Death Looms For The CW

The Wall Street Journal reports that viewership for the netlet is 28 percent off it audience target for viewers between the ages of 18 and 34 so far this season, while ratings overall during the most recent sweeps period were down 22 percent. That's not good news for CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc., which ended their separate network outlets UPN and The WB respectively to form The CW two years ago.

With a focus on younger viewers, The CW was supposed to be a slam dunk for advertisers trying to reach people known for having extra money to spend. But it seems people in that generation are getting their entertainment elsewhere, and are not all that interested in what The CW is putting out. Because of that, some sources are telling WSJ that if things don't get better in 2008-09, at least one of the two major partners could pull out of the venture, possibly bringing The CW to an end.

To help get back on its feet, The CW has made it clear that it's abandoning its efforts to attract young men, and instead will focus even more on young women, which it has done with programs such as "Gossip Girl" and "America's Next Top Model." An immediate indication of that was the cancellation of wrestling on Friday nights, while a big ratings boom to the network, attracted young men who don't typically respond to advertising like women do.

"Obviously, we would have liked to do better," said The CW president Dawn Ostroff. "Our young audience certainly knows how to get their content in different ways, and we have to figure out different ways to measure how they're getting it."

That means working with companies such as Nielsen Media Research, which provides television viewing data to the networks. Nielsen, in turn, told WSJ that it provides "a fair picture of what younger viewers are watching" and that they're "working closely with The CW and all of our clients to continuously improve our measurement."

Maybe the two companies will stay in the project for a while longer. Both UPN and The WB were on the air for more than a decade before going defunct. However, both networks erased about $2 billion from the books of their corporate parents during that time.

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