were perceived by media critics as a hilarious oddity, an attempt at a

“cool factor” that a broadcast network might never achieve. As a result, The CW experienced more public mockery than either of its predecessors had. From the network’s 60s-inspired logo to its “puke green” branding, it became clear by 2008 that The CW would not receive even the modicum of respect that The WB had for what was, in essence, identical content. This would mean that in its next few seasons, the network would be all but forgotten from wider industry discussions of both content and the new “future of television,” which network executives at the time believed consisted of DVRs and VOD (video on-demand), which assume that viewers would remain at the behest of network scheduling. The CW attempted to rail against this structure, both of traditional advertising content and content distribution, and it would be ridiculed for it by the wider television industry for the next four television seasons. As discussed in this chapter, the network’s focus on programming to a younger, more targeted audience via unique advertising strategies would make it ahead of its time in relation to the other English- language broadcasters, who had already been in business for decades by 2006. In the midst of massive industrial change in the mid-2000s, it might seem as though the little network would be lost in the clutter. However, The CW between 2006 and 2008 wasn’t ignored amidst the sea of available networks and alternative viewing platforms; instead, it was actively denigrated by industry observers and critics, for everything from its choice of logo to its brand of teen-themed content. Eventually, the network that brought us Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious would turn into the network providing some of the darkest superhero content on television in Arrow, just four years later. But before it could become the network that asks viewers to “defy your world – dare to live in ours,” The CW would have to go through an “awkward adolescent” phase, typified by its 2008-2011 programming and brand image – including an almost-embarrassing focus on 128 social media relationships with viewers and the reality content it needed to cheaply fill its schedules.

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Chapter 5: The Network of “Magical Thinking”: Fall 2008-Spring 2012

In the previous chapter, I explored The CW’s first two seasons, focusing on the network’s desire to target its audience to a new, narrow demographic of women 18-34 and the lack of success it found between 2006 and 2008. One of the ways the network attempted to gain new viewers and meld the African American-centric UPN with the teen dramas of The WB was through an interest in reaching the digital/social lives of its viewers, and by encouraging them to communicate with the network and its stars via social media platforms. Regardless, by the fall of

2008, the network had largely been considered a failure, and needed rebranding and refocusing if it were to remain in business for much longer.

This chapter discusses the network’s four seasons between 2008 and 2012, when it did everything it could to find a unified voice and come back from the brink. But this would require the network to identify ways it could draw and maintain viewership on a truncated Monday- through-Friday schedule. In sum, the network needed a tentpole, a program that would anchor the week’s schedule and draw similar viewers to the network while simultaneously repelling viewers who did not fit the desired profile. It was about to find that program in Gossip Girl, but even with the show’s longevity, the network had yet to experience significant financial or ratings success. Ostroff would not figure it out in her time as president of The CW; her successor, Mark

Pedowitz, would, but first, the network would have to undergo a kind of awkward adolescence as it found its footing.

2008-2009 Television Season: Goodbye SmackDown!, Hello ABC Family

Somehow, against all odds, The CW was still a network in the fall of 2008. Despite the low ratings of the previous season and its disastrous schedule, the network was about to make 130 further changes in the way it would encourage its main target audience – women 18-34 – to keep their eyeballs tuned to such programming as Gossip Girl and America’s Next Top Model (see

Table 7). This season was the first in the network’s short life where it had a new, CW-born tentpole program in Gossip Girl, but decreasing overall ratings also meant it would also be the beginning of the end for the network’s Sunday night schedule. This season was crucial for the network; after the Wall Street Journal predicted the network’s demise at the end of the 2007-

2008 television season (as discussed in chapter 4), The CW had something to prove and changes to make if it had any hope of remaining on the air. One of those crucial changes was to the network’s target demographic.

Table 7. The CW’s 2008-2009 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2008.

8-9p Gossip Girl MONDAY 9-10p One Tree Hill 8-9p 90210 TUESDAY 9-10p Surviving the Filthy Rich (aired as Privileged) 8-9p America’s Next Top Model WEDNESDAY 9-10p (New Series) 8-9p Smallville THURSDAY 9-10p Supernatural 8-830p Everybody Hates Chris FRIDAY 830-9p The Game 9-10p America’s Next Top Model (Encore)

Held until midseason: Reaper Highlighted programs were cancelled at the end of the 2008-2009 season.

Rebranding, Content Changes, and a Refocused Demographic

In the fall of 2008, the network made a move to stop airing a program that – while it received some of the network’s highest ratings – made it difficult to go all-in on its females 18-

34 strategy. That program was the network’s second-highest rated, and, as discussed in the 131 previous chapter, the one least likely to match their newly desired audience segment: WWE

SmackDown!, which took up the network’s entire Friday night schedule. When UPN’s original contract with the wrestling organization was finished, the new network was unable to negotiate for “the right price,” and the show moved to the now-even-smaller, Fox-owned MyNetwork TV.

This was a display of devotion to The CW’s new female-friendly, younger, and (the network hoped) higher-income crowd, as Ostroff explains: “‘…wrestling had not been beneficial in bringing the viewers we wanted into our schedule, and vice versa’” (as quoted in Carter, 2008b).

Cancelling a popular program because it does not fall in-line with a desired new brand identity is not an uncommon phenomenon in the cable industry – networks that have undertaken several rebrands, like Spike and truTV, have shed millions of viewers in the attempt to capture not just eyeballs, but the right eyeballs, to their programs (see Shaw, 2017, on Spike; O’Connell, 2014, on truTV; Nakamura, 2016, on rebrands in general). But, from a broadcasting point of view, and especially given the state of the network’s disastrous second season, giving up such a high rated program doesn’t exactly read as shrewd business sense. Again, herein lies the difference between a truTV (rebranded in 2008 and 2014) or Spike (rebranded 2000, 2001, 2003, 2006, and expected again in 2018) and The CW: the latter is a broadcaster, not a targeted cable brand. There was little precedent in cancelling a network’s second-most-popular franchise in the attempt to gain a narrower, more targeted audience, at least from a broadcaster’s perspective. Still, this presented as worrisome to industry observers. Early in its third season, Carter (2008b) writes:

Ms. Ostroff said that CW this season was moving closer to what the WB network was at

its height: ‘a destination for young women.’ There could be risk in limiting the network

to that audience, though. Steve Sternberg, the director of audience analysis for Magna

Global, a media-buying company, noted in an e-mail message that ‘given that ABC, CBS 132

and NBC have average median ages of 50 or approaching 50, and even Fox is over 40

these days, it's curious that CW, with a median age around 33, is not going after both

women and men.’

As a result, the network makes yet another move towards programming like a cable network, engaging in smaller-reaching programming strategies for the niche audiences toward which they decided to aim their content. A consequence was industry uncertainty about the wisdom of this cable-based strategy.

Also markedly absent from the network’s third-season schedule were Girlfriends and All of Us, two of the African American-helmed comedies carried over from UPN. In the cancellation press release for Girlfriends in February of 2008, which ran a total of 8 seasons, the network wrote (as quoted in Rice, 2008):

The prolonged [writers’] strike has changed business conditions and our programming

strategy for the balance of the 2007/08 season. To better focus its creative and financial

resources, The CW will only resume production on shows that are in consideration for

renewal next year. As a result, we will not order additional episodes of the long-running

comedy Girlfriends, which planned to conclude its run at the end of this season. This was

a very difficult decision for us, and was based solely on the considerable cost to license

each episode in an extremely unusual business environment.

Further, with the placement of the renewed comedies The Game and Everybody Hates Chris on

Friday evenings in the 2008-2009 television season, the network’s schedule did not indicate that

The CW retained its initial goal of appealing to black audiences. Friday night, historically, is a

“death slot” for content, as US viewers are less likely to watch TV that evening than on other nights of the week (Rome, 2013, explains the concept). In addition, placing those two shows in 133 the spot now vacated by wrestling – a timeslot which did manage to attract a male-skewing, largely white, viewer base, perhaps a result of the “sports-event” nature of wrestling– also appears incongruent with a network looking to maintain the viewership diversity of its predecessor. Regardless of the motivation behind this rationale, it is apparent that choices the network made contributed in large part to lack of ethnically diverse content that aired not just in the immediate 2008 television season, but in the rest of the network’s history. It is in 2008, then, that The CW’s real brand image becomes clear: not only was the new network focused on appealing to 18-34 young women to the detriment of their male counterparts, but it was specifically aiming to attract white 18-34 women to its viewer base. Industry observers’ warnings about the networks’ merger causing decreased opportunities for diversity in appeared to have come to fruition by the fall of 2008 (see Ryan, 2006b, for more industry predictions on what would become of The CW’s schedule regarding niche content).

As the 2008-2009 television season began in the fall, the network appeared to be gaining some traction amongst viewers with its returning Gossip Girl and its latest teen drama, 90210, a remake of the CBS/Paramount-produced original (Beverly Hills, 90210, which aired for 10 seasons on Fox). In late October of 2008, Carter reports for the New York Times that delivery

(the pure numbers of viewers who watched) for the network had increased 25 percent in the new season, in total viewing from Monday through Thursday. Monday’s total viewers were up 41 percent; Tuesday’s were up 37 percent. In the 18-34 demo, increases looked to be even greater. de Moraes (2008) notes, however, that Gossip Girl’s increases in viewership in its first week back in premieres, in particular, were largely overstated by a network grasping at any visible signs of success. She writes: 134

The 3.4 million crowd for "Gossip Girl" was 100,000 fewer than had watched the show's

unveiling last fall. CW noted it managed that number "despite premiering during the

Labor Day holiday," which, let's see, is . . . nope, not my problem and, yup, CW's

scheduling choice. (And the same night, "Raising the Bar" managed to break a cable

ratings record.)

But "GG" logged series-best numbers among several age brackets important to its sales

department, CW noted, including 18-to-34-year-old women and 18-to-49-year-olds.

Actually, what CW said was: " 'MINDBLOWINGLY' IMPRESSIVE PREMIERE OF

'GOSSIP GIRL' DELIVERS SERIES HIGHS IN KEY DEMOS."

In most of those age brackets, "GG" was up one-tenth of a ratings point compared with

last year's series debut.

Perhaps the network’s performance in the fall of its third season was not quite as “mindblowing” as it would have liked, but either way, it appeared there were some signs of life at the network – one of which was Gossip Girl.

Encroaching Competition: ABC Family

In the wake of some moderate successes in the fall of 2008, it can be easy to forget that

The CW wasn’t programming in a vacuum; not only were other broadcasters a source of concern for the new network, but some cable networks were also encroaching upon The CW’s chosen demographic.

In 2006, ABC Family – a cable network owned by Disney that was relatively new to programming original content and is today known as Freeform – had undertaken a similarly themed rebrand, introducing a new slogan (“A New Kind of Family”) and a focus on attracting 135 teens and young-adult viewers (Shine, 2015). A cable network was attempting to filch the very same viewers from The CW, and it turned out the two networks had similar strategies in finding them. ABC Family, formerly The Family Channel and which, as a cable network, has to program a whole day’s worth of content, has historically been associated with two kinds of programming:

The 700 Club block of evangelical programming leftover from Pat Robertson’s Christian

Broadcasting Network (in a bizarre bit of television history, Robertson actually founded the network in 1977), and acquired films and television series that the network needed to fill up its programming day (Linton, 2013, and Shine, 2015, explain ABC Family’s history in further detail).

After 2006, the two networks went head-to-head for the same young female viewers

(Shine, 2015). It appears that Disney (who had owned the network since 2001) was attempting a strategy aimed at maintaining viewers throughout their lives, introducing them into the Disney

TV family with Disney Channel, graduating them up to ABC Family in their teen/young-adult years, and then moving them on to broadcast ABC when they reached adulthood. This meant that

ABC Family needed to become edgier – it needed to become more like the new CW – in order to keep up with the young women whom it hoped would fill up its advertising coffers.

An early attempt to establish ABC Family as a network for young women was Kyle XY, an hour-long teen-oriented science-fiction program that premiered on the network in June of

2006 (Gates, 2006; Martin, 2005). Kyle XY was produced by Julie Plec, who would go on to create The CW’s later tentpole: The Vampire Diaries. In 2008, however, ABC Family premiered a young-adult-themed entitled The Secret Life of the American Teenager, a hit that would become the “longest running scripted series to air on ABC Family” (“It’s Official:

Secret Life…,’ 2012). Secret Life took off with viewers in a big way. The show, an hour-long 136 drama about a high-school freshman (played by ) who gets pregnant at band camp and is forced to live with the consequences, provided fresh new ratings growth in the desired teen and young-adult demographics, and broke ABC Family’s viewership records (Shea,

2009). The show was created and produced by Brenda Hampton, already known for her teen/family-oriented dramas, having created The WB’s runaway hit, 7th Heaven. Already ABC

Family and The CW were sharing creative talent, not to mention content itself. In the next three television seasons, the two networks would share even more similarities: for example, The

WB/The CW’s Gilmore Girls aired in syndication on ABC Family for almost 10 years.

However, the main consequence of ABC Family’s new direction was that The CW would come to find that its primary competition was with cable networks rather than broadcasters like itself.

By mid-2008 and early 2009, Secret Life was a top cable telecast going head-to-head with Gossip

Girl in its Mondays at 8p timeslot, and it was beating out The CW show in viewership (Stelter,

2008b; Shea, 2009). By broadcasting logic, Gossip Girl was the higher rated program: it was being watched by more “broadcast” audiences, who tend to be older adults. de Moraes (2008) reports that GG’s fall 2008 season premiere outperformed Secret Life, but only amongst older viewers. But by the cable-based ground rules embraced by The CW, ABC Family wasn’t just cable competition broadcaster could ignore; it was a serious threat to the new network’s dreams of young female viewership.

MRC and Sunday Nights on The CW

As if encroaching competition from ABC Family weren’t enough to keep The CW on guard, the results of outsourcing its Sunday night lineup were catastrophic. Media Rights Capital, the production studio to which the network outsourced the programming for its entire Sunday 137 prime schedule, had provided the network with such low ratings that by the end of November

2008, the network cancelled the partnership, despite the deal’s low financial risk for The CW.

The deal was effectively a time-buy, where MRC rented space from the network, and assumed all financial risk for the programming but sold ad time during the programs (Collins, 2008). If the block performed poorly, however, it would bring down the network’s entire weeklong prime average rating, since it represented such a large proportion of the CW’s programming week. The programs initially announced to air were two hour-long dramedies (comedy-drama hybrids,

Valentine Inc. and Easy Money), one traditional sitcom (Surviving Suburbia), and a half-hour occupational reality program (In Harm’s Way, about dangerous jobs) that, significantly, were aimed at the older adults 18-49 block (Collins, 2008). Schneider (2008b) writes in Variety on

November 20: “…viewers didn’t pay much attention to the block. Season to date, the MRC block was averaging 1.04 million viewers, down 42% from last year (when the CW bombed with its own fare). Among adults 18-49, the aud (older than the CW’s younger 18-34 bent) that the block was supposedly targeting, the shows averaged a 0.4 rating/1 share — down 50% from last year.” At the time, after the deal was cancelled, The CW planned that it would fill the time with off-network acquired series and a movie package with rights purchased from MGM. When the network regained its own Sunday programming hours, it would also have repeats provided by its network owners to fill that time (Carter, 2008c). When the deal ended, it was revealed that part of the purpose behind it was to protect principle affiliate owner, Tribune, from liability, when it seemed certain the network would shut down at the end of its miserable second season; at least if

The CW went under, Tribune would still have content provided for Sunday evenings via the

MRC block it helped to broker. When the deal failed, Tribune faded its relationship with MRC into the background, especially because Tribune had specifically teamed up with the company to 138 get the programming block started to help save the network’s dour Sunday night performance, and as such, to increase viewership on Tribune-owned CW affiliates (Schneider, 2008b). This would not be the only time the network’s most important affiliate group would question the direction and value of being associated with The CW (Andreeva, 2015e, for example, explains

Tribune’s vocal displeasure with the network before the May 2014 upfront presentation).

However, with even worse results on 2006’s other new network, MyNetwork TV, whose short- lived future as a network will also be discussed in this chapter, Tribune wasn’t provided with much of a choice.

The CW was forced to give up Sunday nights entirely at the end of the 2008-2009 season.

In May of 2009, Littleton (2009) reports, the network announced it had been speaking with its affiliates to give up five whole hours of programming each week – Sundays from 5-10p, including the 5-7p block set aside for network and parent company repeats – in the effort to bring up the season and weekly averages that it would use to sell advertising content. For the new Fall

2009 season, most CW affiliates would be programming MGM movies into their Sunday night blocks, and the films provided would be of greater value (e.g., more desired titles) than what national CW was providing for them the previous season when the time was network time. Ads would be sold on a barter basis, requiring no upfront money from individual affiliate stations but with less available local ad time for the affiliates (Carter, 1991, describes barter sales). While decreasing the number of total programming hours is not typically a desired strategy for networks, the ability to work on growing a stronger Monday through Friday lineup was the best hope the little network had for survival in the spring of 2009. By the fall of 2009, The CW was down to programming just 10 hours per week. This decision to focus on a concentrated and abbreviated lineup would become the network’s best move in the following few seasons. 139

By the end of the 2008-2009 season, not only had The CW left Sundays, but it had also dumped any remaining comedic content from the network’s schedule. With the exception of reality show America’s Next Top Model hosted by , the cancellation of

The Game (which moved on to a new, longer life on BET) and Everybody Hates Chris meant the effective whitewashing of the network. When The CW reemerged in the fall of 2009, there were even fewer diverse faces in their shows’ casts, and no new programming would feature a black or Hispanic lead that season. The network had cemented itself as an 18-34 network for young- adult women, and more specifically, white young-adult women.

2009-2010 Television Season

Table 8. The CW’s 2009-2010 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2009.

8-9p One Tree Hill MONDAY 9-10p Gossip Girl 8-9p 90210 TUESDAY 9-10p (New Series) 8-9p America’s Next Top Model WEDNESDAY 9-10p (New Series) 8-9p The Vampire Diaries (New Series) THURSDAY 9-10p Supernatural 8-9p Smallville FRIDAY 9-10p America’s Next Top Model (Encore)

Held until midseason or later: Parental Discretion Advised (aired as ), Fly Girls, High Society, Tyra Banks Show, , Blonde Charity Mafia Highlighted programs were cancelled at the end of the 2009-2010 season.

