I plan on making a thread for every American broadcast network (i.e. ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox), in regards to the worst network decisions (e.g. worst attempts, biggest failures, and inabilities) ever. Since the CW doesn't have as big of a history as the other networks, I'm going to count its past incarnations as UPN and the WB (http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=318234) respectively.

Good cause I have a one that has always bugged me. I hated that they pulled the plug on Everwood and renewed 7th Heaven instead.:mad: Everwood was a much better show imo.

I would add when they moved small ville to Fridays

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ScrewedByTheNetwork/LiveActionTV

The CW rented out the Sunday-night slots for the 2008-09 season to Media Rights Capital. The shows — 4Real, In Harm's Way, Easy Money, and Valentine — scored such terrible ratings that The CW repossessed the timeslot and put in reruns of The Drew Carey Show and Jericho, plus movies. The ratings immediately jumped back to pre rent-a-block levels (although still test-pattern low), and after the season The CW gave up completely on Sundays and gave the time back to their stations.

Valentine was critically-acclaimed, but despite liking the premise nobody tuned in. Why? No advertisement whatsoever.

The CW started screwing over a lot of shows, particularly their half-hour comedies. Everybody Hates Chris and The Game got cancelled. Another show, Aliens In America, despite receiving good reviews and having decent ratings, got the worst treatment by not only being moved to the Sunday slot but never even airing the later episodes. (Needless to say, its ratings were pretty much destroyed. Doesn't help that the Writers Strike caused the last few episodes of its first and only season to never be finished.) While Reaper (a dramedy about a young slacker who must be Satan's bounty hunter) did get the dignity of a second season, it still got screwed over by CW. Like the many other shows they screwed over, Reaper suffered mostly through lack of advertising. Go look at the ratings for each season 2 episode — they plummet, and plummet hard, about halfway through. One cast member later mocked the network's protestations of innocence, saying "They say they're disappointed? We're disappointed!" and points out how the network basically refused to promote the show.

The last seasons of Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars had so much executive meddling from Dawn Ostroff and the other people at UPN who somehow fell upward into the executive suite of the new network that the slam-dunk "Girl Power Tuesday"' dream lineup which had been gushed about by critics and fans at the time of the merger ended up failing miserably. This was due to The CW forcing the shows to hire writers that didn't know anything about either show's canon (certainly not helping was The CW not allowing Amy Sherman-Palladino to continue with Gilmore Girls), insulting the intelligence of their fanbase by hyperfocusing on the lead actors of each show when both programs had been built on ensemble casts, forcing Veronica to abandon the season-wide arcs of the past for "crime of the week" episodes, and finally the "Content Wrap" (an advertising concept created by the network putting a brand front and center in a non-subtle way) deal with American Eagle Outfitters which forced the Aerie Girls onto fanbases that considered them completely against the spirit of both series.

Ironically, one show that CW tried to screw repeatedly and never succeeded in was Smallville. Repeatedly firing and replacing writers, sometimes in between seasons, moving the show from its very popular timeslot on Thursday to Friday for no reason, and cutting the budget of one season in half and giving it to The Vampire Diaries, it was obvious the network (or rather the network's president, who openly despised sci-fi shows and wanted to shill 90210 and Gossip Girl instead) just wanted this show to die. But despite all the changes, Smallville managed to hang onto good ratings and the series ended on its own terms and not on CW's terms.

"Supernatural" received similar treatment, and people involved with the show have begun to publicly state that Dawn Ostroff was out to kill the show. While it stayed on Thursdays and followed "The Vampire Diaries" for a time, the following season it was moved to the Friday Night Death Slot running against "Grimm" and "Fringe". "Supernatural" got the last laugh. The show survived the death sloth and moved to Wednesdays where it was used to launch "Arrow" another dark drama aimed at men. "Supernatural" is currently the third highest rated show on The CW. "90210" and "Gossip Girl" are no longer on the air.

Life Is Wild premiered in a Sunday-night timeslot and was sure to be canceled after the first season. And then it did, as well as Hidden Palms.

Both of them were victims of The CW deciding to throw out The WB's plan to expand their horizons and go into more expensive programming (UPN was infamous for spending as little on their shows as possible). As Life is Wild was shot on location in South Africa, it was screwed from the moment UPN and WB executives walked out together on January 24, 2005.

Despite decent ratings, The Secret Circle was canned by The CW after one season. Apparently, it's not even going to get a DVD release, although the complete series is available for streaming on Netflix.

