The Schedule That Got Smaller

As The CW enters its inaugural season, that distinction matters more than the new initials. The January announcement from CBS Corporation and Warner Bros. established a fifty-fifty venture to replace UPN and The WB, with both existing networks set to cease operations in September. It promised a competitive fifth network, drawing on the strongest programming of its predecessors.

The arrangement was not just a branding exercise. The CW would adopt The WB's thirteen-hour prime-time schedule. The Daily News, reporting the deal on January 25, noted that UPN separately offered ten hours. Two schedules totaling twenty-three prime-time hours were being replaced by one offering thirteen. That is a change in these networks' combined capacity, not a count of lost original shows or of all the choices available on television.

The useful admission came from inside the business. In the Daily News report, WB spokesman Brad Turrell explained that the two networks would have needed more pilots separately than the combined network would need. With existing hits sharing one schedule, there would be only a few hours to fill. This was an expectation about development, not a completed tally of rejected scripts. But it names the mechanism: preserving more proven material in the surviving lineup reduces the space that needs an experiment.

Nothing sinister has to happen in the meeting. Nobody has to announce that unfamiliar voices are unwelcome. The schedule can simply become satisfactorily full.

Affiliation changed through similarly concrete choices. Tribune's January announcement identified seven markets where its WB stations overlapped with CBS-owned UPN stations. The new affiliation would go to Tribune in Boston, Dallas, Miami and New Orleans, and to CBS in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Seattle. Tribune said it would acquire syndicated programming for its three independent stations.

Those stations were not being erased. Losing a network affiliation is not the same as losing a transmitter, and an independent schedule is not automatically an empty one. What disappeared was the previous arrangement in which two separate network schedules could travel through those competing local outlets. A claim about reduced cultural variety would need evidence about what replaced them.

Nor does the merger deserve a sentimental defense of every old time slot. The Daily News reported financial difficulties at both networks, and executives argued that combining them offered a more viable future. An outlet that cannot sustain itself is not much protection for creative risk.

The CW's July premiere announcement also complicates any simple obituary. Its lineup included Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, Everybody Hates Chris and Girlfriends, alongside new series Runaway and The Game. It scheduled the two-hour America's Next Top Model season premiere for September 20, followed by a staggered rollout. Continuity and new work both had places in the plan.

The question is whose experience makes the arrangement count as an improvement. A viewer finding a beloved show, an advertiser buying an audience and a producer seeking a first commission are not measuring the same thing. Their interests can overlap without becoming interchangeable. “Stronger” needs a subject.

A coherent cultural system needs more than a tidy selection of what has already worked. It needs room for audiences and makers not yet represented among the successes. That does not require keeping every weak network alive. It does require asking where the experiments go when their former slots disappear.

We can welcome the returning favorite. We should still count the room left for the stranger.