It’s becoming clearer that the new owners of The CW are going to be building a very different network beginning next season.
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Affiliate television channel company Nexstar completed its purchase of 75% of The CW as of Sept. 30 of this year. While Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global retain 12.5% each, Nexstar will run all of the programming decisions. We have already seen some of the ramifications of this with series such as Nancy Drew and Stargirl coming to an end.
Nexstar CEO Perry Sook told investors in a recent call, “Warner and Paramount are not precluded from selling us programming. It’s just going to have to be a financial deal that we like. And there may be a couple of shows that distinguish themselves this year that we want to hold over to next year.”
CW will be focusing its efforts on lower-cost series in the coming years and is targeting 2025 for turning the network profitable. That’s a tall order, but with its most expensive series coming to an end, it may just be able to do it.
