Will CW Be a Competitive Network?

James Joyner @ Gone Hollywood | Thursday, May 18, 2006

CNN’s Paul R. La Monica asks, “Can the CW make TV a five horse race?”

Media giants CBS and Time Warner are hoping that one plus one will add up to five. The two companies, who announced in January that they were merging their UPN and WB networks to create a new network called the CW, unveiled the fall schedule for the CW on Thursday at an event in New York.

Despite several hits, neither the UPN nor the WB was able to become more than a niche network catering largely to younger viewers and, in the case of the UPN, an African-American audience. Separately, ratings for the UPN and WB paled in comparison to that of the big four networks: ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. But by taking the best shows from both the UPN and WB to create a new lineup, executives from the CW expressed optimism at the network’s inaugural upfront presentation for advertisers. “Determining this lineup was like playing fantasy football but with TV shows,” said Dawn Ostroff, the CW’s president of entertainment at the upfront event.

The 2006-2007 schedule for the CW includes six popular shows from the old WB and six from the UPN, including “Everybody Hates Chris,” “Veronica Mars,” “Smallville” and “The Gilmore Girls.” Only two new shows will debut on the CW this fall.

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“It looks like they put together a strong lineup. The network should do better together than the UPN and WB did separately,” said Mark Fratrik, vice president with BIA Financial Network, a strategic consulting firm for the media and communications industries.

Well, yeah, running only successful shows should help. After all, if NBC and CBS merged, they’d do better, too. But can’t we just add the ratings of these shows together to compare them to the big networks to guess how they’d do in the short run?

The more important matter is whether they will develop interesting content down the road, once the starter crop of established shows start going off the air. At some point, they’re just a single network with one creative team.

During the presentation, Ostroff also highlighted how viewers will be able to view CW shows and related content through the Web, cell phones and on Apple’s iPod media player. Ostroff added that the CW’s website will feature several interactive and social networking elements catering to the network’s mostly younger audience. She also introduced a concept that the network called “content wraps”: mini-shows that would appear three times a night during commercials that could be sponsored by advertisers and feature product promotion.

Each “content wrap” would tell a story. The example Ostroff gave was of two people going on a blind date.

Ouch, that’s a bad analogy. I suppose it’s better than “like kissing your sister.” But just barely.

One media buyer said that the concept was interesting and that if done effectively could keep viewers from using digital video recorders (DVRs) to fast forward through ads. “The content wraps looked smart. It’s the type of opportunity that marketers want,” said Brad Adgate, senior vice president of corporate research for Horizon Media, a marketing firm. He added that younger viewers in particular may be interested in these types of mini-shows.

Frankly, I’ll be reaching for my remote. And, if they figure out how to put shows on where it’s too hard to distinguish the commercials from the programs, I’ll stop watching the programs. Or wait to get the DVDs on Netflix.

And along those lines, Ostroff said the CW intends to have a “laser-focus” on the 18-34 year old demographic and claimed that it is the only network with such a commitment to this group.

That is a matter of debate, though. On Tuesday, News Corp. (Research) showcased the programs for its new network called MyNetworkTV. MyNetworkTV, like the CW, has agreements with affiliate stations which will allow it to reach more than 90 percent of the country and will be exclusively showing soap operas on a nightly basis that feature mostly young casts and appears to be targeted at exactly the same audience the CW is going after.

I’m am safely outside the target demo; indeed, the only show on either network that I watch now that “Enterprise” is off the air is “Smallville.” Still, I can’t imagine a soap opera network will be much competition for CW.

Will CW Be a Competitive Network?

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