UPN and The WB will be merging to become the CW Network starting this fall.
Here I was, planning to take advantage of actually getting my TV on DVD stuff done on time for once by waxing a bit nostalgic about the newly cancelled West Wing and they dump this on me.
According to the Reuters report the new network will be a "50-50 joint venture" between CBS-Paramount (owners of UPN) and Warner Brothers Television.
Worth noting is the attitudes of the two corporate heads about their existing networks. Les Moonves said, "UPN was approaching a point where we were hoping to break even, and we were getting close." On the other hand Barry Meyer CEO of Warner Brothers Entertainment said, "We saw coming down the pike a challenged landscape to keep (WB) alive." Both expressed hopes for long term profitability for the merged network, which will follow the WB's programming plan of broadcasting Monday through Friday from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern and Sundays from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. with a primetime block running from 7 to 10. There will also be a Monday to Friday afternoon block from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern, and a five hour Saturday morning animation block for a total of about 30 hours weekly. Tribune Corporation has signed its sixteen WB affiliates to a ten year deal with the new network and CBS has done the same with its ten UPN affiliates. Dawn Ostroff, currently head of Entertainment at UPN will take the same role at CW while John Maatta, Chief Operating Officer at The WB will become COO at the new network.
In a press release Moonves stated, "This new network will serve the public with high-quality programming and maintain our ongoing commitment to our diverse audience. It will clearly be greater than the sum of its parts, delivering excellent demographics to advertisers, and building a strong new affiliate body. Additionally, The CW will be able to draw from the creative talent and production resources from the top two television production studios in the business, while also seeking programming from all sources - independent producers or other studios. With this move, we will be creating a viable entity, one well-equipped to compete, thrive and serve all our many publics in this multi-channel media universe."
The new network starts with a wide variety of programming assets to draw upon including: America's Next Top Model, Beauty and the Geek, Smallville, Gilmore Girls, Supernatural, Veronica Mars, Everybody Hates Chris, Girlfriends and Reba. The WWE's Smackdown, which has been a mainstay at UPN, is expected to play a role in the schedule (UPN's contract with the WWE was up for renegotiation).
According to the analysis provided by The Street, "Both WB and UPN have had brief periods of ratings success, with the younger-skewing WB in particular enjoying a period of rising fortune. But neither has achieved ongoing ability to establish itself as a network ratings leader. The result: high TV production and marketing costs and declining audiences for television have put pressure on both networks. Together they should be able to reduce costs and overhead. A merger also brings scale to the combined entity, allowing it to better compete in a world with a fragmented audience." On the other hand Now Playing Magazine's website headlined its coverage "UPN and WB to Merge; Viewers Likely Won’t Notice"
The Big Question of course is what the new network will show. The list of shows that are "likely safe" includes Veronica Mars, America's Next Top Model and Everybody Hates Chris from UPN and Smallville, Gilmore Girls and Supernatural from The WB, with Smackdown's continued availability probably dependent on negotiations with the WWE (it wouldn't break my heart if it weren't there though). The suspicion from a lot of people though is that the programming from the new network will have a high content of WB shows continuing. I think it's also possible that the new network will take the opportunity to clean house and develop the bulk of the new lineup as new shows.
Getting beyond press releases we come to the question of what it all means. There's at least one thing that most people won't pick up on and that is that there is going to be a sudden increase in the number of independent stations in areas where either UPN or The WB have affiliates that are competing with CBS or Tribune owned affiliates of the new network. It's possible that we might see a slight revival of the first run syndication market, particularly since many of these stations will be in the top 25 markets. What does the Los Angeles UPN affiliate show when there are no more UPN shows available to it?
Oh, and the name? It's very pedestrian - it's the first letters of CBS and Warner Brothers. According to BrandWeek.com Moonves quipped "We couldn't call it the WC for obvious reasons."
UPN today announced their Fall 2005 lineup and the shows that have been cancelled. (List and grid of course originally provided by The Futon Critic)
Cancelled: Kevin Hill, Road to Stardom with Missy Elliott, Star Trek: Enterprise, Second Time Around
Retained: One On One, All Of Us, Girlfriends, Half & Half, Americas Next Top Model, Veronica Mars
Moved: Eve, Cuts
New: Sex Lies & Secrets, Everybody Hates Chris, Love, Inc.
Monday
8:00-8:30PM One On One
8:30-9:00PM All Of Us
9:00-9:30PM Girlfriends
9:30-10:00PM Half & Half
Tuesday
8:00-9:00PM Americas Next Top Model (Repeat)
9:00-10:00PM SEX, LIES & SECRETS
Wednesday
8:00-9:00PM Americas Next Top Model
9:00-10:00PM Veronica Mars
Thursday
8:00-8:30PM EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS
8:30-9:00PM Eve
9:00-9:30PM Cuts
9:30-10:00PM LOVE, INC.
Friday
8:00-10:00PM WWE Smackdown!
UPN also has one hour long series ready for mid-season.
Here's a brief summary of the new UPN series:
Everybody Hates Chris is based on the childhood of comedian Chris Rock. Tyler Williams plays young Chris, the eldest of three children growing up in Brooklyn in the early 1980s. Moved to a new neighbourhood and bussed to a predominantly white school by his strict, hard-working parents, Chris has to keep his younger siblings in line while dealing with the pressures of junior high in a new environment.
Love, Inc.: Denise Johnson (Shannen Doherty) is a full service dating consultant. Her company helps lovelorn men (and sometimes women) present the best image possible to just the right prospects for romance. Of course Denise can't seem to find love for herself.