“TV to Talk About”: Social Media and Vampire Diaries

For the fall 2009 season, the network’s slogan was “TV to Talk/Text/Blog/Tweet About,” as announced at the 2009 May Upfront presentation, and it continued pushing a social strategy that other networks had yet to embrace. Hibberd (2009) writes, “‘TV to talk about’ is the theme of a 140 new branding campaign at the network. With ratings down compared with last year, the CW emphasized the popularity of such shows as ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘90210’ in coverage and through social online networks like Twitter.” Elliott (2009) continues: “The theme of the campaign also reflects how successful CW executives have been in scheduling series like

‘Gossip Girl’ that generate some of the most pervasive buzz for any new prime-time shows — even if not they do not attract commensurately outsize audiences.” What the network especially needed to fulfill their 2009 slogan, then, was programming that generated acceptable conventionally measured ratings, and that attracted attention in the new world of social media.

In September, The CW premiered another teen-centered young-adult-fantasy hour-long drama in The Vampire Diaries (see Table 8). The program, filmed on tax incentives in Georgia and based on another book series from , came from the aforementioned Julie

Plec and writer-producer Kevin Williamson, the latter of whom is perhaps best known as the creator of The WB’s Dawson’s Creek (see Andreeva, 2014, for more on Plec). It also was the first broadcast network program to exploit the then-prominent trend in young vampires, coming a year after on HBO and the first film. When the program premiered, on September 10, 2009, it garnered the network’s largest audience for a in its history thus far, and ratings for the program in that first season were immediately more impressive than any other program the network had aired to-date (Ausiello, 2009). The CW had found its first real runaway “hit,” and The Vampire Diaries would go on to develop a cult-like fan following whilst establishing the network as a genre player, able to bring to life campy, science-fiction and fantasy stories that went along with the network’s longest-running program,

Supernatural. 141

The fan following surrounding The Vampire Diaries extended into the social media lives of both its fans and its talent. Finally, The CW had found a show with both relative ratings success and the social media clout to back it up. Following in the tradition of the long-running

(and perhaps long-suffering, given its early ratings) Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries had star talent with a cause. At the forefront of the maelstrom was Vampire Diaries lead Ian

Somerhalder. Somerhalder, then best known for his role in the first season of ABC’s Lost, offered heart-throb looks and name recognition. One review of a pre-season The Vampire

Diaries noted about the show, “It’s bound to be a huge hit. And with and Ian

Somerhalder how can it be anything else. Here’s a tough question for you - who do you think is cuter?” (Stacey, 2009). Somerhalder also brought to the role an interest in environmental causes that in turn flowed with an active social media presence. By the end of the show’s first season in

April of 2010, Somerhalder, a Louisiana native, became active in wildlife cleanup efforts in the state after BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig exploded (Holly, 2010). In

November of 2010, Somerhalder founded his own 501(c)(3) organisation, the aptly titled Ian

Somerhalder Foundation, to address the causes for which he felt most passionate – the environment and animals (“Our Mission,” n.d.). In 2012, Somerhalder would tell the Hollywood

Reporter of his efforts, in Ng (2012b): “‘I realized as an adult it's not me, or you, or anyone running this camera or anyone sitting in this room who is going to actively make people change their minds, it's going to take a generation…The only way to do that is with the youth of the world.’” Ng (2012b) continues: “The active Twitter user, with nearly 2 million followers, honed in on young people and social media as being keys to moving forward. If you ‘empower them with information, that is your change. That is the beauty of social media now,’ he said.”

Regardless of the value of Somerhalder’s foundation, the impact upon The Vampire Diaries and 142 its fans was undeniable. The CW had found its tentpole, and talent that could lead the way into the desirable 18-34 female audiences that Ostroff kept promising advertisers.

Despite the promise of The Vampire Diaries, The CW still offered low-cost, low-rated reality content on its schedule that had very little relationship to or interest from viewers of the network’s scripted content. After the network cut the last few lighthearted sitcoms it had left, reality appeared even more incongruent on its schedules, even as summer schedule filler. At least, by 2009, the network had realized that reality – with the exception of the stalwart

America’s Next Top Model – had little to no place on its regular-season lineups. After the cancellation of Stylista, a competition reality show about fashion, in the previous season, which had the benefit of a perfectly matched lead-in in America’s Next Top Model, The CW stopped programming hour-long reality in its regular-season schedules. All the remaining reality on The

CW’s schedules, to this day, was placed in the off-season, essentially relegated to the background. The CW never found the low-cost reality hit that its broadcast and cable competitors had, and its focus on scripted serial drama meant lesser chances at the sale of its programs into syndication (Flint, 2012b, describes the types of programs typically successful in syndication sales). If they had found the cheaply produced reality franchise, it would have provided one way for CBS and Time Warner to relatively quickly make up for some of the losses it had undertaken as benefactor of The CW.

A Changing Competitive Set

At the same time that it was gaining a competitor in cable’s ABC Family, it outlasted one of its broadcast ones. In the fall of 2009, after yet another disastrous season, MyNetwork TV downgraded its status from “network” to “programming service,” maintaining the WWE 143

SmackDown! rights it had grabbed from The CW the prior year, but providing affiliates with solely acquired content the rest of the week (Malone, 2009). The lineup of cheaply produced that parent company Fox/. had developed to counterprogram The CW on the remnants of former UPN and WB affiliates garnered very little interest from viewers. From then on, The CW would only be competing with the Big 4 in broadcasting.

The CW wasn’t in safe territory yet, despite the successes of The Vampire Diaries, at the end of the 2009-2010 season. First of all, the network still remained unprofitable, and it would be estimated that the network was losing each parent company equity of approximately $50 million per year (Schuker & Woo, 2011). Secondly, ABC Family had one more card to play, in June of

2010, and it was yet another slight from one of The CW’s parent companies. In that month,

ABC Family debuted another Alloy Entertainment adaptation with Pretty Little Liars, a show about four teenage girls after the mysterious disappearance of one member of their friend group.

The show was produced by none other than Warner Horizon, one of Warner Bros.’ TV production studios, which had previously set the property up at The WB prior to the networks’ merger in 2006 (Andreeva, 2009). The show was an instant hit, bolstering ABC Family’s originals profile and providing yet more competition to The CW’s 18-34 goals. As would be the case when The CW entered the superhero programming market, one of its parent companies – always Warner Bros. – was providing content that directly counterprogrammed and potentially undermined its own network’s success.

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2010-2011 Television Season: No New Hits but a New President

Table 9. The CW’s 2010-2011 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2010.

8-9p 90210 MONDAY 9-10p Gossip Girl 8-9p One Tree Hill TUESDAY 9-10p Life Unexpected 8-9p America’s Next Top Model WEDNESDAY 9-10p (New Series) 8-9p The Vampire Diaries THURSDAY 9-10p Nikita (New Series) 8-9p Smallville FRIDAY 9-10p Supernatural

Held until midseason or later: , Plain Jane; Highlighted programs were cancelled at the end of the 2010-2011 season.

At the start of the 2010-2011 television season, it was evident that the network was still resting on the laurels of its predecessor networks, using the long-running Smallville and

America’s Next Top Model to help anchor a schedule that included the fan favorites Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries (Table 9). In fact, much of the network’s new programming would not last another season, and this season definitely did not include another new hit like Gossip Girl from two seasons previous, or 2009’s The Vampire Diaries. All of the network’s new unscripted content and two of its scripted shows, Life Unexpected and Hellcats, would be cancelled by the spring of 2011 – the former of which never received a full-season order for its second season; the latter received a full order for season 1 but didn’t survive to season 2 (Andreeva, 2010a; Rose &

Goldberg, 2011). Significantly, this was the first season that the network was able to program all its available hours with original content, rather than an hour’s worth of repeats on Friday nights

(Berman, 2010). The network continued to operate, but it became evident by midseason that who would be running it come spring was still at question. 145

By the end of 2010, Ostroff’s contract to remain as president of The CW had yet to be renewed, and there was industry talk of her impending departure at the end of the 2010-2011 television season, when Deadline Hollywood broke the story on December 21, 2010 (Adalian,

2010; Andreeva, 2010b). Just two days later, on December 23, the reported that the network was expected to lose $70 mil that year, according to SNL Kagan calculations, and that Ostroff would leave the network when her contract was up in June 2011. The Post also published: “Some reports suggest that part-owner Warner Bros. Television wants to see some fresh blood in office” (Atkinson, 2010). By April 2011, CBS and Time Warner brass had selected a candidate who accepted the offer: Mark Pedowitz, former president of ABC

Studios and then a business affairs executive at ABC, and who had most recently been running his own production company affiliated with Warner Bros. TV (Andreeva, 2011). Ostroff may have been the CBS choice, but Pedowitz, it seemed, was WB’s. Along with Pedowitz’s new job came a new structure for the network and for its parent companies. Under the previous structure, network functions were split between the president (UPN’s Ostroff) and COO (John Maatta), but now Pedowitz would be in charge of most major network functions, including programming, sales, research, finance, and marketing (Andreeva, 2011). Both Ostroff and Maatta had reported directly to CBS and WB executive management; now, Pedowitz would report directly to a board representing both parent companies – and Maatta would report to Pedowitz (Andreeva, 2011).

Maatta ended up staying with The CW until 2014, as the network’s “longest-serving employee,” since he was The WB’s first employee hired under original president Jamie Kellner (Littleton,

2014).

Because it takes at least one year for content to change leadership, merely based on the length of time it takes for a show to be developed, go into production, and air on a network, the 146 test of Pedowitz’s success would not be in the immediate 2011-2012 season. But how Pedowitz reacted to the (typically negative) press surrounding the network and with the content Ostroff had left behind would be of interest in the 2011-2012 season.

2011-2012 Television Season: Change is Coming

Table 10. The CW’s 2011-2012 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2011.

8-9p Gossip Girl MONDAY 9-10p (New Series) 8-9p 90210 TUESDAY 9-10p Ringer (New Series) 8-9p WEDNESDAY 9-10p America’s Next Top Model 8-9p The Vampire Diaries THURSDAY 9-10p The Secret Circle (New Series) 8-9p Nikita FRIDAY 9-10p Supernatural

Held until midseason or later: Re-Modeled, The Frame, One Tree Hill Highlighted programs were cancelled at the end of the 2011-2012 season.

End of an Era: Pedowitz Takes Control with a New Direction

By the fall of 2011, Ostroff was gone, leaving Mark Pedowitz full control of the network for his first fall season. Some strategies remained the same, including the innovative use of social media. One example is a bingo-style game played on Facebook, “CWingo,” that encouraged watching The Vampire Diaries with friends and finding key moments in an episode (“CWingo launches,” 2011). However, one of the elements Pedowitz said he would change was the strict, narrow demo that Ostroff had been planning to go after – the coveted women 18-34 demographic. Pedowitz wanted the network to be a bit more balanced gender-wise, with a more equal proportion of males and females (Ryan, 2015). Further, he was okay with appealing to 147 viewers who were older than 34, broadening out the available pool of viewers to whom the network could program (Flint, 2011). He also claimed, shortly after taking the president post, that he wanted his network to create “‘a measurement system that would account for all the ways the network's target 18-34 audience watches television’” (Guthrie, 2013). He reflected upon this at a summer Television Critics Association panel in 2013:

‘I thought it would be easier to get done,’ he candidly told TV critics gathered for the CW

executive session. Currently the network uses Nielsen's OCR data, which measures

online advertising, as well as numbers from competitor Rentrak. ‘It's far more

complicated than anyone ever anticipated,’ he said. ‘We've always viewed ourselves

beyond our linear ratings with our VOD and our online (viewing).’ In fact, more than 20

percent of the network's viewing is done digitally (online and via tablets and mobile)

(Guthrie, 2013).

This was, in many ways, a major departure for the network. Without the girl-heavy standards of

Gossip Girl and the teen vampire dramas of a Vampire Diaries, how could the network explain its purpose in a world with so much content flooding the marketplace at such a high ?

Could, in other words, an emphasis on non-traditional viewing be applied to more male-centric programming? And could such a significant re-branding toward a new target audience (and new advertisers) for a new network that was struggling succeed? As we will see, this change in audience philosophy had massive ramifications for the future programming and strategies of corporate synergy for the network.

The previous president, Ostroff, had a goal; she most certainly had an ideal demographic to which the network was meant to be programming, to which the network was meant to attract the most number of viewers. She also had, via Rick Haskins’ digital/social prowess, a marketing 148 strategy that involved integrating the shows and worlds of The CW’s content with new social media tools like Twitter. What she did not have, or at least did not elucidate to critics during years she was running the network, was a cohesive strategy to actually find CW viewers where they live and give them what they wanted. Pedowitz doesn’t figure this out immediately, either, but to his credit, he spent the better part of the next five years working on it. Under his tenure, the network grows from critical derision to a moderately more legitimate home for fanboy content. Again, this does not happen immediately, and when he takes over the network, it takes one whole season before he can guide the network in this direction.

Pedowitz’s tenure also ushers in a new era for leadership in general, in terms of the relationship between the network and its parent companies. No longer did CBS, via their choice of UPN’s former leader, have creative control over the network. No longer did Warner Bros., via

John Maatta, have full financial control over the network. Under Pedowitz, the network’s financial structure was reorganized. Further, Pedowitz’s tenure as CW leader underscores the consolidation of what, in the television industry, are two separate, specialized positions, and normally for good reason. Typically, in the television industry, business executives don’t become network presidents; rather, they become “general managers” or, in the case of The WB and The

CW, Chief Operating Officers like John Maatta (see “The WB names John D. Maatta Chief

Operating Officer,” 2005, for more about Maatta’s credentials). The “president” role, at most networks, functions as a creative and visionary position, leading the network’s image and holding the final say on which programs are greenlit or renewed for additional seasons. Control over any and all content decisions, subsequently, would fall to a network president rather than a business executive. In this regard, the creative impulses that come from network presidents – who often began their careers as development executives, creating stories and characters, and 149 then working their way up through studio management – are tempered with the financial wherewithal of business magnates.

Pedowitz is that rare combination of business and legal executive (he began his career as an attorney at MCA in 1979) and held a number of business affairs executive positions prior to his creation of Pine Street Entertainment, where he was a producer (“The CW Press: Mark

Pedowitz,” 2017). In a way, Pedowitz comes to the job as network president in a backwards manner, starting in business management and working his way down to producer. At the time he took control of The CW, Pedowitz was the only direct entertainment president of an English- language broadcast network who was also a lawyer, contrasting with Nina Tassler at CBS, Bob

Greenblatt at NBC, Paul Lee at ABC, and at Fox. (, former president of CBS Entertainment and one of the four members of the CBS/WB board to which Pedowitz reports, is also an attorney, but had vacated the post by that time (James, 2009; Carter 1998).)

By the fall of 2011, Pedowitz had to have a plan for The CW to get its act together, not just for the viewership of a wider demographic but also by figuring how to widen the network’s viewer base to include males – all while keeping intact the network’s predetermined brand image of social-media-savvy; a scrappy but inventive marketing strategy; and, more than anything, a focus on appealing to young adults who were disappearing from traditional television viewership in spades. After a devastating writers’ strike and at the tail end of a major American economic recession, proving the worth of the network financially would have to be more of a burden than ever. Luckily for The CW, Pedowitz proved that he was up for the challenge.

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The Fizzling Legacy of The WB and UPN

After now having been on the air for five full seasons, The CW as a network was starting to materialize as a brand and as a destination for a certain type of teen- and young-adult-related television. In the natural course of medial obsolescence, this also meant that most of the shows that had anchored the new network’s original schedule – and had continued to carry it through to subsequent seasons – would also be gradually phased out of .

By the 2011-2012 television season, just three programs of the network’s entire schedule had origins on either The WB or UPN. Those programs were One Tree Hill and Supernatural, both of which had started on The WB, and America’s Next Top Model, from UPN. One Tree Hill had been floundering for a while – again, it was not recognized as a top performer on its original network – and its truncated final episode order was held for midseason. When Ostroff left The

CW, so, too, would the inhabitants of Tree Hill, the fictitious town in which the show’s teens lived. One vestige of The WB’s teen-drama past was gone; never fear, The CW had appeared, by this point, to continue The WB’s legacy more so than that of UPN, and shows like Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries became the modern incarnations of Tree Hill’s teen idolatry.

In contrast, America’s Next Top Model, in the fall of 2011, was still a ratings powerhouse for The CW. In October, when announced the prices for ad spots on the five broadcast networks, ANTM came in above the rest of the network’s content (Steinberg, 2011b). In the

2011-2012 broadcast season, it cost $61,315 for a spot to advertise during the program. At the time, the network’s program with the second-highest spot cost was The Vampire Diaries, at

$54,016. For context, the most expensive spot for a regular or midseason program on broadcast television in 2011, excluding special sporting events, was American Idol, at over $500,000 per spot. The most expensive hour-long drama that season? Fox’s Glee, at $267,141 per spot. In 151 contrast, The CW show that aired in the same timeslot, Tuesdays at 8p, had a cost-per-spot of just $38,576 (90210).

The CW’s relationship with the intellectual property of one of its parent companies had also been waning as of late, but this was short-lived and in fact of these connections was to be a major strategy for the future of the network. Smallville, the long-running hour-long drama about the life of young , had been cancelled at the end of the previous season, airing from 2001-2011. This meant that the network, for a brief window, was no longer producing content with company owned-IP from Warner Bros. entity DC Comics, and could have signaled a complete break from youth-based, synergistic superhero programming.

However, on January 12, 2012, The CW announced that it was close to a pilot order for a TV series based on the Green Arrow character, a character that had been initially introduced to the network’s audiences during Smallville, in which the titular character was played by Justin

Hartley (Hibberd, 2012a). Just a week later, the network announced that the program was officially greenlit by the network, under executive producer Greg Berlanti – formerly of The

WB’s Everwood – and his production company in conjunction with Warner Bros. TV. Hartley was not attached to the new project; by the end of the month, the role of Oliver Queen/Green

Arrow had been bestowed upon (Andreeva, 2012b; Hibberd, 2012c, explains why

Hartley was not cast). In the same press release, dated January 18, 2012, and perhaps showing a

Ostroff-esque holdover for female demographics, The CW gave pilot orders to both The Carrie

Diaries, a prequel to HBO’s Sex and the City, and , a remake of the CBS series from the 1980s (Andreeva, 2012a). So while it may not seem like it at first glance given the different programs announced for Fall 2012, Pedowitz was beginning to remake The CW, one hour-long drama at a time. 152

Ironically, getting its hands on DC content was no easy task for The CW. Littleton

(2015b) explains that when DC Comics was reorganized into DC Entertainment by Warner Bros. in 2009, the studio’s reporting structure meant that the head of DC reported directly to WB’s film studio, largely excluding the studio’s television production assets from gaining access to

DC’s host of characters and stories. This was because, in 1999, when The WB Network wanted a

Batman prequel script for their network, Warner Bros.’s film studio heard about it – and killed the script before the network could even produce a pilot for the show. Eventually, The WB got to make Smallville, but in no way was the show allowed to cannibalize on what the film studio thought was its primary goal: successful film franchise (much of which has still eluded WB). Instead of following Disney’s model with Marvel, which it acquired in 2009, whereby television series using Marvel’s characters are used to directly promote the big-screen successes the studio has had since its acquisition, infighting at Warner Bros. over the relative importance of film versus television had consistently prevented the studio from using its own IP in ways that could be most commercially beneficial for all parties (Littleton, 2015b). In 2012, when The CW tried to get another DC Entertainment property on its air, all of these structural issues remained, and they were issues Pedowitz could not solve on his own.

