CW is looking to rebuild with the Green Arrow, Beauty and the Beast and a Sex and the City prequel next season.
Those promotable franchises, to be unveiled to advertisers Thursday, are the benchmarks of its new lineup: Green Arrow, based on the DC Comics hero; Beauty, loosely based on the cult 1980s CBS series and starring Smallville's Kristin Kreuk; and The Carrie Diaries, featuring a teenage Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City, from the creators of Gossip Girl.
This fall, Gossip will air 10 final episodes, paired with 90210 and to be replaced in January by the high-schooler Carrie.
Other newcomers also will be supported by compatible lead-ins: The returning Hart of Dixie, starring Rachel Bilson as a surgeon in the South, teams with new medical drama Emily Owens, M.D., with another freshly minted female doctor, played by Mamie Gummer. Supernatural gets an upgrade, moving to Wednesday as a partner for Arrow, the network's highest-profile newcomer.The Vampire Diaries, CW's top-rated show, will serve as Thursday's lead-in for Beauty and the Beast, which combines a romantic story with police plots. And the fading America's Next Top Model will move to Fridays with Nikita.
Also on tap for midseason: Cult, in which a young TV show assistant teams with a blogger to investigate copycat crimes committed by the show's rabid fans.
This season has not been kind to CW. Ratings are down 15%, and freshman series The Secret Circle and Ringer were canceled. One Tree Hill, an enduring performer, also ended after nine seasons.
A joint venture of CBS and Warner Bros. that stemmed from the 2006 combination of UPN and WB, CW is perhaps more vulnerable than other broadcast networks to changing viewing habits; it targets women ages 18 to 34, a more technologically minded audience that's more likely to view shows online or on other platforms.
Thanks to a lucrative deal with Netflix for streaming rights to old episodes, CW has more breathing room, financially speaking. But it still needs to find larger audiences on TV to fill that pipeline and satisfy the local stations that carry its programs. Vampire Diaries averaged just 2.8 million viewers this season, even with seven-day DVR playback factored in.