Sex, Lies & Secrets is about a tight-knit group of friends in the community of Silver Lake who have become almost like family. Of course like any family they have secrets that they keep to protect themselves and each other, some of which do more harm than good. Denise Richards, Eric Balfour, Lauren German, Omar Millar, Tamara Taylor, and James Stevenson star.
Comments: UPN is trying to make a big run into Thursday nights by switching WWE Smackdown! to Fridays and putting three comedies on the night. Love, Inc. might work better as a long form series. Nothing really stands out however, and it's rather depressing (when you remember some of the shows that UPN started with) to think that the high points on the schedule are Americas Next Top Model and Veronica Mars (not that there's anything wrong with Veronica Mars) when you consider that this is the network that cancelled Live Shot, Nowhere Man, The Sentinel, and Legend.
Last night saw the season finale of Numb3rs and the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise. The finale of Numb3rs was the sort of episode you'd expect from a series that was pretty much sure of coming back next season. (Network upfronts are coming in the next week or so, but some series look to be confident about returning.) About the most spectacular thing about it was the complete absence of Sabrina Lloyd. She's been seen less in the past few episodes so maybe they're just phasing her character out. Shame on them if they are.
I really want to write about the Star Trek: Enterprise finale though, but first let me just repeat my usual refrain about it being long past time for the team of Berman & Braga to leave the Star Trek Franchise forever and not let the door hit them on the ass on the way out. They should go out backwards and let it hit them in the .... well you get the idea. There, that felt good.
The series finale was a two one hour episodes. The first was the wind up of last weeks episode in which Trip Tucker and T'Pol discover that there's a Human-Vulcan hybrid child with their DNA, created by an anti-alien group "Terra Prime", headed by the often underappreciated Peter Weller. In the episode, the Enterprise crew managed to defeat Terra Prime's nefarious scheme to destroy Star Fleet Command, prevent the signing of a trade agreement between Earth and a number of alien races, and force all aliens off earth. There's the usual amount of daring-do and in a touching note the baby - named Elizabeth by T'Pol and Trip - dies as a result of genetic complications. Phlox however leave the door open for a certain future blessed event when he explains that the cloning process used by Terra Prime was flawed and Human and Vulcan DNA is in fact compatible enough to allow a child to be born and survive.
On the whole that episode would have been a pretty good opener to a fifth season - the end point of a cliffhanger - or even an end the series, but no, someone couldn't leave well enough alone. We had to be treated to a different final episode. We are catapulted six years into the future, when the Enterprise is heading back to Earth to be decommissioned and put into the mothball fleet (a term that originated with the US Navy for ships that have been retained for emergency service but aren't crewed and receive minimal maintenance). Suddenly there's an announcement calling all senior staff to the bridge and we discover that what we're seeing is a holodeck program being run by Commander Bubble Butt - sorry, Commander William T. Riker. Yes they decided that they needed an episode with Next Generation characters, so we got to see William Frakes who appears to have been eating his way out of his depression after Thunderbirds flopped, and Marina Sirtis who really should lay off the Baklava and hit the gym if she wants to wear that uniform again.
The storyline is a disappointment after so many good episodes in the past year. Riker is participating in the Holodeck reconstruction of the final days of the new original Enterprise (as opposed to the original original Enterprise which was Kirk's ship) because he's pondering a decision. In fact it's the decision that he made in the Next Generation episode "The Pegasus", to disobey orders and tell Picard about the illegal tests of a Federation cloaking device that occurred aboard the USS Pegasus. Apparently Troi told him that he could get greater insights about the decision he has to make by experiencing the last days of Archer's Enterprise. The plot there focusses on Shran, who is supposed to be dead but is really on the run. After leaving the Andorian Imperial Guard (and why would he do that?) he fell in with an unsavoury element, who now want him to return something he doesn't have and have kidnapped his daughter to get it. Early on Troi and Riker let us know that Trip doesn't survive, so during the time that the crew are trying to rescue Shran's daughter on Rigel 10 we're wondering if this is when Tucker's going to kick the bucket. In fact, it doesn't happen until after the rescue when the guys who have kidnapped the child (and supposedly only have a Warp 2 ship) suddenly show up on Enterprise and want the Shran and the kid. Tucker does the heroic thing, putting himself in a potentially life threatening situation to kill the bad guys and save Archer. Throughout the episode we are treated with meetings between the Enterprise Chef and several senior crewmembers. Chef of course isn't the "real" Chef but Riker. Troi has told him that since the ship didn't have a counsellor (or a bar tender) people tended to talk to Chef. Needless to say the insights Riker gains all centre on the Archer-Tucker relationship, which gives Riker the answer he needs to decide to trust his instincts and tell the man he trusts unconditionally (that would be Picard) about the secret of the Pegasus. This episode was such a terrible send-off for the show that it is difficult to believe that Manny Cotto did it of his own free will, given the episodes that have come before in this season. The idea had to have come from higher up in the Paramount food chain.
Next year, for the first time in 18 years there will not be new episodes of a Star Trek series. For the first time in its history there won't be a Star Trek series on UPN. Unlike a lot of people I don't think that the franchise is dead. If anything the last season of Star Trek: Enterprise points the way forward. I've said it before and I'll say it as long as anyone wants, the time has come for Berman & Braga to go. It may be true that there can't really be a single vision for the whole franchise. If there ever is a new series (and if UPN gets desperate enough there might be) it may need a new vision, and a different vision from any future movies. The basic concepts are sound - a utopian future (because so many movies and TV shows give us a dystopic vision) and a focus on exploration rather than conflict - so a new show could be led by someone who isn't currently involved. I don't know what comes next, but I hope it's something interesting.
