Bill will tell you that between the two of us, I’m much more prone to wanting to give Dawn and the CW the benefit of the doubt. But, in the end, the numbers are the numbers. This morning I read in an article from David Goetzl from yesterday on Media Post titled Dawn Ostroff Transforms CW.
I finally figured out the secret of Dawn’s success. The Force is with her, and she is skilled at Jedi mind tricks. It’s like she pulls a stick out of the mud, holds it out and they see not a stick in the mud, but an ice cream cone. And they lap it up.
Impressive. It’s a skill, perhaps Dawn’s best skill. She is obviously a fantastic salesperson, and that’s a wonderful skill to have if selling television advertising is the game.
The article cites two numbers which were among numbers we’d been looking to track down. One was that Gossip Girl is up 44% this year among women 18-34 and that the network wide, the CW is up 11% among women 18-34 this year. We still hope to do some sort of point-in-time season-to-date analysis on how that compares to the other networks (which I imagine is very favorably) soon. I don’t think these numbers are to be sneezed at – it is progress.
But because I understand the overall numbers and how the percentages work, I also understand how tiny of an increase 11% among 18-34 year old women winds up being. But it’s progress, and progress in the right direction if your goal is to target 18-34 year old females. I have no problem with that salesmanship.
I do however have a problem with this salesmanship:
Now, with wrestling gone, Ostroff said there is more of an opportunity to laser-focus on young women and build some programming flow across the week.
Oh REALLY? Because, you know, Everybody Hates Chris, and The Game and a repeat or whatever they stick in the Friday 9pm slot create so.much.flow. All wrestling being gone actually seems to have done was remove a million plus (1.27 million) 18-49 year olds from the weekly averages. I find it hard – approaching impossible — to believe that the removal of Friday Night Smackdown! is a large contributor to the growth of Gossip Girl’s 18-34 female viewing, yet its absence is the single largest contributor to the CW’s decrease in 18-49 viewing.
My take? They see the same numbers we see and they are in damage control mode around losing Friday Night Smackdown! Or Dawn’s drinking her own kool-aide. Take your pick. There’s NO WAY an 11% network wide increase among 18-34 females (which is a tiny number in the absolute) is going to offset the 18-49 attrition where the CW is down 13.3% so far this season. That decrease is almost completely attributable to Friday Night Smackdown’s exodus.
That’s flow but it’s in the wrong direction. In CW’s defense, with the exception of CBS (and Univision, and of course now MNT which picked up Friday Night Smackdown!) the other nets are down similarly among 18-49 year olds and The CW is down the least (excluding Uni and MNT) among the aggregate 18-34 demo.
I don’t fault the salesmanship, but the whole notion of flow coming out of Friday when you don’t program nationally on Saturday or Sunday (at least when the year began) seems completely bogus. CW could have kept Friday Night Smackdown!, moved Everybody Hates Chris and The Game to Wednesdays paired with America’s Next Top Model and been hardly the worse for wear among 18-34 year old females and been much, much better off with 18-49 year olds.
Do I think EHC and The Game are ideally paired with ANTM? No. But, the numbers indicate the approach would’ve worked much better. Sure, I have the benefit of hindsight, and I’ll admit that’s a huge advantage. I also lack Dawn’s vision around the importance of “flow” coming out of Friday nights.
The CW, now with good programming Feng Shui.
OMFG!
well…maybe Dawn is programming a network for her own viewing – she doesn’t look like she watches the Thursday or Friday line-ups on CW…
ahhhhh – now i know what the CW will SOON stand for:
The “C”hicks & “W”omen network
Dawn Ostrich has her head in the sand.
Laser focus on young women? So why did they put on reruns of Jericho? Sure its a bit Gossip girlish early on but after episode 7, its all testosterone, guns and explosions. Maybe she will bring back Jericho, minus all the men? Except for Dale – because he is so smoking hot.
I love the CW thursday lineup, but it looks like CW hates it! The only thing good that that network has appealing to its target audience is Gossip Girl. All their other shows (I don’t watch One Tree Hill, so I don’t know about his one) are horrible!
Maybe she is trying to turn CW into a copy of Oxygen? Thats my theory and Im sticking with it. If so, change the name to WET – Womens Entertainment Television. With wet t-shirt contests and mud wrestling every Friday Night to get some men on board.
Why do you guys always focus on Dawn? It seems pretty sexist to me when you aren’t doing features on Ben Silverman, whose network is often competing with CW for better ratings. I hope there are at least 3 Silverman features in the works, including an Open Letter.
Oh, she’s drinking her own kool-aid for sure.
What I don’t understand, Robert, is how The CW has gone from “Free 2 Be Green” and “Free 2 Be Together” to “It’s all about the women, 18-34.”
