Curated Wreckage

May 12, 2023 2:26 PM

Changes at the CW television network mean original progamming is being scrapped. Instead, the network is turning to importing content from Canada, Australia and the U.K., as well as more reality TV.
posted by sardonyx (61 comments total)

RIP.

Fuckin LOVED the Arrowverse.
posted by kittensofthenight at 2:29 PM on May 12, 2023 [12 favorites]

Canadian Whites
posted by Etrigan at 2:38 PM on May 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

I read this article and immediately had to check that Aline Brosh Mckenna, showrunner of Crazy Ex-Girlfriends, was not the same person as Allie Brosh, blogger and author of Hyperbole and a Half. They are not.

That aside, funny that this is happening at the time of the writer's strike. Such a crazy random happenstance, that.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 2:49 PM on May 12, 2023 [28 favorites]

I've watched a lot of CW programming over the past years (see any of the Arrowverse threads on FanFare). The Canadian content being planned is very, very far away from what the network previously relied on as its bread-and-butter content.

I haven't seen all of the CanCon mentioned, but I can make some comments about a few shows.

Spencer Sisters: mother and daughter detective show where the mother is a fancy romance writer and the daughter is a tom-boy former cop. It's very watchable. If it can find its audience (cozy murder mysteries with light family drama), it has the potential to be a very big hit. Leah Thompson is the big international star.

Sullivan’s Crossing: haven't seen it, but the production values look good in the commercials.

Son of a Critch: family sitcom in the vein of Wonder Years or Young Sheldon with an adult narrator looking back on his childhood. Mark Critch of This Hour has 22 Minutes has based this on his childhood and plays his own father. I've got a soft spot for this show, but I don't think it will fly in the U.S. It's too Canadian and too much based in Newfoundland, with all of the social and political and religious commentary that comes with the geography and the current events of the time. When there was the discussion about Prince Harry's book and the Oprah interview, I was going to suggest that people interested in how the Royal Family is perceived in Canada watch the episode about the visit by Charles and Diana. Malcolm McDowell is the big international star.

Run the Burbs: family sitcom about a Vietnamese-South Asian-Canadian family. I watched one episode, didn't find it all that funny and felt the humour and characters were more cringe than funny, but I might have just hit a bad episode.

Moonshine:somehow I keep missing this family drama (dramedy?) about an unconventional family business. I meant to tune in after Allan Hawco from The Republic of Doyle joined the cast, but I haven't gotten around to it.

Family Law: I only caught a small portion of one episode but it seemed to be a pretty generic, by-the-numbers legal drama involving lawyers who are related to each other and who take on family law cases. Victor Garber is the big international star.
posted by sardonyx at 2:49 PM on May 12, 2023 [10 favorites]

Finally I'll have the opportunity to see the complete Corner Gas! I hope they show the episodes in broadcast order.
posted by rhizome at 2:49 PM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

For kittensofthenight and anybody else who wants to mourn and mock the end of the Arrowverse, feel free to swing by the post for the final season of The Flash where you can read my whining about terrible artificial flowers, questionable wardrobe choices and painfully awful plots and writing.
posted by sardonyx at 2:54 PM on May 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm sure they saw the writer's strike coming, but this has also been in the works for a long time. The Arrowverse shows getting cancelled was in part due to the network not wanting to rent studio space for the shows' production in order to make its balance sheet look better before it was shifted to its new owner.
posted by sardonyx at 2:57 PM on May 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

RIP, pouring one out for Sam, Dean, and Castiel.
posted by Ber at 3:07 PM on May 12, 2023 [11 favorites]

American network television has been scrambling trying to find ways to be progressively more disappointing for years now.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:08 PM on May 12, 2023 [16 favorites]

When the question is "why can't we have nice things on TV?" the answer is always "money".
posted by gentlyepigrams at 3:09 PM on May 12, 2023 [10 favorites]

This probably means the end of the live-action Babylon 5 reboot that was planned for the CW. It may have life elsewhere on cable or streaming, but Babylon 5 really feels like something that belonged as a weekly broadcast over the air.
posted by JDC8 at 3:10 PM on May 12, 2023 [8 favorites]

Yeah, this has been a long time coming. The new owner is actually pretty bad, so imported Canadian shows is a big step up from right wing news content courtesy Nexstar, which was what was expected when they bought the CW.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:10 PM on May 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

Well that’s a long way of trying not to say “Writer’s Strike”
posted by Bottlecap at 3:13 PM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

More Heartland!
posted by clavdivs at 3:22 PM on May 12, 2023

Hah, maybe the meaning of CW will be retconned to refer to the content available on the channel moving forward: from the *C*ommon*w*ealth...
posted by gofordays at 3:25 PM on May 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

Run the Burbs is the project that Andrew Phung did after Kim's Convenience, and I have been wanting to see that.
posted by eckeric at 3:32 PM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've never understood the appeal of the CW comic book spinoffs, or twisted retreads like Riverdale. But I'm old and weird.