Arrow, then, would have to not just grab ratings, but also the right kinds of viewers, in order to prove the new network was worthwhile enough to be trusted with valuable DC content.

Much of the next chapter details how the Arrow programming legacy developed.

Behind the Scenes: WB Buys Alloy

Other facets of Warner Bros. TV were experiencing change at approximately the same time. In June of 2012, as the season came to a close, Warner Bros. made another acquisition that 153 would impact The CW as well as any other content it wanted to make that would appeal in particular to young women. Alloy Entertainment – the aforementioned book packager and producer that had been based at WBTV and was responsible for Gossip Girl, The Vampire

Diaries, and Pretty Little Liars – was acquired by the Warner Bros. Television Group on June

11, 2012 (Andreeva, 2012d). This allowed for more direct feeding of Alloy properties across the

Warner Bros. portfolio, and one of the impacted properties was The CW, which had already experienced ratings growth from Alloy productions. If anything, the purchase of Alloy, which received only marginal press coverage, appeared to directly benefit The CW more than any other

Warner-related property, as the acquired company specialized in reaching the kinds of 12-34 year-old audiences that The CW initially craved (Andreeva, 2012d). While this demographic goal was about to change under Pedowitz, the importance of corporate consolidation upon The

CW cannot be understated. More Alloy programs were coming for the network, as it tried to satiate dual causes: appealing to young audiences and undertaking a more edgy genre that would widen the viewer base to include more male viewers.

When Finances Fail, Enter Netflix

But the most important event that happened to The CW that season – and perhaps in its entire life – was a syndication sale that would finally bring it the cash flow it desperately needed to make quality content that could be sold for uses beyond first broadcast airing. The CW was, as previously discussed, making no waves in the ad sales world, despite its advertiser-friendly innovations. The network’s inconsistent CPMs and relatively low costs-per-spot did not indicate positive financials for the network, and while their value was greater than that of a cable network, the network could not continue to sustain itself on just the moderate value of their 154 advertising inventory alone (Flint & Fritz, 2011; SNL Kagan’s Network Profile and Network

Economics trace The CW’s historical financials as reported by a syndicated third-party source).

“Quality” scripted programming, because of the many stakeholders involved, is difficult to make on the cheap, and The CW’s parent companies were reportedly growing weary of the network’s increasing costs and diminishing returns. In retrospect, CBS chairman Leslie Moonves and

Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara would argue years later that there was never any danger of the parent companies shutting the little network down, but in the fall of 2011, it still appeared to industry observers that a closure could be a real possibility (Littleton, 2016e).

On October 13, 2011, The CW announced a deal with Netflix, which would give the streaming service the rights to full seasons of CW content from its 2011-2012 season through the

2014-2015 season (Schuker & Woo, 2011). This also included the back seasons of currently airing shows, like Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries. The deal was meant to be mutually beneficial: Netflix hoped it would keep younger viewers interested in the site’s content – Netflix had only been offering its streaming service since 2007, just 4 years before this deal with The

CW -- and The CW hoped it would drive viewers back to current seasons of the shows contained therein. However, since Netflix does not provide raw viewership data to anyone outside the organization, even to content owners who have provided Netflix with the licenses for their content, there was no direct causational claim that could be made between viewership of a program’s past seasons on Netflix and subsequent viewership of current seasons on The CW, outside of a loose correlation and a generally accepted “Netflix bump” in viewing (Nocera, 2016, describes the perceived impact of Netflix on ratings). This, however, was enough for The CW, which searched for brand recognition and acceptance in a heavily saturated content market. 155

More pertinently, the deal provided a windfall for the network’s parent companies, which had yet to turn a profit on the now six-year-old venture. The deal was, at the time, expected to amount to approximately $1 billion for the network, but the exact value would depend upon how the shows performed for Netflix (Schuker & Woo, 2011; Flint & Fritz, 2011). Flint and Fritz

(2011) quote Les Moonves as saying: “‘It essentially makes the CW a profitable enterprise.’”

Further, they write: “That means CBS and Warner Bros. will make money off the shows they produce for CW, even if the network itself does not recover its programming costs with advertising revenue.” Little did Netflix know at the time that the deal would include content The

CW would later become known for, including Arrow and The Flash, since neither of those shows were airing or even in development at the time. Under the deal, which took months to negotiate,

Netflix would get the rights to each series for four years after the shows were cancelled on linear

TV (Szalai, 2011). At the time the deal was struck, CBS had no issues with the network’s shows being available for online distribution, but Time Warner had been more cautious. (In the ensuing years, CBS has become more conservative with its online streaming rights deals, attempting to drive traffic to its own subscriber video on-demand (SVOD) service, CBS All Access, and thus not licensing its content to outside streamers (Flint, 2012b; Perez, 2014.) Time Warner remains protective of its content, choosing not to license its rather large library of content to Netflix and similar streaming services, though later, in 2016, it purchased a non-leadership 10% stake in

Hulu; for more about Time Warner’s acquisition of a minority stake of Hulu, see Ramachandran and Beilfuss, 2016.)

In practice, the Netflix deal was able to keep The CW afloat, especially as industry analysts saw the network as a money loser for both parents. Szalai (2011) quotes RBC Capital

Markets analyst David Bank: “‘We believe the deal was structured in a way that benefits all 156 parties (CBS/TW/CW) and at the same time keep CW ‘alive’ as it is probably viewed by both TW and CBS as a decent platform to launch shows, despite it being a loss generator.’”

Further, the importance of the Netflix deal underscores one primary question that industry observers and insiders had continued to ask since the network’s origin. Because of the nature of scripted, serial content, which requires that viewers return week after week and develop relationships with those characters, it is more difficult to sell scripted dramas in syndication to traditional networks and stations because they must be aired in a particular order. This is not the case with platforms such as Netflix, where viewers are more likely to stay and watch multiple episodes at one time (Flint and Fritz, 2011), a practice that later became known as “binge- watching” (a phrase so popular that Collins English Dictionary named it a “word of the year” in

2015). While this may seem obvious, it poses a hindrance for networks and stations aiming to buy rights to content, because it would require that station to air the program somewhat regularly, and in that defined order, lest they lose viewers who become confused by the storylines. This is why broadcast sitcoms and procedural dramas – where stories tend to be largely situated in singular episodes -- make up the majority of syndication deals, and also why they command the highest prices in the syndication market. Flint (2012b) explains why CBS doesn’t like to sell its content to streaming services: “One key reason CBS takes that approach is that its dramas such as ‘NCIS’ and ‘CSI’ have sold very well in syndication in part because the shows are not serialized but rather self-contained. Serialized shows such as ‘’ don't traditionally sell well in syndication but are popular on services such as Netflix where viewers can consume several episodes at once.”

One modern example of this is the Big Bang Theory and its Lorre-produced predecessor, Two and a Half Men, both lucative assets and cultural visible through local- 157 broadcast and cable network syndication. Both shows are produced and distributed by Warner

Bros. TV. Both shows aired on CBS. Yet The CW, as the merger of those two entities, has never aired a sitcom that could realistically compete with either, nor has it been offered the rights to air either of those two shows as schedule filler for a realistic price to garner larger ratings and thus, higher ad rates (Big Bang struck a syndication deal with Time Warner-owned TBS) (see Adalian,

2012, for more on the impact of Big Bang on TBS schedules). By the time the Netflix deal was in place, the network wasn’t even airing a single comedy, especially not a multi-camera, in- studio, half-hour one. While The CW was lucky to get the Netflix deal, it highlights other logistical issues with the network and its choice of content that have yet to be resolved.

“The Magical Mystery of The CW” Continues

By the end of the 2011 television season, when more teen dramas like Secret Circle and

Ringer had been shown the door after one season on the air, it appeared that the network needed a solid image more than ever before. As the network celebrated its sixth anniversary season, it had had little financial success and low viewership. Thus, to the television industry, it was still a failure, despite the fact that the network’s parent companies maintained that it would be sticking around for yet another season. And since none of the Big 4 broadcast networks operate in such a way whereby they lose money continuously and remain in existence, The CW was an anomaly amongst networks. Not quite a cable network, and not quite a broadcaster, The CW was the misunderstood teenager of television. It claimed it had viewers, but no agreed-upon data sources could verify that claim. Hence the hesitancy of the industry to accept it, and for critics to understand the true purpose of the network, which should have become clearer after the Netflix deal. 158

Still, industry observers questioned the value in maintaining a broadcast network and affiliates with the content the network had on offer by the spring of 2012. On July 31, 2012, Tim

Goodman, TV critic for the Hollywood Reporter, wrote the aforementioned quote contained in this paper’s introduction:

It might sound harsh, but there’s very little fascination over The CW as a television

network, other than how long it can last and how it can survive as essentially a content

provider for streaming services.

And yet, both of those mysteries are, unto themselves, very fascinating. But as the

network tries to get people to believe it is popular via “aggregation,” trying to figure out

how that works can lead to aggravation.

To be fair, he wrote a host of other disparaging remarks about the network, as well, under the image of a smiling Pedowitz in a tastefully decorated, beautifully backlit office, presumably one under Burbank sun. This was along with the obvious questions about how the network continues to “keep the lights on,” and how it was “fleecing Netflix” out of loads of cash he seemed to find incongruent with the proven worth of The CW’s content. He went on to question whether anyone really understood what The CW was aiming for, even its senior staff, as he reviews Pedowitz’s remarks at the Summer 2012 Television Critics Association press tour.

Goodman (2012a) writes, “Pedowitz kept referring to shows that did poorly on the network as shows that did well in the digital and social media worlds, which quickly began to sound like some kind of magic talk.” The network had experienced ratings success from a one-off,

“random” Muppets special in the winter, while its regularly scheduled programs floundered. It appeared, he argued, that The CW was deliberately not giving its viewers what they wanted, a strategy seemingly anathema to the running of a successful television network. Goodman leaves 159 his readers with the following question, perplexed as he is about the way the network operates:

“Left unanswered, it seems, is this mystery: Is The CW on to a new business model of failure sold into streaming rights, or are we just waiting for the magic to fade and the lights to go off?”

Pedowitz would need more time at the helm of the network in order to address those claims, but the time for a change of perspective regarding the network was coming soon.

By the fall of 2012, it seemed as though Pedowitz would be taking a step in the right direction, by giving his audience something more of what they wanted in the form of Arrow, the network’s next big hit and a schedule game-changer, as Chapter 6 discusses.

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Chapter 6

An Arrow Through the Target (Demographic): Fall 2012-present

In the previous chapter, I explored The CW’s struggle to find a coherent scheduling and programming strategy that would appeal to its target audience, women 18-34. Over the four seasons from 2008 through 2012, the network found several tentpole programs that anchored it as a teen-drama powerhouse, namely Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries. However, sustained ratings growth remained an issue for the network, and new president Mark Pedowitz was dedicated to changing its dwindling fortunes. The first season covered in this chapter, the 2012-

2013 television season, is the first with Pedowitz at the helm where he has complete control over the network’s creative direction.

Pedowitz’s new direction wasn’t the only reason why the period beginning in 2012 was important to The CW’s history. During this wider period in television history, ratings and viewership for the entire television universe were diminishing at an accelerating pace and networks like The CW had to come up with new and different ways to attract and keep viewers, particularly the young Millennials the network needed to meet its demographic goals. Those viewers were also the least likely in the cable universe to have traditional television sets, so it was more important than ever to provide these viewers with alternative streams of viewing in a monetized fashion. In 2015, Nielsen reported that among 14-to-25-year-olds, just 43 percent of all television viewing was done on a television set; 41 percent of all viewing was done on a computer screen. Among viewers ages 26-31, right in the middle of The CW’s original demo, only 57 percent of TV viewing is performed via a TV set (Steel & Marsh, 2015). Pedowitz was going to have to try harder to find the younger viewers the network desired – or he would have to adjust the network’s demographics accordingly. 161

In addition, The CW was perfectly primed to make use of its parent companies’ intellectual property in the form of DC Comics’ wealth of characters, as long as Warner Bros. allowed the network to use them. One of the major trends of this time in the media industry, continuing to the present and perfected by Disney’s cross-platform integration of Marvel

Comics, is the use of owned media properties across the various departments of a media conglomerate. Disney, for example, helped to shepherd Marvel from a comics publisher to a fully fledged film and , with the films alone accounting for over $12 billion in accumulated revenue (Rodriguez, 2017). DC, under the supervision of a new Warner Bros. chairman, would finally begin to use The CW to these ends, as well. By combining the network’s preexisting (and perhaps prescient) focus on alternative viewing platforms with the synergy of

WB-owned IP, The CW was able to – at long last – create a stable, mature brand.

2012-2013 Television Season

Table 11. The CW’s 2012-2013 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2012.

8-9p 90210 MONDAY 9-10p Gossip Girl 8-9p Hart of Dixie TUESDAY 9-10p Emily Owens, M.D. (New Series) 8-9p Arrow (New Series) WEDNESDAY 9-10p Supernatural 8-9p The Vampire Diaries THURSDAY 9-10p Beauty and the Beast (New Series) 8-9p America’s Next Top Model FRIDAY 9-10p Nikita

Held until midseason or later: , , Capture, , Cult, The LA Complex, The Next: Fame is at Your Doorstep, Oh Sit!, Highlighted programs were cancelled at or before the end of the 2012-2013 season.

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Scheduling Changes and Growing Pains

In the fall of 2012, The CW was ramping up to premiere a few new shows in addition to its stable of tested hits, some of which were pulling more ratings weight than others (Table 11).

The fall schedule already began with some drastic changes, including the shuffling of all programming; except for Vampire Diaries, every fall program on the network was airing at a new date and/or time (Hibberd, 2012b). Further, this season, the first full season that Pedowitz had control over production and development of the network, the network made several key scheduling moves in attempts to push its content through the crowded broadcast landscape. This decision meant radically pushing back the network’s premieres week to October, a month after the broadcast season began. It’s a counterprogramming move that made sense for the little network, and further proved The CW had to schedule like a cable network would, lest it lose the little amount of market share it did get. The rationale behind the premiere shift was simple: if the network were not competing with the bigger broadcasters – who all premiered their fall programming, for the most part, in the same stretch of two-to-three weeks in September – it would have more of a chance of gaining new and different eyeballs on its shows (de Moraes,

2012a). The Big 4 could afford (at least more than The CW) the fragmented viewership of directly programming their shows against each other, on the same nights and at the same times.

The CW, though, had no chance of gaining viewers if they were up against broadcast favorites and their big-budget programs. For some perspective, Hart of Dixie, on Tuesdays at 8p, was up against an hour of NBC powerhouse competition reality series The Voice and broadcast TV’s top drama in total viewers, NCIS on CBS, both occupying the same timeslot (Patten, 2013b). The

Vampire Diaries aired during CBS’s WB-produced duo of The Big Bang Theory and Two and a

Half Men, the former of which went on to be ranked #2 amongst all broadcast programming for 163 the entire season in the 18-49 demographic (Patten, 2013b). Newbie Beauty and the Beast was up against Fox’s established dramedy Glee (“Fall TV grid,” 2012). The signs were there – and none of them pointed to The CW being able to compete with the multitude of networks it would need to stay solvent, both broadcast and otherwise.

The CW’s linear scheduling strategy for that year, as a result, depended upon viewers losing interest in broadcast’s latest-and-greatest hits, since they were the primary networks scheduling content to air all at that point in time. Cable channels in the little network’s competitive set, like ABC Family, have the ability to schedule whenever they need to, largely without the trappings of the traditional broadcast television season, a facet that could be considered one of the medium’s strong points. With no affiliates to satiate or offend, cable channels have the freedom to schedule whatever content they want, whenever they want it; but this also means that most cable channels are programming a 24-hour-day or some variant therein, and thus are forced to find content that can fulfill an entire programming day, every single day of the week. By 2012, The CW had only 10 hours per week in which it was allotted to program, more or less within the confines of the official broadcast television season, running from late

August through mid-May. If viewers burned out on broadcast programming by October, they might be more willing to try out The CW, especially with a high-interest property in Arrow and the final season of Gossip Girl. The strategy was successful; every successive season on the network since has made way for broadcast in September, and The CW has been the only broadcaster since that time to hold off on all of its fall season premieres until October (Hibberd,

2014b, discusses The CW’s premieres strategy).

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Objectifying Ollie: Reimagining the Green Arrow as a Teen Heartthrob

One of the first shows that was the recipient of this new scheduling strategy was Arrow,

Greg Berlanti’s adaptation of the original DC Comics character of Green Arrow. Their adaptation of the character reflected a corporate strategy of copying the previously successful, creating a character and narrative that attracted young male audiences, and the start of a synergistic, transmedia “world building” strategy the Marvel Cinematic Universe had rejuvenated and redefined with the movie in 2008 (Yockey, 2017). It is likely that the licensing opportunities given to The CW would be limited, even by its parent company. For example, The CW would never be given the character of Batman: that anchor character was too lucrative in its licensing potential to loan to the small broadcast weblet. In film, The Dark

Knight Rises had the second biggest domestic box office in 2012, taking a backseat only to an even more synergistic comic-book film that year, Marvel’s The Avengers.

Batman as a character, however, had significant narrative potential as a tortured hero that could appeal to young TV viewers. As typified in the most successful of the character’s then- recent film/TV adaptations, he was a rich young loner and lothario, by his past, who traverses City in the attempt to right society’s wrongs. The strategy that The CW used was to take a secondary character that DC owned, one whose nature and origin was not as firmly set in comics mythology.

Prior to the show’s production, Green Arrow was not a well-known character amongst the DC Comics character universe, and when he did appear in texts, he often did so as a caricature of a superhero, making jokes and less-than-serious plot choices (Reeves, 2017). One of the few stories that took the Emerald Archer somewhat seriously was Mike Grell’s Green

Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, a miniseries published in 1987. Still, this portrayal of the 165 character was a forty-something mentor-like guy with a goatee, not a teen heartthrob worthy of

The CW (Truitt, 2014). (It would not be until the most recent iteration of the Green Arrow character in that the character is finally aged down to match The CW’s mid-twenties version, though the two were written independently; see Betancourt, 2013, for more about the latest uses of the Green Arrow character.)