I have a limited understanding of the numbers as it is, and I realize that advertisers want that demographic, but is it just me or is this strategy something straight out of Lifetime?! They’re not Lifetime, not in a long shot.
What really continues to irritate me is that they focus on women, but completely ignore their male audience in their “OMFG 8 Sub-headline” press releases, as if the male audience isn’t even important. But if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t be doing damage control over the fact that they lost a show that could at least, on occasion, bring in somewhere near 4 million viewers every week, and how many of them were men?
It’s so sexist and disgusting.
I’ve left comments like this on your site before, but I have to do it again: What about shows like Smallville, which is currently in its eighth season bringing in an average of 4.15 million viewers a week (4.8 million with Live+7’s), yet they act like it doesn’t even exist half the time since they’re too busy focusing on their precious [and lame] Gossip Girl.
I don’t know what Dawn is smoking, but EHC, The Game and almost every other show besides ANTM, isn’t really bringing in money like Smallville is.
I’m so fired up about this that I can’t even forget the fact that they cancelled Everwood, which was one of their core mistakes (as well as cancelling Reba, which was another solid (based on the numbers they “like,”) performer, but I digress because that’s exactly what Dawn knows what to do!
Oh, and to Andrea: Why does Robert focus on Dawn Ostroff? Because she’s the PRESIDENT of The CW. If something fails, it’s HER fault and she better start getting that through her head too.
Andrea, We do Silverman:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/11/18/ben-silverman-on-charlie-rose/8384
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/11/17/is-ben-silverman-at-nbc-riding-high-or-just-shifting-blame/8243
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/10/30/nbc-to-get-new-head-of-programming/7226
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/10/27/fortune-magazine-piece-on-nbcs-ben-silverman/6919
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/08/31/nbc-to-programming-execs-its-not-me-its-you/4862
Search is your friend….
As Bill notes, we do pick on Ben, and then after him probably Moonves and Zucker have gotten the most grief. We rarely pick on Mcpherson (ABC) or Reilly (FOX) because they aren’t usually out spinning yarns to the media (at least that we’ve seen). In fact, the only time we may have ever quoted Reilly was when Ben Silverman at a luncheon of network execs said “I date your children” and Reilly said, “I have boys.”
We wish he’d speak publicly more.
Man, that article contained so much spin, I feel like I’ve just come off the tilt-a-whirl. A couple of quotes from the article:
“That move came after the network finished the 2007-08 season. And even with the popular “Gossip Girl” launching, ratings were down some 36% in its target female 18-to-34 demo.”
“And the network overall is up 11% this season in the key demo.”
Okay, let’s do some math. If you’re down 36%, that’s going from 100 to 64. If you go up 11% from that, that’s going from 64 to 71. You’re still 29% down from where you started. Now, to be fair, a lot of that 36% drop was probably due to the writer’s strike messing up everything, but that fact makes the 11% increase even more pathetic.
But stuff like this still makes me scratch my head:
“Shows such as “90210″ and “Gossip Girl” generate significant time-shifted DVR viewing. Adult 18-to-49 ratings for “90210″ rise 60% when DVR viewing numbers over a seven-day period are added to the total; “Gossip Girl” figures increase 38%.”
That’s like a retailer trying to woo investors by saying, “Look guys, our retail sales are really low, but we’re very popular with people who want to come in just to look at the products we sell, then go buy them somewhere else”
You may post items about Ben, but I don’t see his botoxed face in the “Featured Story”.
Ben loves the media so I expect a good “Featured Story” in the future.
Your’re right about McPherson (he must be a ghost) and Reilly does once in the while, usually around May
And Robert is quite correct in that he *is* easier on Dawn that I’d be. Had Robert not had time today to write this post here would have been my bullet points on Dawn’s season:
1. Successes: 90210, 18-34 women
2. Failures: 18-49 adults, Stylista
3. Catastrophes: Entire Friday night, Entire Sunday night
Edit: Andrea, make no mistake, most of those Silverman posts were Featured at the time.
Dawn needed to be fired yesterday.
David — the 36% decrease was from the beginning of the year until the end of the year BUT was just for one show (Gossip Girl). the 11% increase this year over last year is network wide across all shows (assuming the data is correct — i didn’t actually see it yet).
Andrea, Ben has been featured but if your suggestion is that the reason Dawn gets featured *more* is because she’s easier on the eyes, it isn’t so (it is so she’s easier on the eyes, but that’s not why she gets featured more).
Bill, relative to the CW’s 18-49 numbers 90210 is a success and even relative to its 18-34 female numbers. But the expectations were so high, I have to believe that 90210 has been a bit of a disappointment. But if success relative to Privileged (and especially stylista) is the metric…it’s a success.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the CW is making more money with Chris/Game because their ad revenue is higher than Smackdown. I dont have the numbers right know but Smackdown was only making 25k for a 30 seconds ad.