Guilty pleasure: Whose Line Is It Anyways? It's apparently having its difficulties.
posted by Artful Codger at 3:38 PM on May 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

We finished Legends of Tomorrow a few months ago and are on season 2 of Arrow, so we still have a few years to catch up.
posted by signal at 3:56 PM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Are you on the episode where the associate of Arrow unexpectedly gets their own superhero status?

Oh wait, there are like 21 of those.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:03 PM on May 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

"more reality TV"

Oh good.
posted by doctornemo at 4:25 PM on May 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Well, I'll miss Superman & Lois if it goes, but The Flash's last few seasons were the hottest of hot mess and I hate The CW for cancelling Legends.

A few of these imports look watchable. I'll give them a try. But I don't give the CW more than three to five years to live, honestly.
posted by humbug at 4:30 PM on May 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Superman and Lois has taken a very mature and interesting turn this season. I give them huge props for what they're doing. I'm not sure how they'll be able resolve the story line, so I'm watching with curiosity. I also think the network should have kept Legends on the air and killed The Flash, but I'm not in charge of the network, so my opinion doesn't matter.
posted by sardonyx at 4:37 PM on May 12, 2023 [7 favorites]

FTA:

The CW, it’s worth noting, was never designed to be a profitable network, but rather a platform for homegrown originals that CBS Studios and Warners could profit directly from sales of their foreign and streaming rights. The CW previously had a $1 billion output deal that saw all of its originals stream the following season on Netflix. That deal ended when both studios opted to send their respective programs to their own streaming platforms, Paramount+ and HBO Max, while also keeping foreign rights.

So it sure sounds like a lot of this is thanks to - once again - content producers looking at Netflix & other streaming services and going "whoa shit, look at all the money they're making, we need to start our own walled garden and be content providers, too!"

Meaning we're all one step closer to the day when the whole house of cards collapses because everyone gets tired of paying $9.99 a month to a dozen different services.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:39 PM on May 12, 2023 [16 favorites]

The streaming services are all collapsing except for maybe Netflix. There is so much money to be made in licensing and they've all decided to try to get the money directly from the consumer, and that's just not working. And they're all sitting on catalogs that they don't have available on their services but they also aren't licensing, so they have money sitting in a closet unclaimed. The whole thing is ridiculous and we're going to see major changed in the next year or two.

Right now everything is starting to move toward ad-supported free streaming services like Pluto.

This means we're just going back to the model of how things used to be, only on-demand, with no curation and a lot of bullshit to wade through.

Welcome to the new yesterday.
posted by hippybear at 4:54 PM on May 12, 2023 [23 favorites]

I'm glad SUPERNATURAL got out when it did then. That is, years after it should have.

(I loved that show.)
posted by brundlefly at 5:12 PM on May 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Moonshine: somehow I keep missing this family drama (dramedy?)

Definitely a dramedy, bordering on just straight up comedy. It's pretty decent. I got to work on it as an extra since it was shot in Nova Scotia, and I enjoyed it. It could do with maybe 20% fewer plotlines.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 5:13 PM on May 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

Meaning we're all one step closer to the day when the whole house of cards collapses because everyone gets tired of paying $9.99 a month to a dozen different services.

I wish it was still $9.99. Most of them are dangerously close to breaking the $20 threshold these days.
posted by rhymedirective at 5:18 PM on May 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

rhymedirective: I wish it was still $9.99. Most of them are dangerously close to breaking the $20 threshold these days.

Now they cost that much AND show ads anyway. Remember you paid for cable because there were no advertisers?
posted by tzikeh at 5:48 PM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

Enjoyed Son of a Critch and eager for S2, but really struggled with Run the Burbs and gave up at the end of the first episode (if we even made it through)
posted by stevil at 6:29 PM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm just going to say that I love Diana Bang, who was most recently on an episode of The Flash. The whole thing about the cancelling of 'Y the Last Man' is extremely frustrating and I hope that maybe in the future things will work out better.
posted by Quonab at 7:30 PM on May 12, 2023

I've seen Spencer Sisters... it's about the most laid back murder show that it's possible for a murder show to be.

However, it's only 10 episodes in the whole season. You can't fill that much programming time with shortened Canadian series.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:35 PM on May 12, 2023

DirtyOldTown: "Are you on the episode where the associate of Arrow unexpectedly gets their own superhero status?

Oh wait, there are like 21 of those."

We're at the one where one character scolds another until they shape up and start doing things the right way. And also Oliver ignores his friend's advice and then realizes they were right all along.
posted by signal at 8:03 PM on May 12, 2023 [12 favorites]

You mean the one where someone explains that they have to hide their dangerous volunteer activity from their friend/family member in order to "protect" said friend/family member, even though friend/family member is already in danger but doesn't know it so doesn't do anything to protect themselves, until they are threatened, kidnapped, or targeted by a Bad Guy who is able to do that easily because said friend/family member had zero clue that they should be at all careful?
posted by amtho at 11:03 PM on May 12, 2023 [8 favorites]

No, I mean the one where the villain who seemed dead returns to target Arrow through his family.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:28 AM on May 13, 2023 [9 favorites]

Nextstar. == Waystar? It would be cool to have Jeremy Strong/Kendall Roy to come out and hype all the new unscripted material and LIV golf, complete with a verse or two.
posted by drowsy at 7:04 AM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Joking aside, the clever thing about the Arrowverse was that it completely understood that an ongoing superhero story was essentially a soap opera and it pitched itself at that tone and structured itself in that fashion. It was the best and worst thing about it, but it knew what it was and that kept the engine running.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:05 AM on May 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

American network television has been scrambling trying to find ways to be progressively more disappointing for years now.