Berlanti and his team ignored much of the comics’ history and instead built their Green

Arrow as a Robin Hood-esque pretty- in the same mold as the caped crusader. In The CW’s

Arrow, billionaire Oliver Queen returns to Starling City (later ) from being missing-at- sea for five years, when he was in a yacht accident that took the life of his father, Robert. This

Ollie is in his mid-twenties, with a rebellious teenage sister (Thea) and staunch matriarch

(Moira). During his absence, he has somehow learned the skills of being an incredible archer, and part of the show’s narrative structure uses flashbacks to the time when Ollie was “missing,” including being stranded on an island in the South China Sea, a stint in Hong Kong, and time as an assassin for the Russian mafia. This Ollie has no discernable skills besides his archery… and throwing a good party, of course. In early seasons of the program, he owns and operates a club, the aptly named Verdant, and spends his time pining after his old flame, Laurel Lance (in congruence with prior DC stories). Throughout the program, Ollie faces classic DC villains like

Deathstroke and Ra’s Al-Ghul (two villains, perhaps not coincidentally, strongly associated in the comics with Batman), as he attempts to stop the corruption that is damaging his beloved city.

He evolves into the Green Arrow, going from the “hood,” to the “vigilante,” and finally to “the arrow” and “the green arrow.” Corresponding with the DC stories as well, Oliver Queen eventually becomes the mayor of Star City. 166

It is a dark show, both literally and metaphorically, and this Ollie has some depth that is incongruent with other CW programming; for example, in the show’s first season, Ollie kills his opponents, rather than running them out of town or merely torturing them. But since this is a CW program, a network that by this time has made teen drama into its particular forte, Ollie also has to show a fair amount of skin; in fact, he first removes his shirt just six minutes into episode, immediately establishing the show as appropriate for The CW’s base of females 18-34.

(This is not an entirely new ploy for the youthful-themed network; at least WB’s Felicity (1998-

2002) waited 15 episodes before it started pandering to female audiences with such tactics.) It also helped win over that base of young female viewers that the show’s lead, Stephen Amell, had particular physical prowess on the salmon ladder, an exercise that is used as transition between scenes throughout early seasons of the program – all of which serves to satiate the core viewer base as well as the males the network hoped to reach with the show.

Again, the rationale for The CW’s inability to make use of Batman was largely a facet of

DC Entertainment’s structure and the perception held of the network within the WB organization, none of which was based on any real evidence that a Batman or other top-tier superhero would be out-of-place on The CW’s schedule. Green Arrow, then, was a low-rent version of the superhero millions of comic book aficionados had come to love. Also appropriately for a network with few ratings, Green Arrow was a character that could easily be done on the cheap, casting a relative unknown as its lead, for a character with (at origin) no superpowers. Furthermore, the show’s setting – the general American city of “Starling City” assumed to be in Northern California or somewhere in the Pacific Northwest – could easily be filmed in Vancouver, . Green Arrow was, in essence, a perfect test case for The CW and 167 its attempts to attract a broader, 18-49 audience, and to better balance the gender mix of its viewers.

Relative to the reception of most of The CW’s prior shows, Arrow’s reception by the wider media industry and its critics was positively rosy. The A.V. Club called its pilot not perfect, but “refreshingly low on cheese” (Adams & Wilkins, 2012). Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+ (Tucker, 2012). The New York Times even had positive things to say about it, but mostly about the attractiveness of its lead, described as “muscular, handsome and just inscrutable enough to pull off the transition from the playboy he was before the shipwreck to the avenging, bow-wielding Green Arrow he becomes on his return to civilization” (Genzlinger, 2012).

Goodman, whose critique of The CW continues throughout 2012 and 2013, writes in his intro to the show’s review, “When it comes to the fare on The CW, we are a long way removed from talking about shows in terms of quality,” and further, that “a lot of CW shows are comically bad.” Surprisingly, Goodman admits that Arrow fulfills two things the network loves:

“superheros and hunks.” He continues: “As long as Arrow has action, arrows, fighting, flirting and a brewing romance, it’s all good” (Goodman, 2012b).

For the first time in years, The CW had the quantity and quality of viewers it had been hoping for since 2006, and for the first time since Pedowitz revised the network’s demographic goals to focus on all persons 18-49. The network was now okay with getting older and more male – but it had more positive press buzz than it had had in years, possibly ever. Much of this was due to Arrow. The show’s series premiere, on October 10, 2012, was the “most watched telecast of any CW show on any night in three years” (de Moraes, 2012b). Nielsen estimates that the program drew 4.14 million total viewers that night – and more people watched the second half of the episode than the first, indicating that viewers bought into the program’s concept and 168 were invested in its characters. In the wider 18-49 demo, the series premiere telecast received a respectable 1.3 rating. Only the 2009 season premiere of The Vampire Diaries in total delivery, when it received 4.91 million live-plus-same-day viewers. The telecast even beat out

NBC’s failed half-hour comedy Animal Practice in the 8p timeslot, in both total viewers and viewers 18-49 (Crupi, 2012). Animal Practice would get cancelled the following week

(O’Connell, 2012). It seemed that Arrow was a hit from the start.

Much like Vampire Diaries, Arrow also featured a host of talent who were active both on social media and on the fan convention circuit, feeding fans’ interest and desire to interact with the program both in real life and on the internet. In star Stephen Amell, a Canadian actor then known for a few short-run recurring gigs on shows like the aforementioned Vampire Diaries and

90210, The CW inherited not only a star interested in interacting with fans in seemingly all available outlets, but also one who was willing and able to appear at many in-person convention events. In fact, so dedicated is Amell to the convention circuit, that he created his own convention in 2015 – the Heroes and Villains Fan Fest – with appearances by actors largely from other CW comic-book programs (Ho, 2016).

Despite the obvious financial incentive for Amell, the program’s youth-friendly and fan- friendly community benefits from talent who attempt to organize viewers in ways traditional television typically does not, either because of a lack of financial capital or a lack of interest and/or understanding of the monetization of programming in aftermarket capacities (other than syndication). Perhaps, in The CW’s case, this was an issue of ownership: dual owners with very different content strategies that neither invested the necessary monetary resources nor the attention which The CW would have needed to develop, for example, its own conventions starring its own talent – in which it could have benefitted from back-end profits of its own 169 programs. There was even some financial precedent for this, as Fox and its Twentieth TV unit starting in 2009 had invested time and money into touring their successful Glee franchise around the United States, first in malls, then in arenas, highlighting the profitability of catering to the 18-

34 demographic (see Goldberg, 2012, which revisits some of the show’s integrations). Perhaps this was also a result of The CW’s loss of John Maatta, the former COO of the network and its

WB predecessor, pushed aside to make way for Pedowitz as the network’s new president. Maatta had been chairman of the board of Wizard World, a company that literally specializes in creating fan conventions across the country, since 2011, and in 2016, he was named CEO of the company

(Littleton, 2016c). Alas, regardless of the cause, the network never took Fox’s lead by developing its own outlets for fans, but CW talent – starting with Supernatural’s ,

Vampire Diaries’ , and finally reaching a critical mass with Arrow’s Amell – became convention fodder (Ng, 2012a, for more on the Vampire Diaries; Schmitt, 2016, for more on Supernatural). Once The CW entered the Arrowverse – the amalgamated name for

Arrow and The CW’s DC Comics adaptations that would follow Arrow – The CW’s relationship to and reaction to its fans would experience substantial change in the ensuing seasons.

Arrow itself quickly became a target of fan interest, with viewers taking to social media to voice their opinions about the show’s characters and their relationships. The initial canon pairing of Laurel Lance and Oliver Queen, confounded by Oliver’s best friend Tommy Merlin and his love for Laurel, gave way to fan pressures to pair Oliver with a secondary character –

Felicity Smoak (Raftery, 2015). Smoak was also a DC character, but her quiet, geeky personality is all CW in origin. The pairing – dubbed “Olicity” as the portmanteau of the character’s first names – came to represent the desired pairing of the show’s largest fan grouping. This fan preference was despite the fact that , the actress playing Felicity, was meant 170 to be a guest star; ’s Laurel was technically the show’s top-billed female cast member and was cast when the show was in its initial pilot stages (Andreeva, 2012c). Then-

Arrow Marc Guggenheim and his production team learned of the pairing and, in the interest of giving the fans what they wanted, wrote the relationship into the show, but he expresses regret at the way in which he did so (Abrams, 2017). Bett Rickards was promoted to series regular; Cassidy’s character, then in her superhero alter-ego the , would be unceremoniously killed off the show in . Cassidy later appeared across the network’s

Arrowverse in a rare, multi-show deal to guest star as her Laurel Lance character in shows on an as-needed basis (Webb Mitovich, 2016b). Similar deals were also struck between Warner Bros.

TV and (DC’s ) as well as with

(Arrow) (Andreeva, 2016c, on Miller; Webb Mitovich, 2016a, on Barrowman). In the 2012-2013 television season, however, the full impact of the Arrowverse upon The CW’s content was not yet felt across the schedule. The pieces were in place, but the network needed one more DC show in order to make the argument that it deserved to become the de facto Justice League TV network, as Amell once dubbed the network to fans at a convention appearance in (as quoted in Cairns, 2014).

Saying Goodbye to Teen Queens: The Cancellation of Gossip Girl and 90210

Also in the 2012-2013 television season, in addition to the new arrivals of Arrow, The

Carrie Diaries, and Emily Owens M.D., the network finished up two multi-season shows that had come to reflect the kind of programming synonymous with the original WB/CW brand. Gossip

Girl, that Alloy Entertainment book adaptation that helped to put The CW on the map and eventually became a ratings success, brought desperately needed young female viewers to the 171 network. The program finished up its truncated final season in December of 2012. More importantly, the end of Gossip Girl meant more significant changes were in store for the kind of content and audiences that the network’s new president preferred. Along with the success and attention brought to the network by Arrow, the ending of Gossip Girl was almost the end of an era, as Pedowitz started to weed out Ostroff’s female-centric programming choices. To be clear,

Pedowitz was not against running a female-centric or even a female-skewing network, by any means; instead, he saw the 18-34 female target demographic as merely too limited for the broadcaster to focus on, and one way to alleviate that was to program to male and female viewers concurrently. Illustrating this point, Lynch (2015b) features an interview with Pedowitz whereby he describes the evolution of the network’s target demographic and gender skew; Poggi (2015a) explains “why The CW is happy to grow up” in the eyes of advertisers. Gone were the days of

Friday Night SmackDown! as the only program of male interest on The CW’s schedule. Now, the network had the new dark superhero of Oliver Queen – and Gossip Girl’s rich teenagers were no longer in fashion, it seemed. The show had run its course, and instead of letting it die a painful death by running it into the ground for as many more seasons as its cast and stories would allow, Pedowitz let the show run until cast contrasts expired at the end of 2013. It appeared that show staff were on-board with the final season, as the show had long run out of unique stories to tell (as admitted by the show’s executive producer, , as cited by Goldberg and

Rose, in May 2012). It aired just 10 episodes in its sixth and final season, but remains one of the network’s strongest original programs to-date, and has inspired major media coverage of the show’s legacy. Berman (2012) reflects upon the show’s ending in December of 2012 for The

Atlantic, speculating that the rise and fall of the show replicated the rise and fall of the stock market amidst the Great Recession of 2008. 172

During this season, the same reverence was not given to 90210 as was its Monday-night companion. At the Television Critics Association winter press tour in January of 2013, Pedowitz was wavering on whether to renew the program, but when Gossip Girl ended and the show was paired with Carrie Diaries on Monday nights, the show’s ratings fell apart (Patten, 2013a, provides ratings for a typical week of this schedule pair; Andreeva, 2013a, explains how the scheduling move tanked the fifth season’s ratings). The show – a remake of the original Beverly

Hills, 90210 – was another one of the network’s failed remakes of popular teen series of yesteryear. Was traditional teen drama centered on cute boys and the women who loved them no longer the kind of content viewers wanted to see, particularly the viewers The CW was aiming to attract? If this was the case, The CW would need a new brand image and it would need one as soon as possible. 90210 lasted five seasons, all to little fanfare on a network that desperately needed some solid content to count on for ratings success. (It would be nice to say that The CW had learned its lesson after the failed comeback bids of 90210 and Melrose Place, but the network has scheduled another underperforming remake in Dynasty for the 2017-2018 television season; see Wagmeister, 2017).

“TV Now”: The CW Finds a New Brand Image

If the network was in need of an updated brand image, it was about to get the makeover it desired. At the end of its first season order, Emily Owens M.D. was cancelled by Pedowitz and his team; Pedowitz would later recount that this was a pivotal moment for him and his development teams, as he realized what would and would not work on The CW’s schedules

(Littleton, 2016e). The program – a procedural medical drama about a first-year medical intern at a hospital in (the aforementioned Emily Owens, M.D.) -- featured the same kinds of 173 characters that most of the network’s dramas encountered. Geeky Emily, in another classic teen trope, also has a crush on her attractive med-school colleague, fellow intern Will. Every week, viewers would follow the trials and tribulations of Emily and the interns as they tried to solve cases and save lives. It was not a new premise for an hour-long drama, by any stretch of the imagination, but to The CW’s credit, it did attempt to make the show feel younger and more teen-friendly than a similar drama that might have aired on a broadcast competitor.

Perhaps it is kismet that the character of Will was played by – the network’s former Oliver Queen/Green Arrow from Smallville. When the network phased out

Emily Owens M.D., it metaphorically phased out some of the last remnants of its former image, as well: the network that wanted to be “TV to Talk/TXT/Blog/Tweet About” was transitioning into its new life, new superheroes and all. This rebranding in 2012 came with the new tagline,

“TV Now,” which was meant to establish the network as a “truly transmedia broadcast brand”

(as discussed by their long-time creative shop/design firm, Troika). See Appendix A for excerpts from Troika’s work on The CW and the goals for its radical 2012 rebrand (Rose, 2012; Troika’s original presentation is preserved at the Branding Source). At the time, Troika argued, 93% of the network’s online viewers never watched the network on linear television, the way it was intended to be viewed. Furthermore, close to one-fifth of the network’s entire viewership was coming from digital platforms. This is a problem, if the network has not yet monetized those alternative platforms, by estimating viewership numbers for those platforms and then selling the inserted ad placements to advertisers. However, The CW’s embrace of Troika’s work does not suggest this was the case, and the network was instead touting its viewers’ use of non-linear platforms through the TV Now campaign. Rose (2012) quotes Rick Haskins on the campaign:

“The story today is about the huge push to mobile and digital [platforms]…That doesn't mean 174 that we're moving away from social media; we're just doing it in a more subtle way because it is now a foregone conclusion.” Today, in 2017, quantifying dispersed viewership via online and mobile platforms is a key issue for most television networks and for the Nielsen Company, the latter of which has been forced to invest in new technologies and extended measurement

(Battaglio, 2017, discusses Nielsen; Framke, 2017, discusses The CW’s continued efforts to view itself as a “multi-platform” network, continuing themes touted by Pedowitz in 2012).

In retrospect, The CW – again uniquely different from its broadcast competition – was ahead of the pack, as the perplexed nature of industry commentary at the time may have signaled. Reporters like Tim Goodman, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, maintained confusion at how the network continued its relentless pursuit of alternative platforms; instead, he felt, nobody was watching The CW on their televisions because nobody was watching The CW anywhere. It appears that Troika’s data is in clear opposition to, and perhaps even a defense against, articles like his. In a follow-up to his July 2012 piece that questioned the whole nature of

The CW’s existence, in this piece, entitled “The CW: Still Doing Whatever It Is That It Does” from January 2013, Goodman remains utterly perplexed by the rationale behind the network’s existence. He argues that its poorly performing shows barely legitimized the network as a content provider, much less as a sound business decision. He even reflects upon his own coverage of The CW:

I know that the CW thinks I pick on it. That I don't like its shows. But that's not true. I'm

just completely fascinated about its magical thinking. I think that any network that comes

before the TCA to to [sic] tout or defend itself, should do so with tangible evidence based

on the metrics everybody else uses. All I've heard from the CW for years is -- what's the

word? -- bullshit. 175

The CW believes that billions of people in the 18-34 audience are watching its shows via

Hulu or video on demand or through CWTV.com -- all of these things that Nielsen isn't

tracking, according to Pedowitz. So, in essence, the problem is with the Nielsen ratings

not with the CW.

As evidenced above, Goodman is not drinking The CW’s Kool-Aid, maintaining his position from the prior year – that something about The CW just doesn’t add up. The network’s argument that it had viewers, just not ones Nielsen could quantify, was not one new to the entertainment industry. As the sole explanation for why a network seemingly had very few quantifiable viewers? Not so much. In that respect, it makes sense that a reporter/critic like Goodman for a traditional trade publication like the Hollywood Reporter would be so confounded by the problem of The CW’s potential youth viewership. Simply put, there were no other model networks to justify The CW’s claims, without making the little network seem outlandish or, in the words of Goodman, merely overtaken by its “level of self-delusion.” Nobody was watching

The CW, in his view, and the thought that people were must be delusional.

By the end of the season, Pedowitz’s network was on its way to becoming a destination for not just teen drama that happened to have a fantasy or genre flair – like Vampire Diaries and

Beauty and the Beast – but for more broader genre content that could appeal to viewers outside of the teen- and young-adult viewership set. That this appeal also fit an emphasis from both the parent company and media conglomerates on transmedia and integrated branded licenses, especially that populated superhero universes, was likewise beneficial. The network’s next few seasons would highlight the successes that Arrow posed for the network, and reflect the “TV

Now” dictum developed by Troika, even if the network would continue to refine that brand image in its successive seasons. 176

Figures 10-13. Excerpts from Troika’s work on The CW’s 2012 rebrand (“New look: The CW,”

2012).

177

178

2013-2014 Television Season

Table 12. The CW’s 2013-2014 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2013.

8-9p Hart of Dixie MONDAY 9-10p Beauty and the Beast 8-9p The Originals (New Series) TUESDAY 9-10p Supernatural 8-9p Arrow WEDNESDAY 9-10p The Tomorrow People (New Series) 8-9p The Vampire Diaries THURSDAY 9-10p Reign (New Series) 8-9p The Carrie Diaries FRIDAY 9-10p America’s Next Top Model

Held until midseason or later: Star-Crossed, The 100, Famous in 12, Nikita Highlighted programs were cancelled at or before the end of the 2013-2014 season.

One of the most important events in CW history wasn’t directly related to the network’s schedule or its immediate leadership. In January of 2013, to the surprise of industry observers,

Time Warner’s chairman/CEO, , announced that Kevin Tsujihara would be given the top post at Warner Bros. starting on March 1 of that year, taking over for long-time chairman

Barry Meyer (Finke, 2013a). At the time, Tsujihara was the head of Warner Bros. Home

Entertainment, a division of the studio that dealt with home video distribution as well as distribution from related Warner Bros. units, like WB Interactive. Tsujihara took the top spot over the heads of two arguably bigger units (assumed to be bigger revenue generators for the company, but since Time Warner doesn’t report financial data for its individual business units, it is difficult to know for certain) – Bruce Rosenblum of Warner Bros. Television Group and Jeff Robinov of Warner Bros. Film Group. Tsujihara’s appointment was arguably shocking.

