The CW at TCA: It's All About Aggregation - Ed Martin

The executive session with CW President Mark Pedowitz yesterday at the Summer 2012 Television Critics Association Tour would have been right at home last Wednesday during TCA's Online Afternoon, when executives and producers from Yahoo! and YouTube appeared here to discuss their programming. That's because, more than any other broadcast executive who appeared atthis tour, Pedowitz spoke almost as much about his network's digital successes as its broadcast challenges. It seems that many of the network's series that are languishing at the bottom of the Nielsen charts are doing just fine online. Some of that traction has come about via the network's app, which allows users to fully stream episodes of its shows. To date, more than 1.2 million CW apps have been downloaded, TCA members were told before the session began.

Time and again Pedowitz spoke about the performance of his network's series on digital platforms and about the aggregation of television and digital viewing in determining how successful its shows truly are. For example, when one journalist pointed out that the scripted drama series (and Canadian import) "L.A. Complex" failed to find an audience in a short-lived tryout last season and during a subsequent summer run, and asked if The CW was going to play out all of the remaining episodes from its first season, Pedowitz's response was surprisingly hopeful.

"We plan to show all the episodes," he said. "The show does really well for us digitally and in the social media space."

And then there was the question about the fate of the low-rated reality effort "Breaking Pointe." "We're you pleased with how it performed?" a reporter asked. "When will you know if there will be a Season 2?"

"I wish it performed slightly better in the ratings, but one thing I can say is it's a digital online success," Pedowitz replied. "Between CWTV.com, Hulu and our app, we're seeing great digital numbers, and it's under consideration for continuing."

Responding to another question about the network's overall ratings, Pedowitz said, "We look at it through an aggregation. I know I'm repeating myself. We are aggregated across the board with a lot of viewers. The digital streaming numbers on our shows combined with Hulu and Netflix and CWTV.com and the app are astronomical.

"We can monitor or we can measure who's watching us on digital, but it does not count with the Nielsen ratings," Pedowitz continued. "Nielsen is trying to do the best they can. And us, the networks, the advertisers, the affiliates are all looking for an accurate measurement so that every person is counted who's actually watching the show.

"The epiphany I had in December or January was that The CW was an aggregation of all these things," Pedowitz later continued. "Shows tend to play at any time, any place. We're realistic [about] where the audience is. So we want people to view the show. We want people to come there, and if they cannot view it within the live piece, then we want them to come eight hours later because that's when we'll make it available on Hulu or on CWTV.com."

Conversely, a poor performance in the digital space can seal the fate of a struggling show. One critic asked about the serialized drama "Ringer," starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, which was cancelled after one low-rated season despite the network's very vocal enthusiasm for it at last summer's TCA tour.

"I know ratings were one issue, but sometimes The CW will give something time to develop and grow over [several] seasons," the critic said. So why cancel "Ringer" after just one?

"It was a combination of the complexity of the stories, and again, as The CW is an aggregation, it was not performing as well as we hoped in the digital online space and social media space," Pedowitz explained. In addition, in terms of episode orders Pedowitz suggested that less may be more when it comes to serialized drama. "Twenty-two may have been too many [for 'Ringer']," he said, adding that if it had been renewed the network might have ordered "anywhere between 6 and 13."

As has already been reported, The CW this fall will actually televise an original online program that has already achieved a massive following without ever being on television: Joss Whedon's 2008 musical "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog."

"I have been a big fan of 'Dr. Horrible,'" Pedowitz said. "I actually tried to acquire it when I was at ABC Studios for the ABC Digital Player." "Dr. Horrible" will be edited to fit into a one-hour time period (42 minutes, plus commercials). "Hopefully, if Joss does another one, we'll get a crack at doing that," Pedowitz said.

Interestingly, even though online viewing potentially knows no calendar boundaries, The CW has decided to pull back from its efforts in recent years to begin its season early – sometimes as early as the last week of August – and start it later than the other broadcasters. In fact, every new and returning series on The CW will make its 2012-13 season debut in October with the exception of "America's Next Top Model," which begins August 24.

"For a couple years, The CW tried to be the first network that started the season, and that didn't work so well," one critic noted. "Now you're going the other way. You're letting everybody else start, and then you're going to start in October instead."

"We tried, as you know, for many years," Pedowitz said. "Last year we successfully launched three new shows … and then, premiere week came and [our] traction disappeared and we were struggling somewhat throughout the rest of the season. The theory here was get away from the clutter, start in October. It reduces the amount of repeats in the fourth quarter. It also helps the first and second quarter with very limited repeats, which is one of the complaints that everyone had about The CW."