Upfront Dispatches: The CW Stands Alone
After four days of hype, sizzle reels, data and an unexpected abundance of celebrity profanity, there’s not much left to be said about the 2022 upfront presentations. So, it felt more than fitting that things wrapped up on Thursday morning with a sales pitch from a single broadcast network that’s up for sale itself.
The CW made its return for media buyers in a deeply traditional 60-minute presentation that offered up a performance from Stevie Wonder, polite banter from talent and trailers for four upcoming shows. It was virtually unrecognizable from the spectacles from massive media institutions who filled the previous three days. “We are going to keep things pretty simple,” said Rob Tuck, EVP of national sales, to a noticeably engaged crowd at Midtown Manhattan’s New York City Center, “by only talking about one network … The CW.”
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Not only are The CW’s corporate parents exploring a sale — the network is joint venture by Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery, two different companies that no longer stand to benefit much from partial ownership — the network is coming off of its biggest wave of cancellations in its 15-year history. (A whopping 10 series got the ax, nearly half of its roster of scripted originals.) Obviously, none of this came up. It was business as usual, and not just because all of he new shows being proffered are a tied to familiar network IP.
“Our brand continues to be recognized for its strong appeal to diverse audiences and our influence in pop culture,” said CEO Marc Pedowitz, who plugged two prequels (Walker: Independence and Supernatural origin series The Winchesters), a spinoff (Nancy Drew tie-in Tom Swift) and yet another glug from the seemingly bottomless DC Comics pitcher, Gotham Knights. “This is what we will continue to do.”
As long as advertisers let them, of course.
It was almost quaint — and not just because the most marquee talent (excluding Mr. Wonder) to take the stage (Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins) were the stars of a series that started on the long-dead WB Network, aired for 15 seasons and only ended in 2020. The three Supernatural actors, now producing and acting on various other CW projects, tried to sell Pedowitz on one-off revivals for their late series — each of which he politicly rebuffed. (In reality, if the three agreed to reprise the characters together, the programming exec would say yes to any number of horrible pitches.)
Pedowitz went on to go through The CW’s fall schedule, night-by-night, hour-by-hour. He listed off the summer’s offerings and continued to emphasize the network’s free and entirely ad-supported streaming app. He trotted out Riverdale star KJ Apa, who earlier this week learned their series’ upcoming seventh season would be indeed be its last. (Apa also lost a gig in the abrupt cancelation of HBO Max movie Wonder Twins, so it’s been a rough one.) And, in the very end, all network talent that had assembled for the event joined him on stage.
It felt like a goodbye. Sure, The CW will probably live to host another upfront. But such events will shrink alongside its slate of originals and its position in the marketplace — not that it’s the network’s fault. This year’s upfronts cemented the fact that legacy media corporations in the TV business — Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount — no longer place priority on any one TV channel or sub-brand. They are, however, more than happy to exploit their former flagships’ longstanding rapport with advertisers to juice their shiny new streaming platforms.
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