Meyer had come from WB’s TV division, putting TV at the de facto top of Warner Bros.’ priorities. It had been assumed that, in keeping with that structure, Rosenblum would have been appointed to the top post, keeping television executives at the top of the Warner Bros. 179

Entertainment Group. Bewkes, himself a former HBO executive, made a distinct power move by appointing one exec over others, instead of having Rosenblum, Robinov, and Tsujihara all report to him equally – and it was rumored that Bewkes never even informed the former two of his decision to appoint Tsujihara until he went public with the announcement. This led to some obvious awkwardness between the studio’s new head and his colleagues, especially with

Rosenblum, whom he had pushed out of the top spot at WBTV by the May upfronts of 2013.

Rosenblum was replaced with Peter Roth, who became President and Chief Content Officer,

Warner Bros. Television Group, a position he retained for many years (Finke, 2013b; “Time

Warner: Warner Bros. Entertainment”).

Perhaps because he did not come from WBTV, Tsujihara brought to the role a new focus on distributing Warner Bros. content across the company’s properties. Prior to his tenure, Warner

Bros. – which, in 2015, according to Rainey (2015), was the top producer/distributor of television content in the United States – had remained insular, even within the Time Warner companies. For example, instead of using Warner Bros.’ incredible assets and intellectual property to create high-quality premium cable programming for HBO or TNT through Warner

Horizon or broadcast programming for The CW through Warner Bros. TV, Warner acted as a producer/distributor would, selling its content to the highest bidder. And congruent with the aforementioned discussion of DC Comics’ reorganization as DC Entertainment and its tenuous relationship with Warner Bros.’ own television units, there was plenty of DC intellectual property sitting on the shelf, waiting to be used in any media adaptation. This is where Tsujihara is key. Under his rule, reorganization followed, and so did communication amongst the subunits of Warner Bros. It wasn’t until 2014, for example, that – after 25 years as part of the Time

Warner family – Warner Bros. finally produced a program for HBO (The Leftovers). He also 180 increased the collaboration between Cartoon Network (a Turner network) and Warner Bros.

Animation (Littleton, 2015b).

Arguably Tsujihara’s most important impact as Warner Bros.’ new chairman and CEO was on DC Entertainment; more specifically, influencing who at WB had access to the assets owned by the comic publisher, which has been a part of the Warner family since 1967, and had recently seen how Disney could use Marvel’s content to create a company-wide strategy. He is the executive who opened up DC Entertainment to other subsidiaries, making it more accessible for The CW and other units of the business (Littleton, 2015b). He developed a bi-weekly gathering of all of WB’s top executives, in order to discuss how DC content was functioning across the company (Littleton, 2015b). Further, this openness amongst WB executives allowed

The CW to get access to more DC content, and would impact the network for years to come, solidifying the network’s place in Time Warner’s leveraging of its branded licenses.

Extending the Arrowverse Franchise

As it entered its second season, Arrow was slowly spearheading the network into a new realm both of viewers and of the type of content airing on The CW’s schedules. By the end of that season, The CW will have clocked its most-watched season in three years, and while Arrow alone wasn’t maintaining the network, it was a key program and the network planned for more superheroic content coming in the development pipeline.

On September 13, 2013, prior to the premiere of any of the network’s fall season programming, The CW announced that it had cast (of Fox’s Glee) for a DC superhero spinoff to live within the predefined world (again, the Arrowverse) of Arrow

(Andreeva, 2013d). The character was , best known as one iteration of superhero 181 alter ego The Flash. Initially, the plan was for Gustin to appear in a three-episode arc during the back-half of Arrow’s second season, as a “backdoor” pilot to gauge fan awareness and interest in

Gustin and his character (Andreeva, 2013e). The idea was to create a program based on the origin story of The Flash, a character that has been adapted to television before (one season as a live-action primetime CBS program in the early 1990s), but now remade to be of interest to young-skewing CW audiences. Coming from Berlanti and Arrow’s other co-creator, Andrew

Kreisberg, The Flash was about as high-profile a DC character as The CW could grasp in 2013.

As it turned out, Barry Allen’s arc was extended to a full standalone pilot and the show was picked up to series for the 14-15 television season; the character still appeared on Arrow in the

2013-14 season, but with the added commitment of his own pilot (Andreeva, 2013e; Thielman,

2014). Until that next season, as a DC synergy property, Arrow would have to stand on its own in the lineup.

“Pretty People with Powers”: The Failure of Tomorrow People

Despite the successes of Arrow, The CW’s schedule during this season was still unfocused. There were superheroes and supernatural occurrences and girls trying to make it in the big city. In retrospect, it appears awkward that Arrow ever aired on the same network as The

Carrie Diaries, much less America’s Next Top Model. But as the network transitioned into older, more mature content, some of the old formula no longer seemed to fit.

One of these programs was the British television adaptation The Tomorrow People.

Immediately defended by its executive producer with the claim that the show was “more than pretty people with powers,” the show didn’t light the ratings world on fire when it debuted in the fall of 2012 (Gonzales, 2013; Hibberd, 2014a). The vaguely X-Menian concept -- a teenage boy 182 discovers telepathic and teleportation powers he never knew he had, finds a new, underground friend group, and discovers a government conspiracy against them all -- wasn’t new by any stretch of the imagination. It was an adaptation of a 1970s series from ITV, after all, and could be easily shot in Vancouver alongside most of the network’s other productions (Jarvis, 2014).

Despite the show’s moderate ratings, the network was unhappy with the program and its performance by the end of its first season. The show underperformed in several of the network’s most important key metrics – linear ratings (as did most of the network’s content) and digital/social chatter, as Pedowitz described at the summer 2014 Television Critics Association press tour, when asked why the program was cancelled (Snetiker, 2014). This underperfomance was despite a unique social media strategy that focused on the double-header of programs starring Amell cousins Stephen and Robbie, respectively, the night even had its own

#AmellWednesdays hashtag and promo (Ng, 2013). Unfortunately, Arrow Tomorrow

People, and when the network was faced with its own dilemma to renew another mid-grade performer, Beauty and the Beast, versus Tomorrow People, the network used digital and social rationale to keep the former and cancel the latter (Hibberd, 2014a).

183

2014-2015 Television Season

Table 13. The CW’s 2014-2015 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2014.

8-9p The Originals MONDAY 9-10p Jane the Virgin (New Series) 8-9p The Flash (New Series) TUESDAY 9-10p Supernatural 8-9p Arrow WEDNESDAY 9-10p The 100 8-9p The Vampire Diaries THURSDAY 9-10p Reign 8-830p Whose Line is it Anyway? FRIDAY 830-9p Whose Line (Encore) 9-10p America’s Next Top Model

Held until midseason or later: iZombie, The Messengers Green highlighted programs were cancelled at or before the end of the 2014-2015 season. Blue highlighted programs are based on DC Entertainment characters.

The Flash Takes the Top Spot

In the fall of 2014, The CW premiered the show that quickly took the top spot from

Arrow and reinforced its status as a network catering to genre viewers. The Flash debuted on

October 7, 2014. It stars the aforementioned Gustin in the titular role, along with veteran television actors (/Reverse-Flash) and Jesse L. Martin (Detective

Joe West), and younger, attractive regulars (), and Valdes/

Danielle Panabaker (as brilliant lab technicians). With this cast and character relationships, the program was structured akin to Arrow’s semi-episodic narrative (and, of course, was set in the same world, leaving the door open for cross-overs). Set in Central City, another generic

American city that had resonance with the DC Comics world, Barry Allen is a forensic crime scene investigator in his early 20s, working with his adoptive dad, Detective West, at the Central

City Police Department to help solve cases. The show presents the character’s origin story, as well, flashing back to the time when Barry watched someone murder his mother, establishing his 184 desire to fight crime. When a particle accelerator has a meltdown in the city (established in

Arrow the prior season), Barry awakens from a coma with special powers – namely, the ability to run at superhuman speeds. Also shot in Vancouver, Canada, with production offices right next door to Arrow’s, The Flash was the latest inhabitant of the Arrowverse (“In Production,” 2017).

Performance-wise, The Flash was a major success for the network. Its series premiere quickly outstripped Arrow as the network’s most-watched series premiere since Vampire Diaries

(in live-plus-same-day metrics). When Nielsen released final live-plus-seven-day data, it revealed that The Flash’s series premiere was the network’s most-watched telecast in The CW’s entire history (Kissell, 2014).

The show was, from the beginning, a big draw for young adults; in fact, more young adults watched The CW that night than did ABC, which included their own synergistic comic- book-adaptation series, Marvel’s Agents of Shield (Kissell, 2014). It is also significant that the demos in which the show scored highest were not their traditional women 18-34 target or even

The WB’s teens 2-17 target demographics. The Flash performed very well amongst men 18-34, becoming the network’s highest rated series premiere in that demographic (Kissell, 2014).

Young men were a new avenue of viewer for The CW. A show like The Flash, then, could help to fulfill Pedowitz’s mission of appealing to a wider viewer base, bringing in new eyeballs to

The CW brand.

Beyond just helping to establish The CW brand amongst a wider audience, The Flash had officially ushered in an era of quality DC television adaptations across television that came along with Tsujihara’s appointment at Warner Bros. Entertainment Group. With this, The CW had the freedom to potentially increase its reach in the Arrowverse and garner more DC characters for its network. However, now that DC was “open for business across the lot,” it meant that The CW 185 was going to have to compete with other networks for WBTV content. In the 2014 season, for example, NBC aired DC adaptation (2014-2015). Also in this season, as well,

Batman would finally get his television origin story, in the form of Fox’s Gotham (2014-present)

(D’Alessandro, 2014). Sometimes the network was even competing with its own parent companies for content to air on its schedule, which would become apparent in the next television season.

The CW Gets its First Taste of Awards Recognition

As the network entered its ninth season on the air, it was evident that The CW was not making the kind of critically acclaimed programming that was respected by the Television

Academy. With substantially lower ratings than those of other broadcast networks and no wider recognition from the industry, it appeared that The CW’s legacy would be cemented by low-rent teen dramas and superhero adaptations. None of that was fodder for awards season, and by 2015, the network had only been recognized for a few lesser contributions to its industry, including

Emmy Awards for Outstanding Hairstyling for a Single Camera Series for The Originals (2014, nominee) and Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series for Smallville (2008, winner) (“Awards

Search: The CW,” 2017). The awards categories that eluded the network were the major ones most likely to bring it some acclaim and reinforce to a skeptical industry that the network had a right to continue existing – until the 2015 awards season.

The show that would bring the network an initial taste of that acclaim was the CBS

Television Studios production Jane the Virgin that premiered in October 2014. The show focused on the aforementioned Jane, a Latina young woman living and working in , who gets pregnant after she is accidentally inseminated at a gynecologist’s office. Jane is also a virgin 186

(hence the semi-ironic title), and the show partially focuses on her very religious family while she decides to go through with the pregnancy and raise the child on her own. While this may seem like a bizarre concept for a program (it was), Jane the Virgin was a critical darling from the start. And while the show’s ratings were not substantial in relation to the network’s other programming, the network took the unique premise, based on a Venezuelan telenovela, and allowed the program space to grow on its lineup.

This somewhat risky move culminated in one of the network’s biggest industry wins in years – the nomination (and win) for (“Jane”) at the 2015 Golden Globes in the category of Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy (Bacle,

2015). She beat out actresses from prestige subscription VOD services (Taylor Schilling, , Netflix) and premium cable networks ( of Girls and Julia Louis-

Dreyfus of , both on HBO; of Showtime’s Nurse Jackie). Possibly of greater significance is the fact that no other broadcast network was represented in the competitive set;

Rodriguez’s stellar performance, essentially, was recognized despite the fact the show aired on

The CW. Rodriguez’s character was less watched by viewers than any other nominee’s in her category, so the win for her was also a win for the little network that could. Still, Pedowitz expressed his upset at what he saw as a “snub” of the show because it did not receive an Emmy nomination. “The show won a Peabody and AFI Awards and received best series Golden Globe and TCA nominations. We will have to have to earn (an Emmy nomination). They deserved it this year but will go and try to earn it next season” (as quoted in Andreeva, 2015d). Regardless, between the success of the two Arrowverse programs driving ratings and the critical acclaim of

Jane the Virgin, it seemed like several positive elements were looking up for The CW in the

2014-2015 television season. 187

Further, too, this win for the network demonstrated the partnership between CBS and

Warner Bros. in an expanded capacity. Warner Bros. was making most of the content on the network, and most of the content that was driving ratings growth. CBS had remained on the sidelines in previous years with the increased amount of WB assets on the air on the network.

This was a chance to show that both corporate parents could contribute to some kind of successful content on the network, and it serves as a reminder that while most of the network’s assets were being functionally controlled by Warner, CBS was an equivalent co-owner of The

CW.

Branding for the 2014-15 “Heroes Within”: Embracing Adrenaline on The CW’s Schedule

With all the male-driven action on The CW, the network needed a new brand campaign to sell its adrenaline-focused schedule to viewers. The network returned to Troika, in search of a new tagline and way to reach the viewers who may be watching The CW for this new content.

How else could one explain shows as complete opposites as Jane the Virgin and Arrow all airing on the same network? After completing a series of focus groups, the firm returned with the new campaign tagline: “Heroes Within” (“The CW ‘Heroes Within’ Brand Campaign 2014,” n.d.). In the attempt to unite what made Jane the Virgin so powerful and what made Arrow resonate so strongly with viewers, Troika developed the campaign as a way to unite a seemingly disparate brand.

Again, this new brand campaign hints at the underlying issues of a hybrid broadcast network dealing with mixed corporate parentage. CBS could not bring to the brand the same boldness that Warner did, full of special effects and stunts; CBS’s programs on the network were all about character, tending to attract majority female audiences. TV Now, the network’s prior 188 brand campaign, had favored the brand over the network’s content, prefacing how to view the network’s programs over the quality of its content. The rebrand was stark for several reasons, the least of which was the introduction of a new, darker green color to the network’s marketing style-guide and more mature promotional imagery to reflect the network’s new characters. Now that The CW was an established brand, and now that viewers knew they could go to alternative sources to view the network’s content, establishing The CW as a location upon which to view content was no longer the network’s biggest priority. By 2014, The CW was reliant upon income from syndication and other aftermarket monetization streams, and the network could – for the first time in its existence – spend the time and effort tying together its programming rather than its platform. (On Netflix, after all, a television network’s branding is usually stripped from its content, losing all vestiges of the network that first aired it, though networks are beginning to fight back against that structure (Flint, 2015). Hulu, however, maintains network branding and allows users to search for content by network.) “Heroes Within” is not the brand campaign of a network justifying its existence; rather, this is the campaign of a mature brand, one that has established itself as an arbiter of a certain kind of content needing to inform audiences of its new programming direction. Perhaps most importantly, the new campaign was welcoming to male audiences, keeping in line with Pedowitz’s desire to draw more gender-balanced audiences.

Promos for the campaign featured the network’s characters in their native habitats, featuring the following text: “Within each of us/is the power/to be more than we are/to be strong/to be wise/to be passionate/to be brave/to become something legendary. This your moment/rise to the challenge. Heroes within” (“The CW ‘Heroes Within’ Brand Campaign

2014,” n.d.). Gone are the mentions of the network’s streaming platforms and the desire for 189 viewers to utilize social media whilst viewing. The campaign is, in essence, content first, network second. The CW had grown up.

2015-2016 Television Season

Table 14. The CW’s 2015-2016 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2015.

8-9p Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (New Series) MONDAY 9-10p Jane the Virgin 8-9p The Flash TUESDAY 9-10p iZombie 8-9p Arrow WEDNESDAY 9-10p Supernatural 8-9p The Vampire Diaries THURSDAY 9-10p The Originals 8-9p Reign FRIDAY 9-10p America’s Next Top Model

Held until midseason or later: Containment, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (New Series) Highlighted programs were cancelled at or before the end of the 2015-2016 season. Blue highlighted programs are based on DC Entertainment characters.

CBS Scores Again: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Critical Acclaim

CBS would bring the network another critically successful property just one year after

Jane the Virgin. Since the network’s highly rated programs were coming from DC (and thus,

Warner) properties, CBS was going to have to bring a solid contender to The CW in order to compete. When CBS’s premium cable network Showtime rejected the “racy, half-hour comedy pilot” that would become Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, CBS TV Studios executives pitched the idea to

The CW – reworked as an hour-long musical comedy to fit the little network’s sensibilities.

CBS’s execs thought the show could be a good companion to the successful Jane the Virgin, another woman-centered, pseudo-realistic hour-long comedy with elements of the surreal

(Andreeva, 2015c). Crazy Ex-Girlfriend brought a much more surreal experience to the network. 190

The set-up is this: ’s Rebecca sees her old ex-boyfriend by chance in New

York City, and makes the drastic move to follow him across the country – all the way to West

Covina, California. There, she sings and dances her way through life, in a series of representational musical sequences; for example, in the pilot, she sings a three-minute ode to the less-than-glamorous California town West Covina, involving dancing in the streets and lots of musical dialogue, where she goes to search for Josh, her ex. Essentially, the show is The WB’s

Felicity, where the titular character follows a high school crush she never spoke to across the country, but with more bizarre musical numbers and a fairly explicitly signaled mentally ill lead character. For whatever reason, Pedowitz thought it was a good investment for The CW.

Perhaps Pedowitz was right – but only if he was motivated by critical acclaim and not by network ratings. In the 2015-2016 television season, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was the lowest-rated and least-watched show in total viewers on all of network television. (It would claim this title two seasons in a row, as Porter (2016) remarks.) However, following in the footsteps of Jane the

Virgin, star Rachel Bloom won the Golden Globe Award in 2016, in the category of Best

Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy, the very same category won by Rodriguez the prior season (“Winners & nominees…,” 2016). Bloom beat out

Rodriguez, nominated for the second year in a row, as well as Grace and Frankie’s

(Netflix), Queens’ (Fox), and Veep’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus (HBO). The show also won Emmys for Best Choreography and Best Single-Camera Picture Editing for a

Comedy Series, both in 2016. Despite the low viewership, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was a critical darling, and was amongst the network’s entire lineup that was renewed for the 2016-2017 television season (Blake, 2016). While this show was underperforming with ad sales revenue,

Pedowitz was also busy propagating the few pieces of content that could perform the overall goal 191 of bringing in viewers, and that would mean expanding the reach of DC Comics properties on the network.