I’d give her the programming flow thing, if she was running CBS, where apparently everything that doesn’t “flow” like Jericho or Moonlight isn’t working, but on her network everything that is working is going against the very flow she seeks to create.
Cool, EHC and The Game were not kept for reasons of “making more money”.
Maybe $indication money? I think Dawn should develop a procedural with teenagers, all their programs are serials.
Cool, my point is this: EHC and The Game also don’t really target the 18-34 year old females who watch Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill (or Supernatural and Smallville, for that matter). I didn’t put it in the post, but I think it more likely that the reason EHC and The Game are on Fridays and Smackdown is gone is because of (the now failed) plans with Sunday meant they couldn’t air EHC and The Game. I believe there was pressure for the CW to keep the urban comedies and if there was no Sunday (and since CW doesn’t program nationally on Saturday) Friday was the only place to put them…but Friday Night Smackdown was there — but no political pressure to keep it.
It’s purely speculative, but I think it more likely those issues account for what happened with Friday nights than “flow”.
Okay, I did a quick search and I saw that Ben’s botoxed face was featured in November. However, that sickening pic of Dawn with the green CW in the background comes up 3 times since summer.
So, Bill, why is CW featured more? Because you get more of their press releases?
Andrea, you’re obsessed! you can’t go with the “featured” category as a benchmark because we constantly “uncheck” posts to manage what shows up on the home page at any given time (that category only exists from our perspective as a way to get things on the home page.
I really do wish Ostroff would get hit by a meteor. I absolutely cannot stand her. I think she’s a dumbo with bad taste, and I will never not resent the fact that the only show the CW ever talks about is Gossip Girl. And 90210? Not exactly a ratings juggernaut. The shows that have the most improvement this year are Supernatural and Smallville – not Gossip Girl.
WOW. I knew that ANTM, SMALLVILLE, and SUPERNATURAL were the top 3 C3 shows. That article made me look up the others. It appears Dawn fails to mention that her demo doesn’t appear to watch commercials. At least that is what the detailed C3 numbers on GOSSIP GIRL show.
Robert, the network after 2007 as a whole was down 36% in the 18-34 female demo. It’s now up 11%. So David was right in his number crunching.
Why were the numbers down so much? DAWN’S DECISIONS. I could go into detail about how she cut shows that were strong in her favorite demo to bring in GOSSIP GIRL and other shows that still have yet to match the numbers of the shows she cut! David had it right, they’re still 29% below the numbers in their favorite demo from the 2006-2007 season.
Sam Zell is about to kick the CW entirely. If that happens the network folds. The only thing that would appear to make Sam happy is if Dawn was replaced by someone who understands what they have and had. His demands for THE DREW CAREY SHOW to be rerun (which is going to happen at some point on Sundays) were amusing because first he wanted WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY, which had the famous scene of Drew Carey saying “ok trivial reasons for a press conference,” and the comedian goes out and says “Now announcing the UPN’s Fall Season.” When Moonves suggested JERICHO Sam agreed too. That is another shot at Dawn (who turned down JERICHO for CW).
UPN used to pick up TV shows that were booted for some reason or another from other networks. Dawn put an end to that saying the network wouldn’t be feeding off the scraps from other networks anymore! Lets ignore the fact that those scraps were some of the most watched shows the UPN ever had. She has stuck to this lame argument despite being offered shows that possibly would bring in 3.5M to 4M viewers making them the highest watched shows on the network. While UPN used to get “scraps,” it was never offered the shows with such large viewing audiences as Dawn has been offered in just the last 2 years.
Dawn has famously ignored her Thursday Night lineup for some time. She recently decided to not pick up an “AQUAMAN,” show and more recently said they wouldn’t be interested in a GREEN ARROW program. Despite her signing a deal to keep the actor on her network! Why? She doesn’t want that demo interfering with her “plan.” That is also her reasoning for not promoting SUPERNATURAL more. She doesn’t want to remind her demo that they air that testosterone show.
Except her plan isn’t working. She doesn’t make deals to keep shows that her beloved demo flock to. She decides to not renew another because ratings are mediocre (but still decent in her demo). So her beloved demo is still today 29% lower than it was after the 2006-2007 season.
Sam is sharpening his axe right now…
I’ve never understood her focus on that demo. People don’t watch networks, they watch shows. I am concerned for Supernatural if Smallville doesn’t come back.
As a side note, was she the one that canceled Veronica Mars? Wouldn’t that have been the demo she was after?
Nick C. So what aren’t you disclosing? Are you just another crazed fan who hates Dawn (there are many of those, though I doubt you are one of them) or did Dawn/CW somehow screw you out of some work. I generally agree with your thinking — though lacking the data, say, to compare how far Grey’s Anatomy/ABC/other nets have fallen w/women 18-34 since the 2006-07 season, it isn’t a relevant/fair comparison.
