“It’s the Red Wedding at WBTV/CW today.”
That’s how Julie Plec, who co-created of one of Warner Bros. Television and The CW’s most valuable franchises in The Vampire Diaries, described the mood Thursday after the network — for the first time in a decade — canceled nearly half its roster.
The CW canceled more shows (10) than it renewed (eight) as its total volume of originals slid to its lowest level since 2012. (At press time, The CW has 11 total scripted originals, not including low-cost acquired content, with decisions on two shows still to come).
As Plec and scores of other writers and producers learned this week, the free lunches have come to an end at The CW as its corporate parents, Warner Bros. Television and CBS Studios, prepare to divest their stakes in the younger-skewing broadcast network they launched as a joint venture in 2006.
To understand what’s happening now at The CW, it’s best to look back to why the network was launched in the first place. Warners and CBS Studios saw the network as a cash cow: both studios would supply low-cost scripted series to the network and cash in with lucrative international rights. Then, in 2011, Warners and CBS Studios added revenue from a $1 billion Netflix streaming deal as shows like Plec’s The Vampire Diaries spinoffs The Originals and the unceremoniously canceled Legacies added a secondary revenue stream.
It didn’t matter that The CW was never profitable because both studios — then part of Viacom and Time Warner — made money hand over fist via foreign sales and the Netflix output deal. The business model was so lucrative that The CW expanded to original programming on Fridays and Sundays and largely stopped cancelling much of anything. The CW canceled (or gave a proper farewell) to an average of only 3.2 shows during the past decade — a far cry from this season’s 10. In the same time frame, The CW renewed an average of 10.3 shows annually (vs. eight this year) while…