Becoming the Justice League Network: How Location Impacts the Arrowverse

Perhaps the most striking facet of The CW in the 2015-2016 television season is its abundance and reliance on DC shows to prop up the schedule. By mid-season, in January of

2016, the network had three nights a week of DC content, when DC’s Legends of Tomorrow took over one of the Thursday slots. Legends was The CW’s less-expensive answer to the flagging

Marvel’s Agents of Shield over on ABC, the latter of which was rather unsuccessful from a ratings perspective, especially given the high price of its filming; its pilot alone cost $12 million

(Barnes, 2013; Kissell, 2015). Legends would prove a low-level success, as well, as third-tier superpowered characters (, The , ) who were initially developed in the Arrowverse became spun-off into the new franchise. Still, the show performed better than

CBS’s low-rated fare, including Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Jane the Virgin, and costume drama Reign, all of which were sitting at the bottom of the network’s performance rankers for the season (de

Moraes, 2016). When Legends premiered, the network was now devoting half of its programming time on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights to DC superhero content.

Further, it was easy for characters to visit each other across the various programs, since all three programs (as well as many other CW programs) filmed in Vancouver (Andreeva,

2016d). This was more than just coincidence, and more than convenience. All of the network’s programs that shoot in Vancouver are produced by WBTV, including Arrow, Flash, DC’s

Legends of Tomorrow, iZombie, Supernatural, and later ; all use the city to represent their respective backdrops. 192

This may beg the question: why are all of WBTV’s superhero programs based in Canada, more specifically in Vancouver? Vancouver, a city perhaps best known as “Hollywood North,” is renowned for its media production facilities and the fact that areas of it look relatively unremarkable as a city (Gasher, 2002). Vancouver can play , Central City, and Starling

City, all in the space of an hour, without it being evident that the city is the same one. Further,

Vancouver and Los Angeles share a time zone, making it easier for executives to communicate with a show’s production staff. It may appear counterintuitive to people outside the television industry, when writers’ rooms are stationed in LA and actual show production is in some far-off city, but the logistics line up well.

Reinforcing these creative considerations are the production tax incentives that are available to scripted television productions, from cradle to grave, in each part of the production process, including pilot production, series production, and post-production and visual effects

(“Film or Video Production Services Tax Credit,” 2016). A production can shoot in Vancouver, and not only be eligible for national tax incentives through the Canadian government (only some of which require a Canadian cultural component), but also provincial incentives through British

Columbia’s government. Even hiring Canadian below-the-line talent (e.g., camera crew, hairstyling, etc.) whilst filming in the country can provide millions of dollars of relief for production companies in the form of tax incentives (“Creative BC: Production Services Tax

Credit,” 2017). The CW’s programs in Vancouver produced by Warner Bros. TV make use of this national and provincial incentive structure, but the productions are never formally co- produced with a Canadian production company, since the United States does not participate in formal co-production treaties with any country. In most cases, these bilateral treaties exist to insulate smaller countries’ media industries from the U.S.’s historic dominance of the medium 193

(Selznick, 2008, p. 12). (For example, BBC America’s Emmy-award-winning Orphan Black was first-run television in the United States and Canada. The production was formally a co- production between the , whose BBC is a 50% co-parent of BBC America, and

Canadian cable channel Space; Schneller, 2017.) With the location set and the ability to make the cost of expensive programming more affordable on a small network’s budget, Vancouver quickly became the home-away-from-home for The CW, following in the tradition of WB content like Smallville that also used the city’s landscapes.

2016-2017 Television Season (and Beyond)

Table 15. The CW’s 2016-2017 fall primetime schedule, as announced in May 2016.

8-9p Supergirl (1st season on CW) MONDAY 9-10p Jane the Virgin 8-9p The Flash TUESDAY 9-10p No Tomorrow (New Series) 8-9p Arrow WEDNESDAY 9-10p Frequency (New Series) 8-9p DC’s Legends of Tomorrow THURSDAY 9-10p Supernatural 8-9p The Vampire Diaries FRIDAY 9-10p Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Held until midseason or later: The Originals, Riverdale, The 100, iZombie, Reign, Highlighted programs were cancelled at or before the end of the 2015-2016 season. Blue highlighted programs are based on DC Comics characters. Riverdale is produced by Publications in addition to Berlanti, CBS, and WBTV. DC has an ongoing relationship with Archie; DC has previously licensed Archie’s characters for its own imprints (Renaud, 2008). The underlying thread: Warner Bros. Television, which is the primary producer of all DC Comics content on any network, across television, functionally produces Riverdale in Vancouver.

“Defy Your World”: Uniting Teen Queens and Adrenaline Dreams

The three-nights-a-week of superheroes vying for airtime on The CW meant the network’s brand needed revision, or at least further refinement. In the network’s 2016 brand 194 refresh campaign, the network redefined its strategy to encompass a new tagline: “Dare to Defy.”

“Defy your world. Dare to live in ours,” the network’s brand spots from this season proclaim.

The tagline seemed to find the one element both the network’s streams of programming had in common: people, whether they be ordinary or extraordinary, defying the odds to do more and be more than the world expected from them. The dark text and logos of the 2014 rebrand remained, and the network retained its mature marketing strategy (“The CW Brand Refresh 2016,” n.d.).

Not only did The CW’s characters find their “heroes within,” leftover from the original

2014 brand campaign, but they also defied the odds. The CW was still very much the network it was in 2014, so there appears to be no need to completely redefine the network’s brand and ethos, but the 2016 refresh takes the two strongest elements of the network – superheroes and teen queens – and merges them in a new and different way, all the while maintaining the network’s core goals of inviting viewers into the world of the shows. Similar to 1980s’ and

1990s’ broadcast brand campaigns like “Welcome Home to NBC” and “America is Watching

ABC,” and even the late 1990s/early 2000’s taglines of predecessor The WB (“My Generation,”

“The Night is Young”), CW viewers are asked to visit the world of the network, defying their own worlds for the fantasy of The CW. It’s an emotional play that establishes the network as a player in genre content, prioritizing not just character, but a certain type of character – the superhero characters now taking up almost half of The CW’s premiere schedule. making use of the “Dare to Defy” tagline feature the network’s talent proclaiming the following text:

“From first light to last laugh/we are/born to defy/the odds/the rules. It’s a way of life and a state of mind. So, call us what you want – heroes, rebels, or just plain crazy. Where expectations end.

We’re just getting started. So don’t stand there. Defy your world. Dare to live in ours” (“2016

Fall CW Dare To Defy extended promo,” 2016). It feels appropriate, then, that the last line goes 195 to Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen, the character that started the superhero viewership trend on the network – its most defining characteristic to this day, and was about to become even more so with the addition of Supergirl to the network’s lineup.

Supergirl Makes the Move to The CW (and Vancouver)

At the end of the 2015-2016 television season, one of DC’s adaptations – in this case on one of the Big Four networks -- wasn’t faring so well on its own, at least in relation to its network’s other programming. Supergirl was staring down cancellation, despite its status as

CBS’s top new drama amongst younger viewers, and it wouldn’t be the only DC television show that had experienced declining viewership (Wagmeister, 2016). At the end of the 2015 season,

NBC had cancelled WBTV’s Constantine, and no other network picked it up (Andreeva, 2015a).

That show never went back into production, but as the world had been established to exist within the same earth as the Arrowverse, star went on to portray his character again on The

CW’s Arrow, at least giving some closure to the character and its fans (Patten, 2015). But losing

Supergirl, a relatively more high-profile character, would be a bigger loss of the DC extended television universe. Supergirl couldn’t die at CBS.

Mark Pedowitz thought the same thing. In fact, when the show was in development, The

CW had been offered the project prior to the premiere of The Flash, possibly as a good fit with

Arrow. It should have been an easy pickup, produced by Greg Berlanti with a young, female lead and part of a stable of new DC pilots prime for adaptation. Pedowitz passed on the project, though he would later admit it should’ve always aired on his network (Hibberd, 2016). Supergirl, though, had elements that might have been challenging for The CW, perhaps most importantly the special effects that allowed Kara (“Supergirl”) the ability to fly, but that The CW couldn’t 196 easily afford (Goldberg, 2015). That the program’s production was based in Los Angeles also increased costs. Supergirl was thus expensive, at a rumored $14 million pilot and episode costs of $3 million a piece (Hibberd & Abrams, 2016).

Rather than worry about creating an affordable production expressly for The CW, Warner

Bros. TV garnered a massive license fee by producing the project for a larger network, and required that CBS pay an expensive penalty to the production company if they decided not to schedule it (Goldberg, 2015). The real slight to The CW comes in who they gave it to instead:

CBS. CBS, meanwhile, in an attempt to lower its median age (approximately 60), was looking to get into the superhero game with content that could draw younger audiences (Hod, 2015). CBS was sold the show, and Supergirl arrived to some fanfare on that network in the fall of 2015, promoting a cast of newcomers ( from Glee) and established talent (Calista

Flockhart from Ally McBeal), Ratings, however, would not hold out for such an expensive production, and CBS wavered on keeping the show in the spring of 2016 (Collins, 2016b).

This meant Supergirl was up for grabs. Warner Bros. TV didn’t want the show to stop production, either, so in the fall of 2016, it was moved from CBS to The CW, in what industry insiders described as “a last-minute flurry of deal-making” (Collins, 2016b). The CW finally did get Supergirl, but what it did not get was CBS’s expensive production. Prior to the show’s move and in anticipation of decreased budgets at The CW, Warner Bros. TV moved the show’s production to Vancouver, which meant that some of the show’s established talent (Flockhart) would not make the move, or at least not to the extent they did previously (Andreeva, 2016d).

Pedowitz, nonetheless, predicted that the move to a new city would have little impact upon the program, in May of 2016 (Littleton, 2016d). In an effort to shoot all of The CW’s shows together, Warner cut the show’s budget and moved it further into the Arrowverse (Supergirl and 197

The Flash had already had a rare inter-network crossover episode in the former’s first season), since The CW was not allotted the money to continue CBS’s production values or the relatively high license fee it received from that network in its first season (Andreeva, 2016b).

This was not the first time a show had moved between broadcast networks. While it remains a rare occurrence, when a network cancels or decides it no longer wants to air a show, it is the prerogative of the owner to decide what to do with it; networks merely pay a license fee for the right to air those programs and to cover at least the majority of those programs’ production costs (Massey, n.d.). Often the show is “shopped” to other available networks, as they may be interested in picking up the program for their own lineups. When the network that cancels the show is also owner of the production company that produces said show (e.g., ABC and ABC

Studios, for instance), the likelihood that the show will live another day on a new network is slim

– since it is ultimately cheaper to pick up your own show than someone else’s (a key issue with the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules ended in 1995) (Kolbert, 1993; Andrews, 1991;

Carter, 1995b).

But if the show airs on someone else’s network and is no longer wanted there, there are still slim odds its own parent company may want to make use of it. One example of this is

Medium, a Paramount/CBS TV production cancelled by NBC after five seasons, which then moved to CBS in 2009 via the studio’s institutional relationship with the network. It survived on

CBS another two seasons before being cancelled for good in 2011 (Labrecque, 2009).

Disney/ABC had pulled the same tactic with ABC Studios-produced Scrubs in 2008, which they poached back after seven seasons from NBC, giving the show a final two seasons before cancellation (Stelter, 2008c). Warner itself had even succeeded in a more rare move from broadcast to cable network in 2009, when NBC cancelled cop drama Southland, which got four 198 more seasons on Turner-owned TNT; admittedly this was a different scenario, as the network initially acquired the rights to the six episodes of the second season produced prior to NBC’s abrupt cancellation of the program, just weeks before the season was due to premiere (Weisman,

2013; Chozick, 2010).

Supergirl exists in a further grey area. A conspiracy theorist might argue, in this case, that

CBS never intended upon keeping Supergirl for itself at all; that it merely served to set up a high-quality production with talent and marketing support The CW might never have gotten, all to shift those viewers from CBS to The CW when the show moved to the smaller network the following season. There is no evidence to back up such a claim, but whether the strategy was deliberate or not, it worked.

Supergirl did well on The CW in the 2016-2017 television season. It did not perform to

CBS levels, but any movement of viewers from CBS to The CW would have been welcome for the little network. Pedowitz predicted, before the season even began at the summer Television

Critics Association press tour, that “There’s no question it probably won’t do as well as it did on

CBS. But it will probably be our No. 1 or No. 2 show of the season” (as quoted in Collins,

2016b). At the end of the season, Supergirl was The CW’s second-highest-rated program, after

The Flash, and the two were in close contention for the top spot throughout the season (de

Moraes, 2017; Maglio, 2016). Moving Supergirl from CBS to The CW might have been CBS’s biggest ratings contributor to the network in the network’s history, even if it did so via Warner.

The program also featured its first taste of real “top-tier” DC characters. Superman is Supergirl’s cousin, which established DC’s most famous character in the Arrowverse. Occasionally, in fact,

Superman appeared in The CW program.

199

Watch The CW Now, Literally – But Only on Our Apps

By the end of the 2016-2017 television season, freshman midseason series Riverdale was having a hard time in the ratings. The show was poorly viewed on all monetized Nielsen metrics for traditional linear television viewing, but regardless, at the May 2017 upfront presentation,

Pedowitz announced that the show was renewed. His main justification for the renewal?

Riverdale’s solid performance on digital platforms. The way the network came to understand that the show’s performance was so strong outside of linear television was amplified by a change in strategy early in 2016 (Lynch, 2016a, describes the network’s streaming strategy changes in the wake of Tribune negotiations).

In October of 2016, when the network’s five-year contract with Hulu ended, The CW made a radical choice. Instead of just re-upping the deal for an additional period of time, the network decided to pull all content from the site. Significantly, the network maintained its preexisting relationship with Netflix and actually chose to amplify its existing deal, now allowing all episodes of a season to be posted to the streaming service as soon as one week after the entire season had finished airing on the linear channel (Sandberg, 2016). Hulu, in contrast, was getting episodes of The CW’s content while the shows were still in-season, and the ability for viewers to watch those programs on Hulu meant that fewer viewers needed to come to The

CW’s website to watch its programming (Lynch, 2016c, explains the Hulu deal in more depth).

The issues this deal raised – apart from the obvious monetary support the network would be provided by Hulu if they had chosen to extend their deal – were twofold. The first issue concerned access to data on Hulu’s viewers. OTT platforms like Hulu and Netflix, as previously discussed, provide little to no access to content providers regarding the viewership of their programs. Rest assured: Hulu and Netflix have 100 percent knowledge of everyone who is 200 watching their programming, including length of tune, time spent viewing, viewing patterns, and other metrics that could be of use to networks like The CW and its producers/parent companies.

However, Netflix and Hulu’s on-demand SVOD service themselves do not provide content owners and networks with quantitative data to support viewership; Hulu’s live TV option is measured via Nielsen (Poggi, 2017; Steinberg, 2017d). (On October 18, 2017, Nielsen finally announced that they were able to measure Netflix viewing, if only for studios that opted to have their programs measured by the service, and thus, have subscribed to the company’s Subscription

Video On Demand Content Ratings service; see Poggi, 2017, for more details.) Adweek reports that Hulu, knowing that only The Flash and Arrow were receiving significant viewership on the site, wasn’t too keen on hosting The CW’s entire lineup when only two shows were worth their trouble (Lynch, 2016c).

This leads to the second point of contention: monetization as a lump-sum from an OTT provider like Hulu versus the ability to sell and maintain digital advertisements within a network’s own native apps. When The CW sold in-season stacking rights (a form of rights commonly sold to OTTs) to Hulu, it received money from the service. However, Hulu is an ad- supported medium, for the majority of its subscribers, and The CW was not allowed access to the same advertising inventory on the platform that its fellow broadcast networks were – all of which own controlling stakes in the service except for CBS (Lynch, 2016c). Despite Time Warner’s acquisition of 10 percent of the company just two months earlier, The CW was still being singled out as a network. In essence, while ABC, Fox, and NBC were all allowed to sell a portion of the advertising inventory that would be inserted into their programming, The CW was not (Lynch,

2016c). This posed a loss of potential digital advertising revenue that the network and its owners thought it could get on its own – but only if the network retained all exclusive in-season 201 streaming rights for its own apps, desktop sites, and connected device platforms. The CW pulled out of any further deals with Hulu, and set to building their own, self-contained apps to make up for the loss (Lynch, 2016c). The sites were self-contained and owned and operated by Warner

Bros., so therefore The CW would have access to any and all data regarding viewership; since measurement platforms like Adobe Analytics are closed systems, they do not provide external competitive data about other websites or app usage.

This has several uses for the network and its parents. First, it allows a network worth relatively little to the sum total of the Warner Bros. portfolio the ability to innovate as “guinea pig” for an experiment into the building of native apps utilized to grow digital ad sales for the network. If the network is worth little in real dollars, it means that if the experiment fails, Warner

Bros. is not out billions of dollars that it would sustain as real losses. But since The CW lives in a middle-ground of networks, classified as a network with neither parent reporting its exact financials, the network was again the perfect choice to innovate with little financial risk attached.

Prior to the announcement of the network’s self-contained system in which to watch its streaming content, earlier in the year when deals with the network’s largest affiliate group

(Tribune) were breaking down, there was even some talk of the network going OTT on its own

(Jessell, 2016). A direct-to-consumer service would mean the network would be charging subscribers a nominal monthly fee for access to all the network’s content, either through the release of full content libraries or through a stream of the network’s linear channel. With the prospect of Tribune pulling its affiliates out of the top three markets in the country (New York,

Los Angeles, and Chicago, respectively), The CW’s parent companies would be forced to come up with a new and different solution for the network. One of those ideas was the direct-to- consumer product offering, which Bloomberg reported the network’s parents were considering in 202

January 2016 (Shaw, 2016). Tribune signed back on with its affiliates in the eleventh hour of negotiations, avoiding this doomsday scenario for The CW, but the idea that something had to change for the network remained (Steinberg, 2016b, describes the final affiliation deal). One of the early impacts of this change could be seen in the decision to renew Riverdale, an underwhelming performer in the linear space but a show the network deemed successful with viewership via its own apps and website, as well as “anecdotal” evidence from Netflix that the show garnered views in the post-season (Lynch, 2016a, cites Pedowitz’s “Netflix effect”;

Andreeva, 2017f).

One draw for viewers to The CW and its apps is its DC content, which was making up a hefty portion of the network’s schedule by 2016. But it is easy to forget, especially when discussing The CW’s DC-heavy lineup, that DC Entertainment itself was interested in expanding its reach into television and film adaptations of its content outside of The CW’s grasp. In April of

2017, nearing the end of the 2016-2017 broadcast season, Warner Bros. announced that it had developed a DC Entertainment direct-to-consumer OTT service to begin operating in 2018. The service, which will have DC’s branding attached, will begin with one live-action show from

Greg Berlanti (the long-awaited Titans, formerly set up at TNT) and one animated one (Young

Justice: Outsiders) (Andreeva, 2017d, 2016a). Whether this service will succeed, and if so, what kind of impact it will have on The CW remains to be seen, but it is important to remember that the network does not have a Warner Bros. monopoly on DC content. This makes The CW’s position as the de facto Justice League network a tenuous one; at any moment, Warner Bros. could decide it no longer wants to sink the IP and resources into the network.