Though the reason it lost out its spot to Hart Of Dixie came down to cost: Hart of Dixie was much cheaper to produce with similar ratings.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScrewedByTheNetwork

UPN attempted to screw WWE by moving WWE SmackDown! into the famed Friday Night Death Slot (where it would face not only constant pre-emptions for local sports, but the loss of a good portion of its audience to people getting out and doing stuff on Friday nights), in order to try and pressure WWE into keeping Monday Night Raw on Spike TV. However, thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign by WWE (even rebranding the show Friday Night SmackDown!), the show managed not only to not lose any viewers, but gained enough ground that it was one of the few UPN shows picked up by the post-merger CW.

They ultimately wound up screwing them anyway, but it took a few years; when it came time to renew contracts, CBS wasn't interested despite the high ratings. SmackDown moved to the much-less-notable My Network TV, and started beating The CW in ratings by a good margin.

Then it got screwed by Memphis and Des Moines when those cities decided to dump My Network TV after they went to a syndicated model in September 2009, however in both cases the CW affiliate picked SmackDown up for Saturday nights and pretty much got station upgrades otherwise. The rest of the My Network TV schedule was blissfully ignored by both of them.

Sadly, high ratings for wrestling mean NOTHING. Advertisers won't touch it (they believe that it's aimed at the lowest common denominator, and that the viewers won't buy products being advertised; the much-publicized switch to TV-PG doesn't change this), and the only real value is to pump up the network average for prime time. Since UPN and its successors-in-interest are already dead last, and WWE numbers are and were low enough by broadcast standards not to make any difference, they have no compunction about moving/canceling wrestling programming.

The big mistake was handing the merged network to Dawn Ostroff, who ran UPN, who drove it into the ground. It was effectively a takeover of The WB by the less successful UPN.

I think the network is making better decisions ever since her successor Mark Pedowitz took over.

The big mistake was handing the merged network to Dawn Ostroff, who ran UPN, who drove it into the ground. It was effectively a takeover of The WB by the less successful UPN.

I think the network is making better decisions ever since her successor Mark Pedowitz took over.

Dawn Ostroff always struck me as a woman who hated sci-fi or generally male dominated programming. I don't know a lot of what she did over at UPN, but it seemed most like this at the CW. She seemed to want the CW to be I guess, a broadcast TV version of modern day MTV (which panders to young otherwise materialistic girls) or Fox of the early '90s (w/ the new versions of 90210 and Melrose Place).

Not seeing the value in continuing with a seventh season of "Reba", which was the highest rated comedy on the WB network. Apparently they felt that a show with Reba McEntire as the lead was simply going to skew too old. They didn't realize that the majority of the audience that watched REBA were teenagers and people in their 20's.

Not picking up "Charmed" as one of the shows that would air on The CW. "Charmed" was for a time one of the most popular shows on The WB, and not ordering another season of it was a stupid mistake. I think it could have gone another year or two and helped boost ratings for the CW in it's first seasons.


Trying too hard to convince America that "Gossip Girl" was a massive hit, when in reality very few people actually watched.

Picking up too many series that look the same and sound the same, insisting on this stupid idea that every show must have some sort of connection to high school or college, and making the network focus only on young viewers.

Allowing America's Next Top Model to continue to run well past it's peak. This show should have been killed YEARS ago.

Not enough (or any) comedy. Almost every show on The CW is an action drama or girly soap, there are few, if any comedic series on the network.

Turning every show into a Vampire show... too many supernatural/vampire shows! get some originality!

Not seeing the value in continuing with a seventh season of "Reba", which was the highest rated comedy on the WB network. Apparently they felt that a show with Reba McEntire as the lead was simply going to skew too old. They didn't realize that the majority of the audience that watched REBA were teenagers and people in their 20's.

Not picking up "Charmed" as one of the shows that would air on The CW. "Charmed" was for a time one of the most popular shows on The WB, and not ordering another season of it was a stupid mistake. I think it could have gone another year or two and helped boost ratings for the CW in it's first seasons.


Trying too hard to convince America that "Gossip Girl" was a massive hit, when in reality very few people actually watched.

Picking up too many series that look the same and sound the same, insisting on this stupid idea that every show must have some sort of connection to high school or college, and making the network focus only on young viewers.

Allowing America's Next Top Model to continue to run well past it's peak. This show should have been killed YEARS ago.

Not enough (or any) comedy. Almost every show on The CW is an action drama or girly soap, there are few, if any comedic series on the network.

Turning every show into a Vampire show... too many supernatural/vampire shows! get some originality!

The CW seems to never be able to really play to what could be considered the respective strengths of UPN the WB. UPN corned the urban market w/ its sitcoms and was I guess, known more for its sci-fi/action oriented shows. The WB meanwhile, seemed to be more family oriented and otherwise specialized in the "teen angst" market. When the CW came to be and Dawn Ostroff was overseeing it, it seemed like the network became way too niche-oriented. I do agree that I wish that the CW had much more diversity.

