“We believed that there was an unserved audience who wanted to see themselves on the screen, whether it be a digital screen or a TV - they just wanted to see themselves,” says Pedowitz. For the 2021-22 season, two thirds of showrunners, writers and directors are women or people of color, and more than half of its series regular actors are people of color. Pedowitz’s tenure has also seen The CW commit to diversity and inclusion on a higher level than many of its competitors. “We are hoping to see that bounce when we premiere Walker later this month and Superman & Lois next year for their second seasons. “They don’t have the same reach yet as Netflix does, but we saw some very promising things just recently on the digital play over there with Superman & Lois and Walker, Kung Fu and Stargirl,” Pedowitz says of HBO Max. Sports drama All American (2018-present). The network ended that deal in 2019, and while shows that fell under the prior pact, like The Flash, still stream on Netflix after their seasons finish, newer series are housed at WarnerMedia’s HBO Max - and, crucially, The CW now has full seasons of newer series, including Walker and Superman & Lois, on its in-house free streaming platform, rather than only the five most recent episodes. That led to a “Netflix bump” for eventual shows like Archie Comics soap Riverdale and football drama All American, which saw their audiences grow in the seasons following their first time on the streamer. The network similarly made a groundbreaking deal to stream its series on Netflix in 2011, putting its shows in front of millions of Netflix users. It entered the streaming world the following year with the launch of CW Seed, a digital studio that eventually became part of the network’s full-fledged streaming offering. When former ABC Studios head Pedowitz joined The CW in 2011, the network had transitioned to having mostly homegrown series as opposed to holdovers from its predecessors (though it was a year away from the premiere of Arrow, the launchpad for its interconnected DC universe). We really had to scramble to get everything ready when we presented for the first time to the advertisers and the affiliates.” What that did is it put us behind the eight ball. The sense of surprise is always a good thing when you announce something as big as this. “They didn’t want anybody to announce it until after NATPE. “It was very secret as they were trying to build this new network,” says Haskins, who’s now streaming president and chief branding officer at the network. Rick Haskins has been with The CW from day one and recalls some early growing pains in the weeks after the merger of UPN and The WB was announced in January 2006 at that year’s NATPE (National Association of Television Program Executives) convention. “So the creation of the CW app, the creation of the second app, CW Seed, the combining of these apps to make it have more girth, have all led us to interesting places.” “We understood that the audience that we were playing to was moving quickly into a digital social media world, and that the key to, despite what everyone else thought, was that we wanted to hit them no matter where they were, we wanted to engage them no matter where they were and we wanted to be there in a place where they knew that they could come to us,” says CW chairman and CEO Mark Pedowitz of the network’s younger-oriented viewership. 'Batwoman' Trio Lands 'Gotham Knights' Drama at The CW Entertainment.įifteen years and several sea changes in the television landscape later, The CW is still a broadcast network, though its stewards would prefer it to be called a “multiplatform network.” It has weathered the rapidly transforming landscape by adding digital platforms and committing to on- and offscreen diversity - and has even added nights of programming in the past few years, becoming a seven-night network for the first time this season with the addition of Saturday programming. When The CW was announced in January 2006, the idea was to take the two smallest broadcast networks (UPN and The WB) and combine them into one less-small network with the backing of two media titans, UPN owner CBS and WB namesake Warner Bros.
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