So fess up, did you get screwed out of work or did someone close to you? I find it difficult to believe you’re just another crazed fan. It’s not your thinking I question — it’s the emotional energy and angst you have behind it!
Yes, Kathy B, only people in that demo didn’t watch Veronica Mars. And as for watching shows, not networks, that is true, but Gossip Girl really can’t run ads during Grey’s Anatomy.
Doug, um actually canceling VERONICA MARS was one of the reasons of the 18-34 female drop. It wasn’t as huge a hit as losing GILMORE GIRLS, REBA & SEVENTH HEAVEN was though.
Robert, Dawn has never screwed me, out of work or otherwise. I’ve had my run ins with her for work on numerous occasions and I think she is still living off her success at LIFETIME. Many people have mentioned how the CW isn’t hemorrhaging like the UPN or WB were in terms of money. What many don’t know is that Dawn isn’t the reason for that, but other people at the CW. This makes sense when you look at who was brought in compared to her days as head of UPN.
Dawn is one of those women who has a position of power that doesn’t deserve it. She is like an illusionist. She has certain people believing certain things while in fact she can’t run a broadcast network. She disgusts me in the same way that Ben Silverman disgusts me. They have positions of power they don’t really deserve. They are both killing a network. Since taking over UPN & the CW she has tried to create a network for females 18-34. Meanwhile every questionable decision she has made has turned into the wrong decision. She cancels shows or refuses to meet deals with producers. Then her hand picked replacements fail to meet the ratings of the shows she canceled or refused to make deals on.
You want to know why her network has less in the prized demo? GILMORE GIRLS. The producers wanted a 2 year cushy deal to reward them for their past success. Dawn refused. They lost the producers and kept the show on for 1 season (2006-2007). Ratings dropped on the show, but it was still their top scripted 18-34 demo show for females. So look at her decision there. She doesn’t make a deal with the producers and loses them. The show is hurt in quality and thus in ratings. Then she loses the show entirely and its high female numbers. SEVENTH HEAVEN was also another mess that Dawn created. The show had bad numbers on the CW (in comparison to when it was on the WB) but still had a large amount of 18-34 females. I should also mention REBA was another Dawn failure that also had a large female audience (and thus decent 18-34 demos).
You could argue that GOSSIP GIRL was supposed to replace GILMORE GIRLS with the demo, but where was the replacement for SEVENTH HEAVEN? LIFE IS WILD? Seriously? REBA had no demo replacement. Neither did VERONICA MARS. Remember Dawn was behind the brilliant CW NOW and FARMER WANTS WIFE shows. Neither of which was smart for the 18-34 demo female.
Do I have business run ins with her? Yes. Would business be better for everyone with someone else? Yes. She hasn’t “screwed,” me though. She has definitely screwed CBS and Warner Brothers though.
Also her statement that Executives were “very happy,” has likely got Sam in a rage. That had to be the stupidest thing she said.
I should mention that your example of SMACKDOWN! fits with the other examples I gave. Dawn had no answer for the lost ratings and revenue. She moved her Monday Night lineup to Friday Night, moved GOSSIP GIRL to Mondays with OTH and gave us PRIVILEGED and STYLISTA. STYLISTA is definitely a failure and PRIVILEGED isn’t doing as well as they hoped.
If you’re going to get rid of a program you should have a good idea of what you’re replacing it with. The idea that getting rid of SMACKDOWN! would somehow help GOSSIP GIRL, etc. is just proof she has no clue. It’s bad marketing. It’s one thing to position it’s another thing to shoot yourself in the foot.
So what now Dawn? A GOSSIP GIRL spin-off? Really? Melrose Place? Really? She doesn’t want SMALLVILLE to go another season. She isn’t interested in picking up MANHUNTER either. I’m sure her new SUPERNATUAL/REAPER lineup in her head is just a “one year set back,” until she can get a remake of SAVED BY THE BELL on the air.
To a degree I can understand the rationale behind The CW letting Smackdown go – although it remains a poor decision.
If The CW are serious about wanting to appeal to females 18-34 (and younger) then Smackdown was completely at odds with that ethos. It may have produced a strong rating for them on Friday Nights but what crossover was there with the Smackdown audience and the audience for every other show on the network? I would guess very little and if you make the decision to aggressively pursue the younger female audience then the crossover becomes even less. The CW were never going to be able to advertise Gossip Girl or Stylista during Smackdown and realistically expect it to make that much difference to either shows numbers. Ultimately this is the reason why I don’t buy this idea that has been repeated a bit here that The CW would snap up Thursday Night Football rights from the NFL, they’d be an expensive ratings spike that has no real cross promotional appeal for the rest of The CW line-up. What The CW needs/wants is a teenage girl equivalent to Football although God knows what that would be.
