Boomers screamed for the Beatles on “Ed Sullivan.” Gen X wanted its MTV. Every generation has its touchstone moments of televised pop culture. For millennials, one such moment arrived in 2006 when the rival broadcast networks UPN and the WB united to launch a super network with programming geared toward audiences too old for Nickelodeon but not fully invested in what Mom or Dad were watching: The CW.
The network kicked off with carryovers from the merger, including “Gilmore Girls” and “America’s Next Top Model,” before finding its own niche with shows like “Gossip Girl,” “The Vampire Diaries,” “Arrow” and “Riverdale.” The CW would spend the bulk of this century becoming synonymous with a specific kind of programming: one in which teens and 20-somethings had educated conversations about real issues, like cyberbullying and queer relationships, while looking impeccable.
Earlier series like the WB’s “Dawson’s Creek” and ABC’s “My So-Called Life” managed to resonate with younger viewers without talking down to them. But the goal of the CW was to create a network that took younger viewers, especially female viewers, seriously.
“I think teen girls … [are] so happy somebody’s speaking to them because, oftentimes, they get ignored,” says Dawn Ostroff, the executive who moved from UPN to launch the CW, serving as its president of entertainment until 2011. “The question is, how do you maintain that trust? How do you hold their hands and say ‘we’re on this journey together?’”
The Times talked to Ostroff and other major players about the network’s merger, notable programming moments and its evolution. In the process, we remembered the lessons bestowed upon us by “Gossip Girl,” including that tights are not pants, and how to spell “doppelganger” when talking about “The Vampire Diaries.” These interviews have been edited for clarity and length.
The Country Western network?
One immediate order of business: Naming the network, which would be a joint operation between studios Warner Bros. and CBS Corp.
Ostroff: We’d call the network CW for CBS and Warner Bros. But, to the consumer, CW meant “country western.” For local affiliates, some stations that were the WB were now changed to something called the CW or the stations that were UPN had something called the CW. And in some cases, we left the stations that either of those networks were on and went to new networks.
Rick Haskins, the CW’s head of marketing, who would become president of streaming and chief branding officer: I was fine on calling it CW. From a marketing and branding perspective, do you know what “ESPN” [stands for]?
Another concern? Some darlings from the WB and UPN would have to be killed. The CW launched on Sept. 18, 2006, with just six nights of original programming, each with only two-hour blocks. (WWE’s Friday Night SmackDown took up both slots on that day). Plus, there were two new series on the first fall lineup.
Ostroff: There would be gifts or cards and letters [from fans] asking us to save their show. There was a Ferris wheel brought to our parking lot that somebody made for the WB show “Everwood.” We had planes flying overhead with banners that said “Please Save ‘Veronica Mars.’”
Haskins: Our biggest show that first year was the [UPN transplant] “America’s Next Top Model,” where we were No. 1 in 18-to-34-year-olds across the broadcast networks. We knew we’d done our work on that. Now we’ve just got to hunker down and continue to build out from there.
Ostroff: We had shows that skewed a little more male like WWE. We had our African American night at that time [with Chris Rock’s biographical sitcom “Everybody Hates Chris,” the Will and Jada Smith-produced “All of Us” and Mara Brock Akil’s “The Game”]. But young women somehow just made it their own.
Paul Hewitt, former PR head: Dawn used to say “imagine being able to put [female-centric sardonic dramedies] ‘Gilmore Girls’ and ‘Veronica Mars’ together.” Well, that was our Tuesday night.
Kevin Williamson, creator of midseason series “Hidden Palms” and co-creator of “The Vampire Diaries,” among others: They kept saying we have to program for the “shampoo commercial.” Because every time you watch “Gossip Girl” and they cut to a commercial, it’s a shampoo commercial.
(Laughs) I forgot about “Hidden Palms” until just now.
Ostroff: I’ll never forget the first press tour that I did [for the CW]. … They literally said, “Why don’t you just shut the network down?” When we started the CW, we were so deep in a hole. Nobody knew we existed. … And then along came “Gossip Girl.”
