The Craziness of the CW’s Schedule has Actually Just Begun

Once the pandemic hit, the CW started acting strange with its schedule. It wasn’t that unexpected that there would be changes as a result. But this network was weirder than others. It didn’t cut a lot of the show’s episodes’ counts to a logical lower number the first time around. The next season after that, it cut back a lot of the episode count and now stood the chance of regaining normalcy. But then there was the fact that this network was for sale. And a whole lot of shows were cancelled that never would have been before. Which leads us to this season.

 

With the CW network under new ownership, the vast majority of its shows are still owned by either CBS or the WB. But they have just 12.5% of the network now each with Nexstar owning the other 75%. They can carry these shows longer than just this one season, but it is unknown how much they will or if they will do any at all. It is known that The Flash and Riverdale will be ending.

 

The shows that could have a better chance of survival are the third season shows of Superman and Lois, Kung Fu, Stargirl, and Walker. What I do not yet know is who owns what and how much Nexstar owns of anything. It seems that two of the notable new CW shows are spin-offs (Walker: Independence and The Winchesters). One is a foreign import (Family Law). And the only new fall show that isn’t either of those last two is Professionals.

 

While a lot can change at midseason, it seems weird that only one new show might be on at least at the fall that Nexstar owns. Plus, you do have to wonder if they would keep lower rated shows that they own over higher rated shows from the WB or CBS. What’s weird and this might just depend on the news sources that I keep track of is just how little press coverage this has gotten so far. The CW was for sale and I’ve never heard people talk about it outside of one source.

 

There is a thing that happens at times where some networks effectively do a throw the bums out thing. This has largely in my mind only happened with sitcoms and even then, only rarely outside of the one network that just kept doing it over and over again. But I can’t remember much about this thread. Will we have a phased out way of getting rid of all of the old shows on the network? There is no way that they would get rid of all of them at once and start with brand new shows next season outside of what they could take over from this season. Or, at least, that’s what I think.

 

So while the scheduling of the shows may be going back to normal or already back that way, we may never see shows last long that aren’t owned by Nexstar in the future until nothing from the WB or CBS is left on that network. And that is how the network’s craziness has just begun.