CBS Corp. and Warner Bros. launch their new television network tonight with the latest installment of the Tyra Banks' contest, "America's Next Top Model." But in the coming months, the CW must do something trickier than strut down a runway in 4-inch stilettos: It must make money.
That mandate was set this year by CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves. It's a feat that the network's two predecessors -- the defunct WB and UPN -- were never able to consistently achieve. Throughout their 11-year histories, the rival operations together lost nearly $2 billion in their struggles to find a winning strategy. In January, the companies decided to cut their losses and agreed to form a new network with their most popular shows.
Although CBS and Warner Bros. no longer will have to scratch and claw for the same audience of teenagers and young adults, viewers these days still are not an easy catch. Internet sites such as YouTube and MySpace have become the coolest destinations around.
The CW has "got to build an identity and a sense of community," said Shari Anne Brill, programming director for ad firm Carat.
That could be difficult given the confusion generated by the consolidation. "We have a big challenge ahead of us," said Dawn Ostroff, the former head of UPN who is the CW's entertainment president. "Our first goal is to bring the viewers into the CW tent -- bring in the audience that has always been there."
Although many of the CW programs already have a following, many viewers probably won't know where to find them. That's because the merger triggered a domino effect across the country as dozens of stations orphaned by the shutdown of UPN and WB scrambled to fall into line behind either the CW or an alternative prime-time \o7telenovela\f7 network put together by News Corp. The CW will be available in 93% of the country.
The spine of the CW will be made up of TV stations owned by CBS and Tribune Co. Chicago-based Tribune, which publishes the Los Angeles Times, owned a minority interest in the WB network but won't have a stake in the CW. CBS owned UPN.
The station shuffle could frustrate some viewers with well-worn habits. For example, instead of flipping to UPN for "Top Model" or World Wrestling Entertainment's "Smackdown," fans of those shows might have to channel surf. In more than half of the country, former UPN viewers will have to switch to a channel previously occupied by the WB for their shows. This is the case in Los Angeles, where the CW will air on Tribune's KTLA-TV Channel 5. In a quarter of the country, viewers looking for such WB stalwarts as "7th Heaven," "Smallville" and "Gilmore Girls" will have to turn to the old UPN channel. Some viewers will find the CW on a channel that was neither a UPN nor a WB affiliate.