‘You know you love me’
An adaptation of Cecily von Ziegesar’s book series, “Gossip Girl” premiered in 2007 thanks to a deal with book packaging company Alloy Entertainment (which would later adapt “The Vampire Diaries”). Created by “The O.C.’s” Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, the series is about private school frenemies and the mysterious cyberbully stalking them. The duo would oversee more shows on the network.
Savage: “Gossip Girl” was the first show that the CW actually developed and it was really spearheaded by Dawn’s targeted approach of making the network for young women. … Our focus was trying to make what is the most delicious show that you can imagine making for this audience.
Schwartz: There was a very pithy request that the show be crack for girls.
Leslie Morgenstein, president and chief creative officer of Alloy Entertainment: There wasn’t so much uniqueness in focusing on the female audience because I think a lot of networks do that. It was focusing on the younger end of the demo and having the willingness and interest in having characters who are in their teens and early 20s.
It doesn’t hurt that the cast of “Gossip Girl” is supremely attractive. In fact, the CW head of casting Lori Openden and her team made beautiful people as much the network’s brand as television for young adults.
Openden: These were very young actors who were, all of a sudden, series regulars in a big show with a lot of dialogue and [sometimes] a lot of special effects. I loved it as a casting director because it didn’t matter if somebody didn’t have credits if they were talented … [So] we were always watching our own shows to see how people did. It wasn’t exactly an audition, but we were very aware.
And I’m not going to apologize for wanting attractive people.
The CW, and its marketing team, also took advantage of the pearl-clutching reviews the show received. Almost everyone interviewed mentioned a Haskins-led advertising campaign, which featured “Gossip Girl” characters in a sexy embrace with the tagline “OMFG.”
Haskins: The OMFG campaign was created over a weekend. We brought it to executives, who were 10 years older than me. They brought in an assistant and asked if she knew what those letters meant. She started laughing and said, “I love it. This is the way we talk.”
Morgenstein: I was walking to school with my 9-year-old son and we passed a billboard. He looks at me and goes, “Dad, I know what the ‘F’ is for.”
Full stream ahead
“Gossip Girl” became the CW’s first bona fide hit, just not in the old-school linear TV way. In 2008, The Times called the show “The hit that isn’t.”
Savage: Josh and I always felt frustrated because, at that time, everything was still really based on Nielsen ratings and the next morning ratings. We knew people were watching it on their laptops. They were getting together in dorm rooms.
Haskins: I went to people’s houses around the United States and asked them to show me how they watch TV. [I saw] two young women watching TV together on a couch. And they were talking to each other on the phone [over text] rather than looking at each other and talking out loud. It was a jumble of LOLs, WTFs and OMG. That really became a basis for us figuring out how we could approach that consumer audience …
Ostroff: We were the first network to figure out the technology to stream full episodes with commercial insertion. Everyone was illegally streaming it from BitTorrent, so the mandate was to figure out how to monetize these shows or the network will not be able to continue.
Mark Pedowitz, former CW president; chairman and CEO from 2020 to 2022: We knew we were never going to get our primary audience from broadcast, as much as the affiliates hated that. We knew that we were going to pick up a lot of audience through our digital app as well as from [deals with] Netflix or Hulu. The CW, without question, from that streaming point of view, was the canary in the coal mine.
It wasn’t just the fans who were brand-loyal.
Openden: Stephen Amell did two episodes of “The Vampire Diaries” [before he starred in “Arrow”]. Justin Hartley guest starred all over the place before he became a big star, unfortunately, at NBC. Austin Butler was on “Life Unexpected” and then “The Carrie Diaries” and I thought he was great in [Baz Luhrmann’s movie] “Elvis.” I think the same thing’s going to happen to KJ Apa and Lili Reinhart, [who were both on “Riverdale” and will star, respectively, in the films “Jimmy” and “The Love Hypothesis”].
Love triangles with bite
It’s 2009. Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series is tearing up bookstores and multiplexes. “True Blood,” an adaptation of Charlaine Harris’ “The Southern Vampire Mysteries,” was baring it all on HBO. Did audiences have the appetite for another vampire show based on intellectual property?
