Ratings surge as The CW finds its footing

The CW is, after years of struggles, finally in the big league. Fresh off of renewing 'The Originals', 'The Tomorrow People' and 'Reign', the network broke its own records last week. More importantly, for the first time multiple shows outperformed their competition.

The CW launched in 2006 following a merger of The WB and UPN with shows like ‘Veronica Mars’, ‘Supernatural’, ‘Smallville’, ‘7th Heaven’ and ‘Gilmore Girls’. New shows like ‘Gossip Girl’ and, later on, ‘90210’ aimed at white teenage girls with their parents credit cards. The problem was that these girls weren’t watching live, seemingly, and the audience for those shows largely consisted of grown-up males. Both shows were cancelled last year and from the initial offering only ‘Supernatural’ remains. In March, the network, led by Mark Pedowitz who took over from Dawn Ostroff in 2011, announced The CW would aim at a broader audience. Its flagship show was ‘The Vampire Diaries’ but newby ‘Arrow’ showed enough potential to order more similar themed shows.

The spin-off from ‘The Vampire Diaries’, ‘The Originals’, is doing well on Tuesdays with ‘Supernatural’. The new show improves its ratings weekly and the veteran manages to bring in new viewers besides its core audience. Last week saw the best Tuesday for the network in four years. ‘Arrow’ has become a rock on Wednesdays and now outpaces three million viewers. Which, of course, isn’t much compared to the twelve million AMC pulls in with The Walking Dead, but it’s more than The CW is used to. A lot more. For its fifth season, ‘The Vampire Diaries’ leads the way for the network. On one of TV’s toughest nights, with the eight hour block barely successful for any network and anything after 9pm battling for millions of eyeballs, the vampire show beats FOX and ABC in the demo. A first for the network, who spend much of its existence as the black sheep of the network family.

It’s clear the fantasy-genre is working for The CW. The world of live viewing is shrinking and the exodus of viewers to cable is all but over. It’s surprising that a niche network as small as The CW manages to grow. Some areas don’t even show The CW and prefer local networks. On the other hand, the big four, especially FOX and NBC, dropped some balls concerning scripted fair. The CW seemingly picked them up. The shows are being 56% more streamed than last year, with mobile viewing growing to 194%. Those are less impressive numbers in the world of advertising, but the viewers seem to know where to find the network. And for the first time ever, the network seems to have found its viewer.