The biggest mistake that CW is making is not diversifying its programing they need programing aimed at the 25 and over crowd doesn't have be edgy perhaps an equal mix of edgier shows for late night and moderate programing for primetime.

Their decision to only appeal to teen girls a few seasons ago almost killed them...it worked for maybe the first year or two, but then ABC Family took their audience with Pretty Little Liars and all of that ilk and the network came close to collapsing. They've remedied the situation in the past few years though - adding Arrow, capitalizing on Supernatural's male(r) audience and acquiring the relaunched Whose Line. I actually think the past year has been pretty good for The CW even if they still occasionally dip into catastrophically low ratings - they have a handful of solid players now (Arrow, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries and Originals is looking good so far) and are developing an image beyond "the network a small amount of teen girls watch". I'd like to see them try to dip into comedy again now that they have Whose Line.

About that former WB president, the reason he or she had bad problems dealing more on comedies than dramas is that he or she might have a extremely troubled past life. When you have a troubled past life that means you are more negative on something wrong than positive on doing something right.

I was hoping to see FOX next. There's a network that has made a LOT of mistakes! CW is too small and insignificant to really bother with.

About that former WB president, the reason he or she had bad problems dealing more on comedies than dramas is that he or she might have a extremely troubled past life. When you have a troubled past life that means you are more negative on something wrong than positive on doing something right.

You mean Dawn Ostroff, who oversaw UPN, not the WB prior to the merger? With that being said, I have absolutely no idea where or how you came up w/ that particular comment.

The WB made too many mistakes on its own comedies. Some of them need to be rebooted in a private network during by future.

The WB made too many mistakes on its own comedies. Some of them need to be rebooted in a private network during by future.

Okay, give me so good examples of the type of mistakes that the WB made regarding its sitcoms for me to take this more seriously!?

http://www.entertainmentfuse.com/can-the-cw-survive/

The Birth, the Youth and the Disappointments.
The CW (http://www.tv.com/news/the-cws-upcoming-brand-refresh-5-past-mistakes-the-network-should-learn-from-28971/) was launched in 2006 as the result of the merger between the struggling UPN and WB networks owned by CBS and Warner Brothers respectively. At the time, the obvious goal (for the parent companies) was to combine their forces to obtain better ratings in the teenager and young adult demographic, but there were certainly also high hopes of creating programs that would be a revenue stream for their TV studios (WB) and an asset for their TV stations (CBS). Needless to say, the ratings part never happened, and despite recent improvements (see further down), the jury is still out on the capacity for The CW to deliver on its programs.

Analysts mostly agree that the network’s programming choices are to blame for the latter. Over the years, under the leadership of Dawn Ostroff (http://www.thetvaddict.com/2009/06/17/an-open-letter-to-dawn-ostroff-president-of-entertainment-the-cw/), The CW has turned its back on situation comedies and favored hour-long serialized dramas that have a very faithful (but small) core audience, and do not do well in syndication and repeated viewing in general. What’s more, the network has gradually leaned mostly toward the female half of its initially more mixed young adult audience, further restricting its reach. The Vampire Diaries, which averages a bit more than 3 million viewers per episode so far, is the only primetime show that can boast an “acceptable” audience by broadcast network standard, and even that is a stretch.

Ditching Sundays!

The saving grace to me with CW is "The Flash"...if the CW gets more superhero shows that are hits...then they have saving grace!

Okay, give me so good examples of the type of mistakes that the WB made regarding its sitcoms for me to take this more seriously!?

1.) Popular, Maybe It's Me, Do Over, Greetings From Tucson and Run Of The House were not only discontinued in the wrong time, they were badly messed up in the middle of the series by those stupid despicable TV critics for no reason at all.

2.) Popular was discontinued when Brooke was hit by a car and the condition was never revealed at all.

3.) Maybe It's me was badly messed up and discontinued after Jerry appraised the good news in too in a hurry and erratically before Molly and Ben kissing situation and Becky stole Ben back away from Molly for a no reason at all. They were blaming for Rick messing up, but Jerry was the officially guilty person messing up Molly's prom night.

4.) Do Over had a story to improve the past corrections, but it should not have been discontinued in the wrong time.

5.) The 15-year-old David Tiant character in Greetings From Tucson was poorly made. Actor Pablo Santos, who played David, is a kid with strong 11-year-old personality and he wasn't ready to play that type of David character at all because that character too strong maturely made to match Pablo's immature personality. That is a big bad reason why Pablo had a very hard time to perfect his acting.

6.) Run Of The House has a strong title and it was of course violent. But it should not have been discontinued in the wrong time.