Morgenstein: With both “Gossip Girl” and “Vampire Diaries,” sometimes you just feel like the audience is going to eat this up. And the CW certainly was the right outlet for those shows to be on.
Williamson: They brought us the book [L. J. Smith’s “The Vampire Diaries”] and said, “Do you want to do this?” And I was like “no.” I just thought this would kill the vampire craze, and I would be the one who killed his career in the process. … I still have never finished the book.
Julie Plec, co-creator of “The Vampire Diaries”: I got 30 pages into the first book, and I told Kevin, “Stop reading. You’re not going to want to do this. But I want you to focus on one thing, which is the town.” I said it’s the town and the two brothers, and the orphaned girl who comes between them, and the saucy minx who looks a whole lot like her.
Williamson: I love a love triangle.
Plec: I speak teenager like how I hear teenagers speak to each other when there is an adult in the room.
Williamson: Julie’s instinct was to go softer; mine was to go harder. And she goes, “You got to back off.” And I was like, “No, no, no. You don’t understand. The more thrilling it is, and the more genre it is, the more you’re going to care.” When people die and people get hurt and people’s lives are at stake, it’s going to become epic.
No longer the ‘Gossip Girl’ network
The 2011-12 schedule was set when Pedowitz replaced Ostroff as head of the CW. He wouldn’t have a chance to organize his lineup for another year, by which time his pal from his ABC days, Greg Berlanti, had a new deal that put him back under the Warner Bros. TV umbrella. The two, along with Marc Guggenheim and their teams developed the superhero series “Arrow” and more shows set in that universe. At the 2014 Upfronts, Pedowitz declared that the CW was no longer the “Gossip Girl” network.
Pedowitz: “Arrow” did exactly what it was supposed to do, particularly pairing it with [WB holdover] “Supernatural.” It brought men. It brought mass appeal, and broke us out of just being a young adult network … [although] we stayed true to our roots as the years went on with “Jane the Virgin,” “Riverdale” and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.”
Berlanti: We knew we had the burden of creating, for a new generation, what this kind of superhero television could be. Luckily, there was so much great cable and programming that had darker characters [on then] so you could point to them as an audience not losing interest just because somebody wasn’t a squeaky clean hero.
Pedowitz: Collectively, … without having talked to each other, we all said, “Let’s make ‘Flash’ a spinoff of ‘Arrow.’” That literally is what happened.
The Arrowverse shows became so integral to the network that the CW began regular crossover events.
Pedowitz: My inspiration was the “Doctor Who” Christmas specials.
Sports beats supes
Berlanti’s production company and the CW would also collaborate on projects like “All American,” which was more in tune with its YA roots. “All American” ended its run on Sept. 28.
Berlanti: These were young places with stories being told by, for and about young people, and so there was an authenticity to it. What you started to watch happen in both movies and TV in the last 10 to 15 years, is there are not as many opportunities for people under a certain age to tell stories. And so what did they do? They created their own platform, in essence, with YouTube … a big part of my job now is … if I want to participate in that game, I have to find the talent who has something to say.
The CW channel is now owned by Nexstar Media Group, which rebranded it as a place for live sporting events and imported programming.
Brad Schwartz, current CW president: As we’ve evolved, sports became a really big priority. … People are like, “the CW is doing college football?” because Dawn and Mark did such a great job of building a brand that meant something. The CW does live on. It just lives on in “Sterling Point” and “Off Campus” [on Prime Video] and “My Life With the Walter Boys” and “Wednesday” on Netflix.
Josh Schwartz and Savage now executive produce and co-showrun “Sterling Point” along with its creator, Megan Park. After success with titles like “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” Prime Video launched a YA-focused fan event, Obsessed Fest.
Josh Schwartz: Everyone’s like, “oh, Amazon is giving us the CW.”
Carina Walker, head of YA, Amazon MGM Studio: Our goal is to have content for this audience year round — inclusive of TV and film. In fact, [a miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s] “Carrie” premieres Oct. 7, and … we have adaptations of beloved [book] titles like “Rose Hill” and “Things We Never Got Over” in production.
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