Having said all that if The CW would drop this single minded pursuit of females 18-34 then Smackdown could have been a huge promotional tool for them. Marketed right then I suspect they could have probably seen a slight spike in numbers for Reaper, Supernatural and maybe even Smallville had they advertised them heavily during Smackdown. Maybe the key would have been to create a ‘testosterone block’ built around Smackdown with Smallville etc. attached to it?
Of course regardless of all that I imagine that given the comparatively large gains the MNT have made this season pretty much exclusively on the strength of Smackdown a lot of people within The CW have got to be (once again) wondering why they let it go regardless of the demos.
I don’t get the bellyaching in these comments. I think I can say almost everyone commentin here doesn’t even watch one show on the CW. I’ve seen a couple of episodes of “Gossip Girl” and know people who enjoy it, and I think it does well for what it is, a teen soap. Are the CW’s ratings good? No, but they do reach their target audience. I don’t get why there’s so much anger directed at Dawn here. Do you really care that much? Did she run over your dog? I don’t see why it’s such a big deal that she’s the head of the CW. She may not be doing a good job, but is it really worth this much groaning everytime her name’s brought up on this site?
So, we should be that happy that she isn’t doing a good job? All of the “bellyaching” is here because it’s very clear, from the average television viewer, that Dawn doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.
Any of us who has left a comment here could clearly do a better job than she’s doing.
I’m a Smallville fan, so I do watch The CW. As a viewer of this network, I am allowed to have an opinion because I’ve seen the changes they’ve made with their brand and how they sell themselves.
If you ask me, I would laugh off on concentrating on female viewers and add some programming that might actually appeal to a broader, older audience, which is something she doesn’t want to do.
In fact, what they should do is snatch up MadTV and place that on their Friday or Saturday night since there are already rumblings that another network may want to pick it up after Fox had said they were done.
Will she do something smart like that; something that might actually grab a new audience who may want to see that show? No…because it’s clear she’s an idiot.
Another avenue would be picking up King of the Hill, which was also axed by Fox. There are also rumors that ABC or another network might pick it up. This show could be put on Sundays, just like it was on Fox, which could attract that audience…But again, she doesn’t do things that are logical.
Why’d she decide to drop Aquaman after giving it the greenlight? Why’d she cancel Everwood after deciding it would come back for a fifth season…Ultimately replacing that with 7th Heaven, which she already decided was canceled how many months before the launch?
Anyone with a brain would’ve kept Everwood on the air. Even if the audience wasn’t big, it was devoted. She makes a decision and she backpedals the next…Anyone can see that she doesn’t know what she’s doing…that’s what people are pissed about.
P.S. Sorry for the typos.
Andrew, ratings might have been down for EVERWOOD but they’d still be better than everything but ANTM and SMALLVILLE. Dawn’s decision making process is scary. She originally intended to bring EVERWOOD back for season 5 which would have made the show hit 100 episodes (good for syndication). The producers were more than willing to make a good deal. Instead the series finale numbers for 7TH HEAVEN were so good she thought “wow, I never saw numbers like that on UPN!” When the WB used to AVERAGE those numbers with 7TH HEAVEN at one point. So she switched and went with a show that had already been on the air for 10 years and had no legs instead of the show that might have 3 more seasons in it.
Dawn refuses to pick up shows from other networks. She doesn’t believe it speaks highly of the network’s ability to develop their own programs. Forget that two of the shows she was offered had at one point AVERAGED over 9 Million people for a season. She turned it down. CBS brought it back. CBS offered it to her again, again she turned them down. She’s just stubborn.
That is her real problem. At LIFETIME it was all about proving a network aimed at women would work. Now it’s about a network aimed at young women. She refuses to admit defeat.
Look at the WB. The WB had ratings that would make the CW tremble. They had shows that AVERAGED nearly 7 million viewers a night. SUPERNATURAL when at the WB averaged 4.5 million viewers! It had highs around 6 million. The CW can’t even approach that right now. Heck, SUPERNATURAL wasn’t even a top 3 show for the WB.
SUPERNATURAL didn’t fit Dawn’s plan. She had to take the WB’s top shows though. So with one she refused to deal for a multiple year deal (GILMORE GIRLS) and for SMALLVILLE and SUPERNATURAL she banished them to a night with minimum promotion. Yet, she picked up ONE TREE HILL which had turned into a loser for the WB.
Fire Dawn. Hire someone who understands that the word “position,” is a noun and not a verb like Dawn uses it. Start there. Then make sure they understand that a network aimed at 18-34 is fine, but 18-34 and alienating one sex is not fine. Go after the NFL. It is what made FOX legit.
Sadly, Dawn did all she could to destroy the numbers the WB was pulling.
