CW was Never a Successful Channel, Yet it Somehow Influenced Movies and Other TV Franchises
For over two decades, the CW and its predecessors catered to younger audiences so well its style and themes influenced other genres, eventually making their way onto the big screen in some of the biggest movies. That is what I and others believed over the past few decades. The only problem is… it’s not true.
The CW (and the WB/UPN before that) reportedly was never profitable. Some of the shows were indeed popular and influential, but the channel as a whole wasn’t. It turns out the CW approach works for a niche audience but not much beyond that.
First, a bit of history: the channel began as UPN in the 90s, a channel only some of us will remember. It would later rename itself the WB before finally becoming the CW in 2006. The early big hits were the teen dramas Dawson’s Creek, The Gilmore Girls and “action” shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, and Smallville. Action is in quotation marks because of the low production budgets and often the action wasn’t really the focus of the shows.
Later came One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries and Supernatural, all popular with younger female audiences and some male audiences as well.
Certainly this demographic is a big contingent in the literary world with YA fantasies often dominating bestseller lists. Sometimes the literary success crossed over to film as well with The Hunger Games and Divergent. At that time, it felt like this genre was becoming the next big thing. Despite the success of a few movies, the trend fizzled out so dramatically, the last movie in the Divergent trilogy was never made.
When it became CW in 2006, it stayed true to this model at first but eventually broadened out its fantasy and superhero shows, cashing in on the popularity of Marvel and DC movies. Arrow, The Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Batwoman, and Roswell premiered in the 2010s.
It was easy to be convinced the channel was a huge ratings and financial success, holding a powerful segment of the audience in what was the biggest genre going at the time: superheroes.
Except, it was never profitable. It was part of a larger entertainment portfolio but was never a revenue-driver on its own and never had that big audience. Despite the heavy coverage from access media, cultural references, and a devoted fan base, it just wasn’t as big as it was made out to be.
The story of CW is evidence that while YA fiction, especially YA speculative fiction is hugely popular and successful in the literary world, it doesn’t necessarily translate to other mediums. It also isn’t a style that can be grafted onto any story to make it into a hit.
Although it sounds cruel to say, it is a relief to learn the broader audience wasn’t consuming this genre of TV in huge amounts. There’s nothing wrong with YA fantasy or providing low-brow escapism and a little wish-fulfillment on TV but it shouldn’t be influencing other genres in the way it has in the past few decades.
There was a time YA fiction meant coming-of-age stories about passing from adolescence into adulthood. Books like Ordinary People and the film Stand by Me are great examples. They featured kids or teenagers who were facing adult situations and profound traumatic events and feelings for the first time. It was anti-escapism. Stories like these were part of curricula in high schools, which obviously means they weren’t there for their entertainment value but were important nonetheless. These stories were, in a way, there to prepare readers and viewers for adulthood.
YA fiction now means anything with teenagers or adults in what are essentially wish-fulfillment stories about Mary Sues getting the attention and adoration they desire. The best—and worst—example is Twilight. The story is nothing more than a shy girl getting everything she wants because she has “special” blood. Not only a beautiful guy but she gets to leave her boring and dull life for one of excitement and danger among vampires and werewolves. Then came the vampire superpowers and a daughter.
Stories like these aren’t meant to prepare you for anything. They are just an escape from reality into a satisfying fantasy.
So why wasn’t CW more popular, or why did it lose money throughout its entire existence? One reason could be that many don’t carry the same tastes and preferences for entertainment into later adulthood. Many have fond memories of the shows from their formative years but they probably didn’t watch any of the new shows as they got older. It is likely there was a big drop off in ratings in the 30+ demographic.
Another possible reason: these shows often downplayed the intense emotional drama of its stories through sarcasm or “snark” as some liked to call it. Other times, it avoided tragic events altogether and instead generated drama through typical social situations in sci-fi/fantasy settings. The melodrama or exaggerated emotions of the characters were appealing at times but turn many away with what seem to be trivial or frivolous problems presented as crises.
CW’s inflated influence is felt in many action franchises that are intended for much wider audiences. Look no farther than the mega-franchises Disney has purchased in the past decade: Marvel and Star Wars.
Imposing CW’s YA style on these classic franchises has proven problematic. Rather than enhance these great stories, they narrowed their appeal and downplayed their strongest aspects. The Disney Star Wars trilogy largely abandons the themes and unique subtlety of the original trilogy to instead follow a Mary Sue on her journey to deconstruct the victories of her predecessors so she can achieve the victory instead and take their name. It is wish fulfillment fantasy storytelling at its worst.
Imagine a child who destroys someone else’s elegant sand castle then build their own and claim they made greatest sand castle on the beach.
Marvel managed to balance the influence of Joss Whedon and others with its winning comic book superhero formula. Unfortunately, this balance was lost in late Phase 3 and Phase 4 (with exceptions like Spider-Man No Way Home). X-Men, a comic book universe with powerful themes of prejudice and persecution became a movie franchise of CGI mega-battles with mutants showing off their cool powers. Each movie spends maybe 5-10 minutes at most on the deeper, much more interesting themes from the comic book or even the cartoon.
On TV, Halo, Rings of Power, and Wheel of Time all exhibited signs of discarding the powerful themes and universal and often timeless appeal of the source material in exchange for spectacle and adolescent wish-fulfillment. Sophisticated and intricate world-building done with a specific narrative purpose was butchered.
Halo the game is about fighting a war against a genocidal alien race but the show spends very little time on the war itself, the suffering of the victims of the war, or the future setting and technology that is all at the heart of the video games. The show spends more time on Mommy and Daddy issues, the protagonist getting in touch with his emotions, his sexuality, while another character rebels against authority by dyeing her hair.
It’s like if you were in high school and fighting a war at the same time. A time to rebel against authority when your race is about to be wiped out. Who wouldn’t like that…
The showrunners of Rings of Power didn’t understand the source material and instead wanted to use up their massive budget on visuals and stealing from Peter Jackson. They wanted to write the characters they wanted, with screen time spent on irrelevant characters like Isildor, his sister and his friends, who all happen to be young and attractive.
Then there’s the attempted shipping of a toxic Galadriel and sexy Sauron, which is exactly what J.R.R. Tolkien would’ve wrote if he had a chance to write a novel set in this age…
Wheel of Time was based on a popular fantasy novel series but the showrunners decided to butcher it to tell a basic teen drama about young adults with emotional issues.
Whether it’s a TV show based on a first-person shooter deciding not to have action, a piece of literary canon dumbed down for teens, or a fantasy favorite turned into 90210 with magic, the intended audience is the CW audience.
All of these franchises already had large existing fan bases, most of them much larger than any CW audience. So why alienate the existing fan base to appeal to a smaller one? It may be because they are convinced the CW audience is the bigger audience. If that were true, CW would’ve been profitable.
There have been great shows on CW but it is not a popular TV channel. Its successes are a credit to the creators and casts of those particular shows but their genre and intended audience are much more niche than Hollywood thinks. The truth is most people didn’t watch and didn’t care about the CW over the past two decades. It is time to stop pretending we did.