The only shows I watch on CW are:
Smallville
Supernatural
Vampire Diaries
Melrose place
You do realize, I hope, that that is
more than half of its offerings.
Regardless, I believe this is a bad decade to launch an over-the-air television network. The value of the American viewer's eyes is on the brink of the precipice -- indeed, it probably has already begun to plummet, and so there simply isn't a strong case to be made for investing much to bring more television entertainment to the over-the-air audience. There is a big question-mark hanging out there, now, as to whether the over-the-air audience warrants the amount of resources devoted towards producing entertainment for it, as things are
now.
I think the
smartest move for CW is to milk its long-standing properties (like Smallville and Supernatural) as long as they can, and try to prep its newer properties (like Vampire Diaries) for a jump to either CBS or TNT, aiming to use CW as a proving ground for some sort of "reverse commute", i.e., television series
starting on subscription services (Showtime, from the "C" side of CW; HBO, TNT, TBS, etc., from the "W" side of CW) and then showing up a year or two later, on CW). They can sprinkle the schedule with some previous-years CBS shows, as well -- many of them do great in syndication, so why not syndicate to an established national network like CW, first, keeping those profits in the family?
One thing though: If they do that, they could find themselves, eventually, relegated to the same treatment as independent stations in the market. It is important to remember that satellite and cable service providers are
not required to treat all local channels the same, in terms of how they are provided on the service: The service providers must present all of the local channels that invoke Must-Carry
unencrypted, but the FCC has determined that they
can present any of them
downconverted (
without that being considered material degradation). We can assume that service providers will stick with full HD presentations of the major networks, as well as the independents that present major local sports team games. For other local stations, it is a distinct possibility that they'll be relegated to downconverted-only service, and that could have a major negative impact on the viewership for such channels. So perhaps they need to keep these few original series, even if they're lame, even if they're not getting big audiences, just to keep the bandwidth allocation on satellite and cable services, which in turn helps keep their ratings for all their programming higher than it would be otherwise.
The Smallville show has really gone as far as it can go without becoming the full Superman show. I mean Smallville was where teenage Clark Kent lived before he became Superman. This show has spent close to a decade in this small town. It is time to either change the title or end the show.
With respect, that's ridiculous. Nothing can be more ill-advised than changing the title of a series mid-stride. The title of the series is the title of the series,
even if the series evolves over time such that the title no longer fits as well. As long as people are still watching Smallville, it would be silly for CW to give up on it, on what?
Lexicographical Purity grounds? :tux:
Vampire diaries has potential , but it is really just a Twilight/Dark Shadows rip off of a show.
Dark Shadows? Really? I cannot agree with that. And, of course, the Vampire Diaries books predate the Twilight booms by a decade, so questions about which came first are simply academic. As it is, there is no Twilight
television series, so there is
no "rip off" factor, anyway.