7.) After season 6 ended, both aunts characters were written out, but actress Beth Broderick, who played the eldest aunt Zelda, was badly turned down due to poor talent and was forced to never return to Sabrina Teenage Witch show in the wrong time. Caroline Rhea had strong talent and was never turned down, but she should have return to the series finale of Sabrina together with Beth Broderick at the same time. The Cole character in Sabrina season 7 should have been played by Bryan Kirkwood instead.

8.) Nikki and Off Centre should have transfer to FOX to be safe on their second season renewals.

9.) Simon Rex, who plays Jeff in What I Like About You, should not have left after season one because he and Wesley Johnathan, who plays Gary Thorpe, make a better perfect pair of comedy than the girl characters and actresses.

I'm glad the WB is officially shutdown after there too many bloody brawl fights on all WB comedies.

But in the future, they might reboot these shows in a private network:

Popular, Maybe It's Me, Do Over, Greetings From Tucson and Run Of The House.

1.) Popular, Maybe It's Me, Do Over, Greetings From Tucson and Run Of The House were not only discontinued in the wrong time, they were badly messed up in the middle of the series by those stupid despicable TV critics for no reason at all.

2.) Popular was discontinued when Brooke was hit by a car and the condition was never revealed at all.

3.) Maybe It's me was badly messed up and discontinued after Jerry appraised the good news in too in a hurry and erratically before Molly and Ben kissing situation and Becky stole Ben back away from Molly for a no reason at all. They were blaming for Rick messing up, but Jerry was the officially guilty person messing up Molly's prom night.

4.) Do Over had a story to improve the past corrections, but it should not have been discontinued in the wrong time.

5.) The 15-year-old David Tiant character in Greetings From Tucson was poorly made. Actor Pablo Santos, who played David, is a kid with strong 11-year-old personality and he wasn't ready to play that type of David character at all because that character too strong maturely made to match Pablo's immature personality. That is a big bad reason why Pablo had a very hard time to perfect his acting.

6.) Run Of The House has a strong title and it was of course violent. But it should not have been discontinued in the wrong time.

7.) After season 6 ended, both aunts characters were written out, but actress Beth Broderick, who played the eldest aunt Zelda, was badly turned down due to poor talent and was forced to never return to Sabrina Teenage Witch show in the wrong time. Caroline Rhea had strong talent and was never turned down, but she should have return to the series finale of Sabrina together with Beth Broderick at the same time. The Cole character in Sabrina season 7 should have been played by Bryan Kirkwood instead.

8.) Nikki and Off Centre should have transfer to FOX to be safe on their second season renewals.

9.) Simon Rex, who plays Jeff in What I Like About You, should not have left after season one because he and Wesley Johnathan, who plays Gary Thorpe, make a better perfect pair of comedy than the girl characters and actresses.

I'm glad the WB is officially shutdown after there too many bloody brawl fights on all WB comedies.

But in the future, they might reboot these shows in a private network:

Popular, Maybe It's Me, Do Over, Greetings From Tucson and Run Of The House.

How is a show transferring to another network like Fox exactly, the WB's fault? Isn't that technically, Fox's fault for not deciding to pick up said shows in the first place. Yeah, the WB canceled them in the first place, but it seems like you're implying that another network isn't equally at fault if you wanted them to pick the shows up.

And again, I'm would blame the showrunners/writers/actors themselves for why certain things happened within the show before I would blame the network.

Nikki and Off Centre would get continued with better ratings, if they move to FOX immediately.

Showrunners, writers and actors are not all the time independently correct. They are sometimes ordered and depended alternatively by the TV network, errors or urgencies!

Nikki and Off Centre would get continued with better ratings, if they move to FOX immediately.

Showrunners, writers and actors are not all the time independently correct. They are sometimes ordered and depended alternatively by the TV network, errors or urgencies!

There's no absolute guarantee that a move to Fox (other than it being established longer) could've immediately ensured that a show would continue for many, many years.

Well if they renew both Nikki and Off Centre for their second seasons, then they both should have move to a private cable network instead.

Otherwise on the other hand, they both should have been cancelled officially right after their first season instead!

http://www.entertainmentfuse.com/can-the-cw-survive/

It was part of Dawn Orstoff's master plan to cater exclusively to the 18-to-35 female demographic (ironically, she was the UPN executive at the time of the merger, yet cared little about the UPN shows), which is alright if you are on cable, but as far as being network TV goes, it was poisonous, so her removal was the best thing for the network.

Wait a minute, is Dawn Ostoff a network president of UPN or WB?

Wait a minute, is Dawn Ostoff a network president of UPN or WB?


Dawn was a President of UPN for a period of time and then took over for the CW. I believe she has since moved onto another job at another company.

Then who was that former WB network president considered to have a bad personality?