To add to the conversation I think just looking at some of the projects being planned by the CW is concerning. Everything they have planned is a spin off or companion to something else.
They started with the Graysons which would have worked off of Smallville. While I think it could have had some success I think a Green Arrow series makes alot more sense. The character already has a fanbase from Smallville and they could easily use a Smallville episode to launch the series. And if they are really adventurious they could push for a live action Justice League series with the other characters who have also already been set up through Smallville.
But The Graysons fell apart so they decide that we need a spin off of Gossip Girl and a remake of Melrose Place. Plus that new show with judges from ANTM. I mean did they learn nothing from Stylista.
Does the CW do anything that is original anymore. This along with all the other mistakes (dropping Everwood and Aquaman … letting Smackdown go … not picking up Jericho … not caring about the great Thursday night line up) adds up to the fact that Dawn O as run her course and the CW needs someone new in charge.
Nick C, I agree with everything you said. It just goes to show that we, as viewers, know what would’ve worked after the launch of The CW. I actually started watching Everwood from the beginning. During Season 3, my interest peaked, but I returned with Season 4 and was excited to learn that they’d be coming back until I heard about Dawn’s stupid decision to bring back 7th Heaven, which was a disastrous idea because the show had ALREADY been marketed as taking its final bow. It was stupid on her part to think that she would see the same numbers if a shorter season was ordered and guess what? That’s exactly what happened.
Personally, I think UPN and The WB were fine on their own, especially The WB as you mention who had SOLID ratings. She’s proving that she’s willing to crash a burn, along with her precious women 18-34.
It’s fine that she wants to target young women, but what about young men? I’m 25. The only shows I watch on The CW are Smallville and Supernatural. The other 6 days of the week I’m watching cable news or Without a Trace / Cold Case reruns on TNT, which could benefit The CW if they picked up or; here’s a thought: DEVELOPED some kind of procedural drama like the other networks have. Yes, there are a lot of them these days, but the format works. If they want to play in the big leagues, the have to develop something similar.
But even if they did that, it’d just be a sad knock off of whatever shows are currently on NBC and CBS because they just can’t do anything right.
What she needs to realize is that EVERYONE watches television, not just 18-34 year-old women. If she would get that through her thick skull, they might get somewhere.
Eric, I agree with you as well. I am a long-time Batman fan. I was excited to see Birds of Prey when it came out, but we all know what happened with that.
I agree that The Graysons could’ve worked, but with a lot of retooling. With Smallville in its eighth season, you’d think they’d be all over a show like that (or The Green Arrow) that would replace Smallville when it goes off the air. If they don’t, they’re in serious trouble. I’m not sure that they’re ready to throw in the towel and let Smallville go though. If they did, what show would be making them money? ANTM and Supernatural?…The bottom line is they HAVE to keep Smallville on the air because they have nothing else.
However, even if they didn’t, Dawn would be stupid not to consider The Green Arrow spin-off because like you said, he’s an established character (Plus, women 18-34 seem to like Justin Hartley, so wouldn’t that be enough?)
I’m not really psyched about a Melrose Place reboot either. I actually used to watch the original with my stepmom every Monday night on Fox. I have to say, it was a guilty pleasure, but:
This is Dawn’s problem: She doesn’t want to target young men, at least from the press releases with the 8 ridiculous sub-headlines, she doesn’t want to pick up other programs from other networks…She just wants to REMAKE them and put them on The CW to try and make everyone think that they’re “original.”
As for her being fired, I thought there were rumors that she was going to be canned? Either way, she needs to get gone or go back to Lifetime and let someone who knows what they’re doing take over.
Alex, Dawn already declined a GREEN ARROW show. THE GRAYSONS was put out of its misery by Warner Brothers who decided it wasn’t a good idea. The idea currently is MARTIAN MANHUNTER spinning off of SMALLVILLE with Justin Hartley and the GREEN ARROW being involved. However, I’m rather sure if that happens it will be forced on Dawn by the Warners half. She doesn’t want the show. She wants to pair REAPER and SUPERNATURAL together and watch them die so she can have her demo.
SMACKDOWN! SUPERNATURAL, and SMALLVILLE were perfect for the CW if they were trying to be THE NETWORK FOR YOUNG VIEWERS. Instead her myopic view is going to kill the network (it has already started). Basic rules in marketing state you can’t just please one demo. It’s a bad idea. It worked for LIFETIME, but this is a broadcast network.
The CW should never ever lose any 18-49 viewers, seeing as how their entire schedule seems geared to that demo and that demo alone. There’s no excuse for it.
To play devils advocate for a moment.