203

Cable’s Loss is Broadcast’s Gain: Pedowitz Fights for The CW’s Future

At the end of the day, the decision to shift away from any particular content stream might not even come from Pedowitz, Tsujihara, Moonves, or any of the myriad of other players who could potentially influence the network. With the acquisition of Warner Bros. by AT&T in

October of 2016, the company already notable for its mobile telephone, wired cable (AT&T U-

Verse), and direct broadcast satellite (DirecTV) services expands upon what is now the world’s largest telecommunications firm, beating out China Telecom and in the 2017 Forbes

Global 2000 list (Gara, 2017). As of September 2017, the deal is not officially closed, but in

August, the Wall Street Journal reported that the deal had entered an “advanced stage” and was expected to go through despite President Trump’s seeming aversion to its approval during the

2016 election campaign (FitzGerald and Flint, 2017).

The reorganization of the company under AT&T’s reign will also have implications for

Warner, arguably the more important of The CW’s two owners in 2017. For The CW, this may come in the availability and access to content produced by Warner Bros. TV and owned within the former Time Warner businesses, as well as in administrative support (since Warner physically runs the network). This will depend upon whether the new business unit developed by

AT&T is as siloed as Time Warner has historically been, and remains to be determined as a unit of AT&T. Very little information is publicly available about the structure of the company and its assets after the merger. , currently head of DirecTV, will lead the new Time Warner businesses after the deal closes from his office in Los Angeles (Palmeri and Moritz, 2017).

Randall Stephenson will remain the overall CEO of AT&T. Bloomberg reports that the new company will utilize a management style attributed to Warren Buffet at Berkshire Hathaway,

“known for giving acquired companies a great deal of autonomy rather than try to standardize 204 them” (Moritz, 2017). Regardless of the speculation, the impact of the merger upon The CW’s day-to-day operations, if any, remains a vast unknown quantity at the present moment.

By any account, Warner’s 50 percent share in The CW is the closest AT&T will get to owning a major broadcast network outright in 2017. At the time of the merger, Time Warner retained one FCC for an individual (Atlanta’s WPCH-TV, formerly the Superstation WTBS) leftover from its acquisition of Turner Broadcasting System in

1996, which it sold to Meredith in April 2017 to avoid its merger with AT&T requiring FCC review (Eggerton, 2017).

Regardless of what happens with its half-parent, Pedowitz feels The CW is in a good position in the industry as a broadcast network. Despite declining linear ratings across television, and some of the largest declines in broadcast, Pedowitz argues that only owners of multiple cable networks are, at present, forced to reorganize due to industry pressures (Andreeva, 2017f). At the summer Television Critics Association press tour, he puts forth the example of Viacom, a rival media owner to Time Warner and a former part of the CBS media empire. Viacom’s struggles have been heavily publicized in recent years, so it is no wonder that he chose this as a primary example of a company forced to deal with declines in cable viewership (see the aforementioned discussion of Spike and the Paramount Network as evidence of Viacom’s new strategy, including relegating some classic cable brands to the periphery) (Lieberman, 2017b; Stanley, 2017).

Pedowitz argues that broadcast has had to deal with none of that, particularly The CW, which considers itself a “multi-platform” network. Of course, it helps that The CW owns no assets and therefore is worth very little as a property, but Pedowitz’s sentiment remains: maybe things will be okay for broadcast, in the long run. He leaves the journalists at the network’s “executive session” with the following quote: “I’m proud of what we did for the CW in terms of 205 transitioning the perception. When I came out here at the beginning, most of the questions were,

‘Are you still going to be in business’. Today, this is a healthy, strong creative platform that seeks quality material and will continue to do so” (as quoted in Andreeva, 2017f). He goes on to remark: “There will be [industry] contraction but there is one thing I’m confident about — the

CW is going to be around for a of a long time.”

2012-Present: Significance and Conclusions

In the most recent period of The CW’s existence, the network and its parents have seemed to finally realize the potential of using owned intellectual property to fill The CW’s schedules. Neither The WB nor UPN was fully able to figure out how to make this work, but in a world where Marvel content is taking over both the film and television worlds, it only makes good business sense for The CW and Warner Bros. to figure out how to use this IP in varied, interconnected ways. While Warner has yet to undertake the kind of cross-platform integration with DC that Disney has with its Marvel universe, its use of DC Entertainment content on The

CW is a step in that direction, and is providing the network with quality content it would not be able to afford on its meager budgets otherwise. It is also providing The CW with the viewers it needs to compete in an otherwise crowded televisual landscape.

What the most recent period of the network’s existence also brings to light is the tenuous nature of television networks in today’s media environment. Without a dedicated core audience and viewers advertisers want to buy, networks today have an even more difficult path to staying on the air. While The CW has escaped death several times in its short life, there is still doubt remaining about its future, especially when the parent who runs it, Time Warner, has doubts 206 about its own future. Chapter 7 will discuss in further detail the innovations the network has created and the potential for it in today’s television climate.

207

Chapter 7:

The Comeback Kid: The Future of America’s Least-Watched Broadcast Network

“The Night is Young”: Why The CW Maintained Relevance

In the summer of 2017, the unofficial “mayor of TV,” FX Networks president John

Landgraf, and his research team revealed that, in 2016 alone, 455 scripted television series aired across broadcast, basic cable, pay cable, and online streaming services and that, in the first half of 2017, well over a dozen more scripted series aired compared to the first half of 2016

(Littleton, 2017b). With additional streaming services and niche cable channels that could continue to be created, how is a brand to stay relevant amongst a sea of hundreds of scripted programs, offering anything and everything imaginable in terms of content and delivery method?

This paper has explored research questions surrounding the financial, programming, and regulatory changes that have impacted and allowed for the development of The CW. These include its dual ownership, cable-like programming strategy, and FCC regulation that let emerging networks flourish. The publicly stated rationales for the development of the network were primarily a focus on reaching the younger viewer, which included a digital/social focus meant to find these viewers in non-linear alternative platforms. The network’s initial target demographic was women 18-34, slightly older than The WB’s teens 12-17, but has evolved into the industry standard including all people 18-49 as younger viewers have proven more elusive to find. As a result, we can understand The CW’s longevity through specific economic and programming rationales that allowed for it to be traditionally unsuccessful, because the network’s content was more valuable to its owners than the network itself was, leading to the conclusion that the network is most likely in existence to provide a first-run outlet for WB and

CBS content to be sold into syndication. This helps to explain how the network’s unique 208 ownership influences its programming strategy, as it has come to program only content owned by its two parents, and more specifically, Warner Bros. content over CBS content. Perhaps due to its minimal financial risk and corporate parentage, the network has also been able to innovate more. One of these innovations includes investing more time and resources into communicating with fans in the digital and social online spaces, a facet of the network it was originally ridiculed for, but has now been copied by other networks as they try to monetize alternative platforms.

Finally, between these and other innovations and the successes of synergy between The CW and its parent companies, we can learn about where the medium and business of television is headed

– a heavily consolidated, more multi-platform experience for the user than ever before.

After a decade, The CW has created a world of superheroes and social viewership, reliant on multi-platform views and advertising-oriented innovations to continue to prove its worth to a questionable industry. This dissertation has presented a history of this network in the context of a changing and uncertain television industry. Chapter 1 discussed how The CW is a unique property amongst broadcasters, with its cable-like programming strategies and traditional broadcast affiliate structure. As with many historical events, though, The CW could not have come to exist were it not for a set of regulatory and economic changes that came to be years prior to the network’s own existence, amongst them the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, the

Dual Network Rule, and economic consolidation of network groups, elucidated in chapter 2.

Chapter 3 explored how the network came to be able to function this way, as the merger of two smaller, generally unsuccessful networks, in UPN and The WB. The way these two networks operated left an indelible mark on their successor, and UPN’s programming talent via CBS and

The WB’s business savvy via Warner Bros. TV structured the new little network into what it became today. In The CW’s first two seasons, the network experienced very little success as it 209 tried to establish itself as the amalgamation of its two predecessor networks. With almost an entire schedule parsed from the greatest hits of The WB and UPN, the network struggled to find an identity of its own. Between the measurement changes of the 2007-2008 television season and the disappointing ratings from the network’s then-buzziest new show, Gossip Girl, nothing about the state of the network in May 2008 indicated that it had the long-term potential to remain in business for much longer. Even the Wall Street Journal thought its continued existence was a long shot, as discussed in chapter 4. Somehow, the network persisted, and between 2008 and

2012, as discussed in chapter 5, The CW rebranded itself into a space for teen and young-adult women via the glamorous fictions of Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries. With the help of new president Mark Pedowitz, the network rebranded itself once more – into a genre-friendly, superhero network focused at a wider audience and at male viewers, as well. Chapter 6 takes the network through Pedowitz’s reign at the top, how the network’s own owners – particularly

Warner Bros. TV – have influenced the content it can bring to air, and finally, how the network has acted as a sort of incubator of innovation due to its minimal financial risk and dual corporate parentage. In many ways, the network that brought us Felicity and Dawson’s Creek now brings us Arrow and The Flash, through a direct lineage extending back to the mid-1990s. However, unlike the earlier version, as Chapter 6 argues, the CW’s synergy was tied, like much of the industry, to comic-book licensing and digital distribution and measurement.

Apart from providing a detailed history of the network, this project serves to present a lifecycle of a network, from origin to mature brand, reflecting how a series of economic, structural, and regulatory influences at a transformative era in television end up impacting what the viewer gets to see: the content that airs on their television screens. Without The WB and

UPN entering the market in the mid-1990s, artifacts of a specific historical moment in the life of 210 broadcast television, The CW as a brand could not have come to exist. Without aging broadcast viewers, Ostroff might never have chosen The WB’s demographics for the new network, focusing on women 18-34, and developing content with that intended audience in mind. On The

CW in 2018 and beyond, “the night is [still] young,” to borrow one of The WB’s old marketing taglines. Without Warner Bros. Entertainment Group’s sometimes-tenuous relationship between its DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. TV units, The CW might never have become broadcast

TV’s Justice League network, full of DC adaptations and superheroes. The sum pieces of those decisions comprises The CW, but a history of the network gestures at wider issues and trends occurring throughout the television industry, as will be discussed in the following conclusion.

In some ways, a history of The CW is a history of all the smaller networks in the world of late-cable/early-digital television, entrenched in a fight to stay relevant amongst an ever-growing competitive set. Much of this story is about audience fragmentation and segmentation, a very different emphasis than during the Big Three broadcast network days that dominated television from the late-1940s to the late-1980s. With the landscape cluttered between broadcast, cable, streaming services, and the myriad of ways for viewers to consume content, post-millennial television brands have engaged in a battle of differentiation, in the attempt to stay top-of-mind for the consumer. Rather than become relics of a network era, the entire television industry – The

CW included – has been forced to engage in strategies that, in some small part, struggles to make networks unique from other networks providing similar content, to hedge themselves against even their own parents, which may own multiple networks, shutting them down (Littleton,

2017a).

In particular, The CW has experienced some of the same issues as cable networks, but in a heightened fashion, due to its status as a broadcaster. Not quite a cable network and unable to 211 compete with the scale of the bigger English-language broadcasters, The CW also existed in a structural middle-ground. Different networks have had differing ways of dealing with this critical mass of content, sometimes referred to as “peak TV” (Littleton, 2017b; Paskin, 2015; amongst others). In broadcast, ABC has drawn itself towards ethnic comedies and diverse prime-time soap operas; CBS has populated its schedules with older-skewing crime procedurals; NBC has feel-good hits and competition reality programming; and Fox has maintained its younger, just left-of-center vibe with musical dramas and edgy comedies. Over on cable, Freeform has gone for younger, female audiences with dramas marking lifetime milestones; FX has become the top ad-supported arbiter of “quality” serialized scripted drama; and MTV is putting the “music” back into Music Television. The CW lived in this world, and it could be that its status as a broadcaster, its early hybrid nature from UPN/The WB, its corporate owners, and its lack of early success as a definitive television brand gave it a nimbleness to innovate and adapt that many cable networks would not have been able to do. By 2018, the network could finally say that it had a mature, stable brand: a youthful-skewing portfolio of buzzworthy genre programming that lives in the world of the fantastic, daring viewers to defy their own everyday lives to visit the world of The CW. How The CW achieved this status is a story of a changing television industry and the innovations that The CW introduced, despite industry skepticism, that allowed it to survive.

The Little Network that Could: A Decade of The CW’s Innovations

In a relatively short period of time, The CW managed to innovate on a shoestring, cultivating a unique part of the TV ecosystem despite its mixed ownership and critical derision.

Three primary innovations in broadcast television have come about as a result of The CW’s 212 existence. These are comprised of 1) its demographic targeting and cultivation of social viewership, much of which associated with the teen drama, 2) practical advertising changes and a continued emphasis on the monetization of content, 3) renewed focus on broadcast network affiliate relationships, and 4) structural monetization of the network, including cross-platform, sometimes “transmedia,” storytelling via comic-book licensing. These three functions of the network help to solidify The CW’s place as a relevant cultural artifact that deserves to be remembered in television history.

The first of these broadcast innovations is also, possibly, the most obvious. Its demographic emphasis is among the most important of ways that the network established its value in an era of declining broadcast ratings, and of declining linear TV ratings across the landscape. This strategy, while increasing its audience value to advertisers, is a reminder of the ways in which broadcast television has evolved since the 1950s. The CW itself, in strategy, is perhaps not a broadcaster at all, and remains one in technological definition only. One way the network has maintained its value is by paring down its schedule into programs that quantify

“success” in two avenues: the “quality” of its viewers and its C3 ratings. Typically, networks want to see a boost between the number of viewers who watched a program live or timeshifted within the same day (Live-plus-same-day) and the amount of viewers who watch the commercials airing within the program up to three days after air (Crupi, 2016).

As discussed in chapter 3, The CW initially experienced a decrease in these viewers between the two metrics, which was only a problem because they had been forced to transition to a new industry standard along with all the other broadcasters in the May 2007 upfront. At the time, it was assumed that the network’s young viewers were behind the decrease; younger viewers, it was believed, were less likely to stick around for commercial breaks, despite the 213 network’s massive increases in program ratings in extended timeshifted viewing (the aforementioned live-plus-seven-day metric; Carter, 2009). By the 2016-2017 television season, however, the network had been able to stem the tide of viewers leaving during the commercial breaks, acquiring an audience more willing to view advertising content. Since the metric calculated by Nielsen is proprietary, there is no way to know for sure exactly which changes to the network’s audience contributed the most to this change, but in comparison with the network’s 2006 audience, The CW’s viewers as of 2018 are still some of the youngest in broadcast, but with median incomes substantially higher than they were in 2006 (even when adjusted for inflation; Poggi, 2015a, based on Nielsen data). The CW does have, in 2018, a niche of viewers they can count on to be interested in its primarily superhero content, and they are not just teen girls or women 18-34.

Although this audience has significant advertising desirability, it also was a challenge to reach in traditional broadcast television outlets. But from 2006 to 2018 (and beyond), The CW encouraged the kinds of social viewing that allowed viewers to enter the worlds of its programs with ease across platforms. The network’s emphasis on the teen drama helped to attract a young audience moving to alternative distribution and to create digital buzz. As stated earlier, teen drama itself was far from a new concept or brand image when The CW debuted. It was, as discussed in chapter 3, The WB’s particular forte, for instance. What The CW brought to the genre, though, was an emphasis on social viewing – partly out of necessity, with its low budgets and low-cost programming, and partly out of a desire to differentiate a brand entering the 21st century.

The network has been able to remain a brand supported by its two parents in large part through its early determination to locate and provide content on alternative platforms. From the 214 beginning, when Ostroff proclaimed her reliance on social to direct content choices and later, when Pedowitz described the measurement platform he hoped the network would spearhead, The CW was always ahead of the other broadcast networks (and most of the cable ones) when it came to describing the need for a system of total audience measurement. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Nielsen Company initiative that was meant to deal with this measurement was named as such: Total Audience Measurement (Lynch, 2015c). Portions of that system have been released to entertainment industry clients, including measurement of television programs watched out-of-home as well as on VOD, SVOD, and connected devices (Lieberman,

2017d, Lieberman, 2017c, and Lynch, 2017, describe some of these data sets). Other entertainment data providers have helped to pick up the rest of the ecosystem, like Adobe

Analytics/Omniture, Rentrak/ComScore, and ListenFirst, amongst many others (Steinberg,

2015b, explains ComScore’s acquisition of Rentrak and issues of measurement). While The CW never developed these measurement systems on its own, the need for new ways to measure new forms of networks underscores the unique qualities of the network’s viewership patterns, prefacing measurement techniques virtually all linear networks would be monetizing by 2017.

Further, The CW and its parent companies have gotten better at monetizing this alternative viewership from an advertising sales perspective, realizing that investing in the infrastructure to build and manage the network’s own OTT apps could drive viewers away from platforms that either provided no ongoing advertising revenue or only a small portion of what the network was due. The difference is that The CW provides all its programming for free, with no subscription required. Again, this puts the network at the forefront of viewership trends. No other broadcast network has taken all its in-season content off of subscription VOD services in favor of its own platforms with no paywall or authentication required (Lynch, 2016c). For example, 215

CBS, which never participated in external SVOD, has its own SVOD service, CBS All Access, but it allows no content to be viewed without a monthly subscription rate. All the other broadcasters, excepting The CW, participate in their joint-owned service, Hulu (Lynch, 2016c;

Spangler, 2017a). What The CW has done is more akin to cable networks, but even amongst them, The CW was still, through 2018, somewhat of a unicorn. For a network to participate in external SVOD services and then decide to pull their content off the platform was virtually unheard of, and it indicates that changes are coming for those external SVOD services, like

Netflix, which are contingent upon the purchase of rights from production companies and networks in order to populate their platforms with content.

Case in point: in the Riverdale example given in chapter 6, when the show returned for its second season in the fall of 2017, its ratings were higher than ever before. This was proof, in the network’s eyes, that the renewal of a show whose season 1 linear ratings were less-than-desirable but with considerable digital interest and the added bonus of exposure via Netflix helped to draw audiences back into the second season of a program that was a standout in an otherwise underwhelming fall 2017 premieres week (O’Connell, 2017a and 2017b; Andreeva, 2017g;

Patten, 2017; Otterson, 2017). Riverdale – the teen-drama version of Archie Comics’ legendary characters – is a prime example of how a network could see increases in linear ratings when a show’s non-linear viewership is allowed to cultivate an audience. Particularly in the crowded teen drama landscape, where The CW is forced to compete with Freeform and other cable networks, one of the network’s primary innovations is allowing for digital and social viewership to impact renewal decisions and subsequently, linear ratings.

