CW Gives Up On Sunday Night

May 8th, 2008 by Bill Gorman  Email This

Variety is reporting that the CW is giving up on programming Sunday night:

The CW is close to sealing a deal with an as-yet unnamed media buyer to take over the night. Under the deal, the CW would sell the 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. block to an advertising conglom, which would turn around and develop programming and sell ad time. […] Decision to sell the Sunday primetime block is an acknowledgement that the night has been a tough one for the CW - and before that, the WB, which also struggled to gain ratings traction there.

Looks to me like the CW is just cutting its losses. The CW already doesn’t program Saturdays, and after losing Friday Night Smackdown, can Fridays be far behind? At what point to they simply become a reseller of broadcast bandwidth?

Even by their extremely low threshold for success (Gossip Girl!) they have done badly on Sundays. Looking at a season to date adults 18-49 ranking of their Sunday shows this season finds that every single one of their Sunday shows did worse than the regular airings of every single one of their other shows. Either they put all their worst shows on Sunday night on purpose, or they just got very, very unlucky. What do you think?

UPDATE: More details from TVWeek.

Season to Date Adults 18-49 Viewing, Through May 4, 2008

Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.