The CW lacks the money and the exposure of the big four networks so trying to compete with them on ‘their turf’ as it were and competing for the 18-49 demographic is simply setting themselves up for failure. It’s been noted in this thread already that Fox were only able to become part of the big four because they had the money to buy up NFL games – not only does The CW have no new football to bid for its unlikely they’d be able to outbid the other major networks for football coverage. If The CW can’t compete on the wider margin of 18-49 then zeroing in on a specific demographic is the strongest business strategy.
If you’re an advertiser and you want to appeal to the 18-49 demographic then The CW is going to be the fifth (at best) network you look at buying time on and that dramatically limit’s the amount of money they can make. In contrast to that by aggressively pursing the women 18-34 (and younger) demographic The CW has instantly set themselves apart from the other networks and allows them have a much more profitable advertising strategy, they can charge prime advertising rates to reach young women because they’re the only network that specialises in attracting them. With that in mind The CW shouldn’t be overly focused on total viewers or the 18-49 demo, they should be primarily focused on young women. A show like Smallville may very well get good numbers and good 18-49 but if its tanking with young women then The CW shouldn’t be focused on it because that’s not where their marketing strategy is.
Having said that, that doesn’t mean that I strictly speaking agree with this particular strategy. In general I think The CW has gone too narrow and they’re using a cable channel mentality on network television. On cable a channel exclusively aimed at young women works on network television not so much. My suggestion would be that The CW is probably better suited to seeking out young men and women rather than simply women. Become the under-30 or the under-25 network and advertisers will absolutely love you.
Alex, actually from an advertising standpoint it really doesn’t make sense. I don’t care what school you went to if it was Wharton or Florida International you’re taught that such a myopic focus is BAD. However if the network was aimed at all of the 18-34 demo with a special focus on creating unique shows for women in the 18-34 they’d have a position worth reaching.
It worked for FOX. Also the NFL pays for itself. If you win a bid, you win. Going after the THURSDAY NIGHT game isn’t a bad idea. Especially if it gives you a playoff game every season.
As I said I don’t particularly agree with The CW strategy but I can the logic (maybe not the best word) being used during the decision making process. The theory that they or perhaps more specifically Ostroff has latched onto is that advertisers like to zero in on specific demographics and target their ads very specifically, so with that in mind the idea of presenting advertisers with an entire network focused on demo x seems like a great idea. What nobody at The CW seems to have worked out yet is that in reality this idea isn’t so great because it dramatically reduces the value of time on their network.
If every night of the week on The CW is dedicated to attracting young women to watch then what benefit would I, as an advertiser get from buying ad time with The CW on a Tuesday rather than a Wednesday? Its essentially the exact same audience tuning in every night of the week so once I’ve brought ad time with you on a Monday why am I going to want to buy more on any other night of the week? I’d just be reaching out to the same people every night of the week and there’s only so far that can go. More the point by focusing purely on the one demo you dramatically reduce the number and type of products advertisers can sell on your network. Whereas advertisers can look at the Fox line-up for example and find a show that appeals to just about every and any demographic and therefore know they can at some point during the week advertise any product.
Like I said I think The CW are trying to attach a cable mentality to a broadcast network and its not working.
Personally I feel The CW should be setting itself up as the under-25 network (the anti-CBS if you like) with a slate of programs that will produce big 18-34 numbers in both sexes. Perhaps split the week in half? Sunday – Tuesday being the female line-up with Wednesday – Friday making up the ‘testosterone block’.
With all that said I think The CW might in fact be right to pass on shows that have been cancelled on the big four, as much as I might love to have seen certain shows continued I can absolutely understand why The CW wouldn’t want them. Its hard to set yourself up as competition to or as a viable major network when you’re picking up shows that other networks have axed because of bad numbers. There’s also no real guarantees that audiences watching a show on CBS for example would follow it to The CW.
Alex, I agree picking up a show like CLUELESS wasn’t a good idea. However when JERICHO was first offered to Dawn the show was averaging over 9 million viewers! It was a bubble show for CBS. Dawn turned it down. She was also offered another CBS show which she again turned down. That show I think averaged like 8M viewers. CBS wasn’t offering the network “scraps,” but shows that for whatever reason weren’t “fitting,” with CBS. CBS owns half of the CW. Moonves likes the idea of putting “tweener shows,” on the smaller network. Dawn does not and bottom line she was allowed to say no.
I can tell you that I know marketing. This idea is bad marketing. Harvard Business School will be using this as an example of bad marketing in the future. It’s a perfect example of not knowing how to handle “position.” Dawn wants the CW’s position to be “The Network for young women.” Yet her strongest assets were shows that didn’t fit her position. One of the first things a good professor teaches you is that position is a NOUN and not a verb. You can’t position yourself. You can be put in a position.
Defining your position is one of the biggest hurdles for creating a Brand. The CW had a mix of the WB and UPN. The WB had a Brand. They were the network for young people starring good looking young people with witty dialogue (thanks to Buffy and Dawson’s Creek). The Brand of the WB got so strong it became a pop culture reference. UPN on the other hand had no real Brand. It was Trek & urban comedies. If UPN was anything it was a punchline to jokes from Jay Leno to WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY.
