The Rise (And Fall) Of The CW
gamerant.comMassacre. Bloodbath. Slaughter. These are the words that Screenwriting Twitter used to describe the wave of cancellations on The CW. It was an unprecedented move for the network, which has a sixteen-year history of renewing shows without regard to relevance or ratings—sustaining series even after they were forgotten by viewers.
Speculation has already begun about what will replace The CW’s original, scripted shows, but there can be no doubt that the raft of cancellations effectively marks the end of an era for network television’s ugly stepsibling. As critics and commentators peer forward into the future of CW programming, however, it is also worth taking a look back—to reflect upon what made The CW, for a brief, glorious period, the belle of the ball.
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The CW is a network built on teens. Seven shows migrated to The CW when it was rebranded from The WB in 2006; of the six scripted shows, four focused on teenaged protagonists—Gilmore Girls,One Tree Hill, Smallville, and Supernatural. These four shows may not have wholly predicted the future of The CW, but they certainly sketched the trajectory of its tentpole programming: supernatural premises, young characters.
Even when adults appeared in CW shows, they usually had a certain look—if the characters did not always skew young, the audiences did, and the network catered to teen fantasies with parental figures who looked less like viewers’ own moms and more like ‘Stacy’s Mom’. The emergence of Gossip Girl as a pop culture phenomenon inverted the formula that had dictated The WB’s programming: instead of a grownup show that parents could watch with their teens, it was a teen show that also appealed to
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