Further, The CW instituted changes in the form of its advertising that would foresee similar changes seen in the wider television industry. Chapter 4 introduced the network’s 216 innovative new advertising formats, amongst them the “content wrap” (where an entire ad break was devoted to one advertiser and integrated along with content) and the “cwickie” (quick, 10- second bursts of ad content). At the time, it was unclear whether or not these new formats would make it any easier to break into the coveted youth market, but if the network were able to encourage its younger viewers to watch them, it could improve its fortunes – and its C3 ratings – immensely. While the coverage of these ad creations lessened after the 2007 television season, they continued to air on the network; at least as late as 2017, Riverdale had a content wrap partnership with cosmetics company CoverGirl, starring the show’s cast members as they “got into character” with CoverGirl makeup (Steinberg, 2017b). These changes themselves also preceded other advertising content changes within the television industry, most notably on cable television, which has had to deal with declining CPMs and viewership for much of the last decade, as well. Turner networks proudly initiated Limited Commercial Interruption in truTV and TNT premiere content in mid-2016, using scarcity of ad space to drive up premiums

(Schneider, 2016). Apart from just decreasing ad loads, cable networks have tried other innovations, as well, like AMC, which recently announced that it would start selling even shorter ads than the cwickie – of just 6 seconds – to air just prior to each episode of their #1 hit drama,

The Walking Dead (Steinberg, 2017e). In many ways, The CW’s strategies foresaw the need for advertising to undergo the same changes as content, in order to keep up with shifting patterns of viewership, primarily on the part of younger viewers.

Along with these changes came the ability to further monetize its own content via native

OTT apps and through ad sales of content airing on its own platforms. The most major step, discussed in chapter 6 – removing its content from Hulu, meaning that no in-season programs would have stacked episodes available anywhere but The CW’s own apps and website – sets a 217 precedent for other broadcast and cable networks and production companies who have been selling their content to SVOD services like Hulu for some time. Despite the fact that, with the increased availability of content in the landscape, content providers may argue that they need aftermarket income more than ever before, The CW’s steps set a potentially dangerous precedent for those very SVOD services who have had to increase their license fee payments to content owners for the privilege of hosting that content on their streaming services. If other networks take The CW’s lead – and steps taken by follow in that direction, with their decision to pull all theatrical assets from Netflix – The CW will again have led the way into wider changes in the television industry (see Garcia, 2017, on Disney’s plans).

In addition, the network carried over from The WB a revenue stream that other networks had yet to implement in wide scale – the use of reverse compensation, as discussed in chapter 3, requiring affiliates to pay the national network to participate and air network content (Stelter,

2011). The WB had been able to institute this radical departure from typical affiliate relations because independent networks, those unaffiliated with any major network, were clamoring for content, and the prevailing feeling was that having any content from a national network (even a low-rated one) was better than trying to program an entire reportable day on one’s own. The WB required that these affiliates paid them a fee for the privilege of carrying WB content in primetime and whenever else the national network was programming. The CW, meant to take the best of both predecessor networks, inherited this model and continues to use it to this day. The impacts of a national network like The CW requesting reverse compensation payments reverberates throughout the television ecosystem; when affiliates have to pay for national network content, they also have to gain revenue from alternate streams. Often, this has meant that major station owner groups, like Tribune, have chosen for their affiliates to collect 218 retransmission consent payments from MVPDs (cable operators) carrying their content, in the attempt to make up for this loss of revenue to their stations (Lafayette, 2016). MVPDs, subsequently, are forced to pay affiliates a fee per subscriber in order to carry those stations’ signals on their headends, but means that stations have given up their right to must-carry in those markets; thus, if no deal is made between stations and the MVPDs serving that station’s region, locations may go without that network on their cable systems in the event that negotiations end poorly (“Cable Carriage of Broadcast Stations”). In fact, this was one of the key issues in The

CW’s 2016 renegotiations with the Tribune station group, its most important affiliate owner, as the network’s reverse compensation fees were expected to outstrip the amount of money brought into affiliates by MVPDs through retransmission consent payments (Steinberg, 2016b). In the end, The CW found a way to make a deal with Tribune, extending the network’s linear life for the next few years, but the impact of what may seem like a minor structural change has had reverberating impacts throughout the television ecosystem (Stelter, 2011, for instance, discusses this change amongst the Big 4 broadcasters).

Finally, a structural change in programming that positively impacted monetization of The

CW was the closely intertwined synergy between the network and parent company Warner Bros.

The CW’s schedule was not only anchored by Arrow and then by later DC adaptations like The

Flash and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, but the network even developed its most recent brand campaigns around the shows’ successes. In a way, The CW has become the de facto superhero network it explicitly said it would not become in 2015, and it is all due to the network’s relationship with Warner Bros. More specifically, many of the network’s shows live in the same televisual universe, making it easier for characters to cross-pollinate other storylines and for crew and writers to overlap. Further, all of the adaptations that exist in the Arrowverse film in nearby 219 locations in Vancouver, so the programs are physically close, and sharing Warner Bros. facilities. In fact, by 2015, The CW was already so closely connected to DC content that Mark

Pedowitz remarked, at a Television Critics Association press tour that year, that the network was not going to go through with any other spin-offs of Arrow and its universe (Villarreal, 2015). In practice, this is not what happened; today, The CW hosts Arrow, The Flash, DC’s Legends of

Tomorrow, Supergirl, and is gearing up to premiere Black Lightning. Other comic book material currently airing on the network is iZombie (Vertigo, a DC imprint) and Riverdale (Archie

Comics). It is also relevant to remember that The CW only programs 10 hours per week, and does not premiere scripted content outside its regular October-to-May television season. All of these shows, subsequently, are airing at the same time, with effectively half of the time in any given week devoted to some form of comic book content. While other broadcast networks have had shows with multiple spinoffs airing in premieres simultaneously (e.g., CBS with the CSI and

NCIS franchises; NBC with the Law & Order franchise), none of these narrative-world franchises has been as pervasive on the schedule as The CW has been with its comic book programs, if only because those networks programmed a traditional three-hour prime block on weekdays. Further, the percent of scheduled airtime given to comic adaptations on The CW is much higher than that other broadcasters, and while other networks have had integrations and tie-ins with cross-platform, and sometimes even transmedia, stories before (as in

Disney/Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and ), those programs have not become tentpoles around which the entire network has established its brand identity22. As a result, The

22 See Jenkins, 2008, for a more in-depth discussion of transmedia storytelling, which broadly takes a media universe and engrosses a viewer across media, allowing viewers to interact with the stories and characters in many varied ways. In this respect, the Arrowverse shows are partially transmedia in orient; a better example of a truly transmedia experience in modern TV franchises is Mr. Robot (2015-present, USA Network), with fully developed alternative 220

CW’s schedule is reliant on Warner Bros. in a way that it is not reliant on CBS, and its subsistence on WB’s owned IP throughout the schedule substantially differentiates the network from other broadcasters.

Limitations of this Study

Ostensibly the largest limitation of this study is the lack of granular financial data available on The CW and the way it is funded by its parent companies. Since the network is a

50/50 partnership, neither parent company takes responsibility for reporting the network’s value, revenue, or debts; even if one company did report the network in its bottom-line financial statements, the data would be far too granular to be included in 10-Ks and other publicly available data. As a result, with the exception of syndicated data sources like SNL Kagan, there is not a concrete way to know the network’s real expenses through data available to the public.

In addition, this study was conducted using primarily secondary source materials, including trade industry reporting and local/national press coverage of the network. This gives a broad overview of the network and the way it was received by the wider television industry, but it does not provide the ability to know, with specificity, exactly why the network and its executives at any given point in time made the decisions they did. As a history, subsequently, this project can only ascribe to collect and analyze the broader aspects of The CW’s life as a network; it cannot speak for those executives and industry professionals for whom The CW is their livelihood.

Moreover, this study of the network is concerned in large part with the history of one of the two parent networks that keeps The CW alive – Time Warner and its Warner Bros.

storyworlds via marketing and digital platforms which allow users to become fully engrossed in the show’s world in their day-to-day experiences. 221

Entertainment Group business unit. This study cannot account for all events and occurrences at

Time Warner that have helped to make The CW what it is today, but the company’s history is well documented in the popular press, and this project is designed to add CW-specific details to the canon of business history. These are the challenges of writing recent history, with a network that is in constant evolution and a parent company on the brink of acquisition by the largest telecommunications company in the world. What will happen to The CW in just a few short months after this project is completed, when it is anticipated the AT&T deal will close, is anyone’s guess, but this study serves to provide a snapshot in time of public and industry perception of the network’s first decade and maturation as a brand.

Areas for Future Study

In terms of areas for future study, a full-fledged study of a network like The CW is a reminder that there are networks in more or less similar positions across the television universe.

This history begs the study of five specific network types that have influenced and been influenced by the changing state of the media industry in present years.

The first of these network groups is The CW’s own: networks of mixed corporate parentage. These are the co-venture networks, the networks whose financials are never made publicly available and are not the sole focus of any one media institution’s business. These are networks like A&E Networks, like the aforementioned A&E as well as History and Lifetime, among others, with 50-50 ownership from Disney and Hearst; networks like UPN, whose ownership changed several times over a relatively short life span, and may have contributed to its sudden death; and even a network like BBC America, whose namesake gave up its leadership stake in the network and no longer runs it (see Flint, 2012a, on A&E’s ownership; Steel, 2014, 222 and Lieberman, 2014, on AMC Networks’ 49.9% acquisition of BBC America). Comedy

Central’s relationship with Viacom and Time Warner as well as Court TV’s relationships with

Liberty Media, NBC, and Time Warner would all merit discussion amongst networks of these business structures, as well (Vries, 2003, on Comedy Central; Karnitschnig, 2006, on Court TV).

These are the networks whose parent companies have had to change with the times, and sometimes that means that some brands get left out of the new direction. Often, because of ownership, these networks become peripheral not just to one parent company, but as shown throughout The CW’s lifetime, are sometimes not wholly important to either company. These are extremely valuable brands to study, because while they are not, in most cases, the biggest drivers of ratings and advertising dollars, they are often allowed more innovative approaches to the industry due to their peripheral status and low fiscal risk.

The second type of network that merits further study is one that has undergone a substantial rebrand, much like The CW did in 2006 and again in 2014. These are networks whose parent companies, for some reason or other, have decided that the network would be best suited with a different identity. Sometimes, this entails a name change, and a whole new type of network is created by the transition. Networks like Spike and truTV have been rebranded, in part or in sum, several times throughout their existence, the former from a general entertainment network to a men’s network and back, the latter from true crime to a general reality network and most recently, to a comedy network (see Stanley, 2017, on Spike; O’Connell, 2014, on truTV).

Even more networks have gone through rebrands that saw little change in content, but provided viewers with a new name and brand strategy (Freeform) and vice versa, like Oxygen’s transition from a women’s entertainment/reality network to a female-focused (see

Poggi, 2015b on Freeform; Goldberg, 2017, on Oxygen). 223

Established networks have not been alone in their pursuit of new viewers, though, and success in ratings numbers has not always meant the development of a cohesive brand strategy or the maintenance of those viewers in the face of alternative viewing platforms. Subsequently, general entertainment and movie networks that have been forced to drill down their viewership into the more specific demographics initially the goal of The CW’s Dawn Ostroff are also worthy of study. For the same reasons that cable networks have always been considered more niche in outlook, networks that had previously skated by on the laurels of expensive syndicated broadcast acquisitions with a short shelf-life have been forced to start spending their millions on the creation of original scripted content that can compete in the industry at large and sell in the international space. These are large general entertainment networks like TBS and TNT, which have typically acted as a duo, rebranding into two edgier sides of the same coin, comedy and drama, respectively (Andreeva, 2015b). These are movie networks like AMC, IFC, and

Sundance, which have all had to start acquiring non-film content, including originals; AMC, with its , Walking Dead, and Mad Men, has become a main competitor for the original quality-drama ad-supported network, FX (Lynch, 2015a). IFC has successfully developed its own half-hour scripted comedies (e.g., Brockmire), and Sundance has invested in scripted content both in the originals space () and from an acquisition perspective (Transparent from Amazon Prime; for more on IFC, see Littleton, 2016b; Marechal, 2013a, on Sundance’s foray into original content; Gilbert, 2017, on Transparent).

As is the case in most industries, though, some networks didn’t survive the struggles they faced, regardless of their brand or content. These are networks whose value is in recording a history of business failure, networks like The CW’s parents UPN and The WB. More recently, these include networks like Pivot, whose Millennial focus never took off, and Esquire Network, 224 whose parent stopped packaging it with the portfolio of Universal Cable properties it sold to

MVPDs (Rainey, 2016, on Pivot; Holloway, 2017 and 2016, on Esquire). Esquire could not survive the fallout of losing carriage in millions of homes, and it was evident that its parent company lost faith in its brand, making it the most recent of the newer branded networks to be eliminated.

The final type of network that merits study given the climate of the current media industry is the new network, often a secondary brand, entering the television landscape for the first time. Today, these networks consist of internet media brands entering the space with the help of seasoned legacy media organizations (like VICELAND; see Collins, 2016a) and networks that have been formulated out of the ashes of completely different networks (like FXX and FXM at FX Networks and FYI at A&E Networks; see Elliott, 2013, on FXX; and Goldberg,

2013, on FYI). These new networks have been born into a contentious media space that is ever- changing, and without the brand capital to put behind their names, have not yet reached a wide viewer base. Like The CW, which had to start from scratch with a new name, logo, and identity, these new little networks have had to struggle to differentiate themselves amongst the sea of TV clutter. Whether they will be allowed to stay on the air long enough to achieve that remains to be seen, but regardless, makes networks of this type worthy of study.

Finally, The CW is unique because it has had to deal with elements of all five of these issues. It has been formed from the ashes of two unprofitable networks and melded into a new shape and style, the like of which was different than the other Big 4 broadcasters with which it was made to compete. It has had to survive in spite of its unique ownership strategy, again, one that its broadcast competitors had not been forced to deal with as nascent programmers. In 10 225 years, the network has even undergone a substantial rebrand, away from Ostroff’s 18-34 females in favor of Pedowitz’s broader, more inclusive audience base.

The Lasting Legacy of America’s Least-Watched Broadcast Network

In sum, two elements can best describe the lasting legacy of America’s least-watched

English-language broadcast network, one decade since it began: social viewing and superheroes.

Until other networks began to embrace alternative viewing platforms – which, arguably, The CW always did, in some way, shape, or form – it appeared to many television critics that the reasons for The CW’s continued existence were futile. Further, until Disney’s use of Marvel content across its film and television empire spurred new leadership at Warner Bros. Entertainment

Group to get DC Entertainment properties into use across Time Warner, The CW’s superhero television might have become more of a one-off in the schedule rather than the creation of a fully-fledged Justice League network.

The first of these, social viewing, has meant that the network has not only cultivated a following of viewers who have endeared themselves towards The CW’s brand of young-adult- flavored content, but also a core audience of fans, who will turn to the network in future because they enjoy the network’s current programming. This goes hand-in-hand with digital and non- linear viewership, actively encouraging these fans to watch the network’s programming anywhere they so desire, whether that be on the network’s own apps, website, or connected devices when programs are in-season, or on Netflix to catch up on prior seasons of content. By assisting viewers in locating the brand wherever they live, The CW has remained a relevant brand, one that has preempted other networks in its competitive set in terms of viewers’ access to 226 and the monetization of content. This is one element for which the network will be remembered, regardless of how long it remains a linear television network.

In addition, the network’s programming legacy, as an extension of The WB Television

Network, is best summed up as the title of this paper – “teen queens and adrenaline dreams.”

This is the network that has successfully transitioned itself from teen-queen drama like Gilmore

Girls and Gossip Girl, and from family-friendly wholesome dramas like Everwood and 7th

Heaven. More specifically, The CW’s recent turn into superhero programming has solidified it as an arbiter of fan-friendly content with a deep adrenaline streak. The transition from shows about rich girls and their social lives to male-driven dramas with superpowers and fight sequences has been one of the more drastic rebrands in television in the past decade. Still, regardless of the change in programming content, The CW remains a destination for youthful content, making its superheroes appealing to many of the same viewers who may have originally come to the network for The Vampire Diaries or Jane the Virgin. This is the second element for which The

CW will be remembered in the wider television landscape.

This history of the network has attempted to address that fundamental question, arguing that there is actually a rationale behind the network, one that allows it to stray away from focusing on the linear ratings that other networks of its ilk are so dependent upon. The network’s purpose, subsequently, transcends just the ten hours of linear programming on its air from 8-

10pm, Mondays through Fridays. The purpose of The CW, as it stands, is two-fold: 1) the network exists to provide a first-run outlet for Warner Bros. TV and CBS Television Studios content in the event that those production studios do not want to sell their content to outside networks and 2) to search for younger audiences in a multi-platform way with content and a network that provides little financial risk for either corporate parent. The entire network, in a 227 way, is not a ratings play; rather, it is a way for cheaply produced Warner and CBS content to air so that it can be sold for greater amounts of money in syndication. Now, perhaps more than ever before, the way the network requests that its viewers “dare to defy” their own worlds in favor of

The CW’s reflects the changing state of the crowded televisual landscape. From broadcast to cable to streaming services, viewers will watch television content wherever and whenever they see fit. This study shows that The CW, with its emphasis on viewers’ social interaction with and digital viewership of its programs, is more ready to compete in this TV climate than many traditional networks. Because of its investment in its own non-linear viewership, with the help of the innovations allowed to it due to its minimal financial risk, The CW is perhaps as Pedowitz says: ready to “be around for a hell of a long time.”

228

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VITA

Anna Aupperle Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications 115 Carnegie Building University Park, PA 16802

EDUCATION Ph.D., Mass Communications Expected May 2018 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA Advisor: Matthew P. McAllister

M.A., Broadcasting, Telecommunications & Mass Media May 2014 Temple University, Philadelphia, PA Thesis: “From ‘Teenage Dream’ to Collective Reality: Participatory Online Fandom Communities, Social Activism, and the Media Spectacle” Advisor: Jan Fernback

B.A., Broadcasting, Telecommunications & Mass Media May 2011 Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

Editorial Assistant Jan. 2015-Feb. 2017 American Journalism: A Journal of Media History, State College, PA

Teaching Assistant Aug. 2014-May 2016 The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA  COMM 168 – “American Journalism,” 3 semesters  COMM 403 – “Mass Communications Law,” 1 semester

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Sr. Analyst, Program Research Jan. 2018-present USA Network, NBCUniversal, New York, NY

Research Analyst, Programming Research Jul. 2016-Dec. 2017 truTV, Turner, New York, NY