It would have been in the best interest of the CW to try and capture the Brand that the WB had. Instead Dawn felt that what she was trying to do at UPN should be done at the new network.
It’s a huge case study of stupidity in the marketplace. It’s entirely an example of not knowing your position in the marketplace and hurting your company because of it. Your idea of a network for all the young was done before, it was called the WB and it was the strongest half of the UPN/WB merger. What did UPN have that was even decent? ANTM? EVERYONE HATES CHRIS? VERONICA MARS? Oh I remember now, it had SMACKDOWN! and ANTM.
I think it was Guy Kawasaki I heard once mention that if a company can’t identify their position in the eyes of the buyer then they can’t improve their position.
As mentioned before by the guys here, SMACKDOWN! wasn’t making it harder to get female viewers for GOSSIP GIRL. If you’re going to replace something have a plan. Have a show in mind.
Vader, I watch a show on CW – Privileged. It was the main actress that made me tune in, and I decided to stick around because I liked what I saw. I still like the show, I find it quirky and fun. Who’s the main actress on Privileged? It’s Joanna Garcia, who I loved on Reba among other things. And lookie there, Dawn scraped Reba.
Then comes this: Dawn will scrape Privileged for, and now brace yourself… Reaper! Not that I have anything against Reaper, and I also know quite a few can’t wait for it’s return, but tell me: What programming flow is there when you have Reaper following 90210??? And what programming flow is there, when the best performers for CW (Smallville, Supernatural, the now gone Smackdown) are those that do not target Dawn’s coveted demo???
That’s why I’ll bother to comment when Dawn is mentioned on this site. Because what she does and what she says makes no sense to me.
Men…typical men.
I choose to view this as a godsend for me and my friends at my weight watcher meeting. How can we convince Dawn to make new episodes of PUSHING DAISIES the cornerstone for the All New CW network? Maybe we should be mailing daisy seed packages to our new heroine, Dawn.
BTW, I would guess that if you looked up the word misogynist in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Nick C. If I could, I would tell his mother on him.
Oh right, I’m a misogynist because Dawn is doing exactly what they teach you not to do in school? I love people who make those lame assumptions. She’s a woman and I’m treating her unfairly. I treat Silverman the same way: with contempt. I don’t even act like I like them to their faces. Why should I do so here? Because she’s a woman? Sorry. I’m going to treat her the same as I treat any other idiot: like an idiot.
Gusar, Dawn had pressure to bring back REAPER from above. So she kind of had to. You’re right though that it doesn’t fit with her “flow.” So why green light it in the first place?
There is no argument that ratings are no where close to what the WB used to pull. There is no argument that the CW doesn’t lose money like the WB or UPN did. However the reason for the later has nothing to do with Dawn. It DOES have something to do with a person she approved hiring though. So I guess she gets credit for that.
The CW is a tighter run ship than the previous networks. That is all she has going for her. The rest is ratings hell.
What’s even more ironic, Nick C., is that late last month, guess what they decided to put on Sunday nights in place of Easy Money and Valentine: The axed Jericho!
Dawn didn’t want Jericho, but in an attempt to bail themselves out so to speak, they bring back reruns of Jericho to anchor Sunday nights…what a contradiction that is.
Good job, Dawn…*sigh*
andrew, I know and Dawn didn’t want JERICHO reruns even! However Moonves forced it.
Moonves hates Jericho after the whole 25 tons of peanuts gimmick and the resulting 25% viewer loss. If Moonie forced CW to air it, he only did it to torture Jericho fans who think its a sign CW might make new episodes. A sign that might be the case is if CW pulls Jericho reruns due to low ratings like the SCI-FI channel did back in March. Back then SCI-FI aired 15 of the first 22 episodes then pulled the plug.
I caught some of this weeks Jericho rerun and it seems like they replaced all the original music with an irritating generic country music soundtrack (it sounded like there was low voice in the background with the instrumental track cranked up real high). It was so bad I had to turn it off when it was on. I heard the DVDs were something like this too due to CBS being too cheap to pay the original artists for the rights to use their songs.
Only shows worth a crap on the CW:
- Smallville
- Supernatural
- Reaper
All others suck…seriously…suck big time. OK, I’m a 28 y/o Male, so I’m way out of the networks Target demo I suppose, but it really pisses me off that this broad spits in the face of fans who have been with shows like Smallville & Supernatural (I’m sure she would have turned them down if she was in charge of the WB at the time) which happen to be their top 2 scripted shows. Maybe they should look to cater to 18-34 males since those shows actually do the best #’s…including Smackdown. How she stays employed is beyond me!