As the CW Turns 20, the Once YA-Focused Network Takes a Look at the Road Ahead

On a recent Saturday night, the CW found itself in an unusual position: Beating ABC and CBS in total viewers. Credit goes to their coverage of college football, as its Aug. 29 broadcast of a surprisingly competitive matchup between Florida State and New Mexico State averaged 2.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched sports broadcast in network history.

Granted, the CW has only been in the sports business for three years. But it was a reminder that, as the network marks its 20th anniversary this month, the broadcast network is admittedly in quite a different place than it was even a few years ago.

And that’s by design: Under new owner Nexstar, which took over the CW in 2022, the network has undergone a rather dramatic transformation. While previous co-owners Warner Bros. and CBS utilized the CW as a place to program young adult dramas from its respective studios, Nexstar has aimed to broaden out the CW to focus on low-cost procedural drama acquisitions, repeatable unscripted fare and live sports that it feels better suits its stations’ needs.

Coincidentally, the final scripted holdover from the previous CW ownership, “All American,” wrapped its run with a series finale on Sept. 28.

“I always greatly respected what Warner Bros. and CBS were doing with the CW and the brand they built,” says CW president Brad Schwartz. “But it was very clear when we took over that was probably not the type of business that could survive in the future. Our job was to create a network that the local stations can be successful with.

“And that meant, how do we disrupt ourselves and move forward from this young adult scripted brand that was built over years and certainly was defined?” he continues. “Broadcast TV continues to be the greatest platform for bringing the most amount of people together simultaneously. And the product that is the best for doing that is sports. And so, if we were going to evolve the network, get the network to profitability, then moving into sports certainly became a very important strategy.”

In building CW Sports, the network started with LIV Golf and then brought in Atlantic Coast Conference college football (joined later by deals with the Mountain West and Pac-12 conferences). The CW also has Professional Bowlers Assn. coverage, AVP beach volleyball and has signed a seven-year deal with NASCAR to air its O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, which consists of 33 races annually.

According to NASCAR chief media and revenue officer exec vice president Brian Herbst, the O’Reilly series saw a 6% increase in viewership this year on the CW, on top of a 9% bump the previous year.

“Every meeting that we had with the CW/Nexstar folks, it seemed like they were going to be aggressive in building out their content and programming plan,” Herbst says. “And one of the anchor properties that they were betting on was NASCAR. We thought the distribution strategy was great in terms of a free-to-air broadcast network across all 120 million-plus TV homes, as well as a marketing strategy at the Nexstar local station group level … We’re super happy with the results for the first couple of years, and we expect continued growth out of it for the balance of the term.”

Meanwhile, the CW reunited with the WWE (which was part of the network’s initial 2006 launch with “Smackdown”) in 2024 with “WWE NXT,” which airs live on Tuesdays.

“Brad and his team are always finding fresh, creative ways to engage our core audience and reach new fans, all while staying true to the NXT brand,” says Shawn Michaels, senior VP of talent development creative at WWE.

Schwartz says all of that adds up to 700 hours of live sports this year, up from zero just a few years ago.

“The old CW used to just program two hours a night, seven nights a week,” he says. “We’re going to do over 1,250 hours of programming this year. Nearly half of that is now live sports.”

Nexstar networks president Sean Compton adds that the company has calibrated the CW’s focus “as a program provider for affiliates. Properties like NASCAR, college football, basketball and WWE [pull] significant numbers of viewers to our stations, and that audience flow strengthens the entire local brand of those stations. That’s the outcome that matters to us the most being a company that owns a lot of local TV stations.”

On the unscripted front, the CW has invested in repeatable franchises like the cop docuseries “Police 24/7,” as well as game shows like “Scrabble” (hosted by Craig Ferguson) and “Trivial Pursuit” (hosted by LeVar Burton). All three of those shows have been given large episodic orders so that they can be sold into daytime syndication, including on Nexstar stations.

“While the syndication market’s gotten very thin, we’ve built those shows for our primetime audiences while complementing the off-net need for our stations, whether it’s daytime or in fringe time slots,” Compton says. “They debuted this fall in syndication with 94% clearance across the U.S. It’s a theme that we’re less reliant on major studios.”

As “All American” ends, the CW continues to focus on acquisitions — particularly from Canada — to fill its scripted needs. That includes “Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent,” from Lark Prods., Cameron Pictures, Universal Global TV and Citytv; “Wild Cards,” from Blink49 Studios, Front Street Pictures and Piller/Segan, commissioned for CBC; “Sullivan’s Crossing,” from Reel World Management, CTV and Fremantle; and next up, “Private Eyes West Coast,” from Lionsgate Canada, Piller/ Segan and commissioned for Corus Entertainment in Canada.

Lionsgate Television Group chair Kevin Beggs notes that Schwartz did something similar at Pop TV, where he programmed Canadian import “Schitt’s Creek,” which went on to be a critical and awards hit.

“They all kind of knew at the CW that they have to reshape the model, and we are happy to be a supplier of that model,” Beggs says. “It’s not for every show, but for a really smart, efficiently produced drama or game show, it makes all the sense in the world — if we can figure out how to budget it correctly and keep the quality at a high level, which is really one of Brad’s skills. That’s how you have a small-budgeted show like ‘Schitt’s Creek’ relative for what he was paying, garner multiple Emmys and become the ‘it’ show of the year. It’s the dream. Everyone says, ‘Well, I want that.’ That’s what he’s doing there, and we’re excited to be part of it.”

The CW’s new crop of dramas runs a bit more procedural, and skews broader than the young adult fare that most viewers remember from the network’s first 20 years. But Schwartz notes that the legacy of the CW’s YA fare lives on elsewhere, such as Netflix’s “Wednesday” and Prime Video’s “Sterling Point,” “Off Campus” and “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”

“Those all are shows that would be classic CW shows,” he says. “But it was just very clear if you were going to build this business forward and make it profitable, that you had to change it.”