We got rid of cable about five or six years ago and frankly haven't missed it at all. We can sort of tune in a few broadcast channels using a digital antenna but we generally don't bother.
posted by octothorpe at 7:24 AM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

We only watched Supergirl (the final episode of which was way too fanservice for my taste), but the crossovers with the rest of the universe were always fun.
posted by Night_owl at 7:42 AM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Any good US network show will end up streaming soon enough anyway, and even the better ones don't create enough buzz that you feel like you're missing out to wait.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:45 AM on May 13, 2023

We get several Canadian and US stations (including the CW) with a homegrown HDTV antenna in the attic, and we pay for Netflix, and that's enough. We recently took a new Internet package and they threw basic cable at us as well, for free... and we've never used it; the antenna gets more stations.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:47 AM on May 13, 2023

If you want to add more streaming services on the cheap, try Gowd.com.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:02 AM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

from /.
US Pay-TV Subscriptions Fall To Lowest Levels Since 1992

TV providers in the U.S. collectively lost 2.3 million customers in the first quarter of 2023. "With the Q1 decline, total pay-TV penetration of occupied U.S. households (including for internet services like YouTube TV and Hulu) dropped to 58.5% -- its lowest point since 1992," reports Variety, citing a report from MoffettNathason. "As of the end of Q1, U.S. pay-TV services had 75.5 million customers, down nearly 7% on an annual basis."
posted by aleph at 8:29 AM on May 13, 2023

But what will happen to all the witness protection people who have been hiding out on CW shows certain that no one will ever find them?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:31 AM on May 13, 2023

Sad about this, the CW was *the* network for bullshit teen dramas for a long time now. Girls can't have anything.
posted by subdee at 9:40 AM on May 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

I really really wanted to find a streaming service I liked while on an extended business trip for the last 5 months. They're all crap. Between NHK free streaming video* and occasionally renting a movie on Apple movies, I was happy enough that none of the big services had anything I was willing to pay for on an ongoing basis.

And possibly there IS good stuff, but they are TERRIBLE at convincing me with their "here's why you should subscribe" pitches on their websites. The program choices I can see are just promoted garbage.

* recommended:
How to be Likeable in a Crisis
Kiriko's Crime Diary
posted by ctmf at 10:33 AM on May 13, 2023

I'm a few pivots away from going back to all piracy, all the time.
posted by signal at 11:26 AM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm a few pivots away from going back to all piracy, all the time.

It's been a while since I dipped my toes into the Bay, but I'm wondering if there are better interfaces now or is it all like it was ten years ago still?
posted by hippybear at 3:00 PM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

ooohhh, yeah.
posted by clavdivs at 5:34 PM on May 13, 2023

Son of a Critch

We watched the show up here in Canada (it's on CBC) and liked it as a family. I think maybe a closer comparison might be Moone Boy rather than Wonder Years personally. Malcolm MacDowell who plays the grandfather doesn't try to do a Newfoundland accent which probably helps his character. Notably, one of the things that pops up in the series is that the Critches are Catholic and as I'm just a little older than Mark Critch there's an episode where they talk about the Mount Cashel Orphanage sexual abuse scandal which really resonated with me. I'm not from Newfoundland but as a Catholic kid in Canada? That was a seismic event. I knew lots of my peers that would cite Mount Cashel as the day they stopped being Catholic.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:20 PM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

As reported by Jensen Ackles, The Winchesters has been canceled after one season. I didn't have any hope for this show but got sucked in because More Supernatural. That said, I actually stuck with this show and it totally grew on me, especially after I realized that the best character stories were not John and Mary. I appreciate that it totally became its own thing, but comporable to the original. I do like how the first season wrapped up most of the storyline but left lots of room to continue.
posted by indexy at 6:24 PM on May 13, 2023

That's part of what I meant about Critch not really working in the States. You can say "Mount Cashel" in Canada, and it's pretty much understood what the story is and its implications and undertones. Americans just don't have the same short-hand and familiarity with our culture, and while the rest of the world is expected to know everything about the U.S. and get all of that country's references and pain points and political history and jokes, the reverse isn't true.

A lot of what makes Critch work (at least in my view) is that the show assumes a collective Canadian consciousness and experience. Yes, it explains the situations young Mark and his family find themselves in, but those stories are built on the foundations that have created the country we live in today. IIRC, the Critch episode didn't explicitly name Mount Cashel, it just alluded to the fact Marks' family was uncomfortable with him contemplating becoming a priest. The subtext was that his parents and grandfather were upset about the abuse that was coming to light but it wasn't spoken about openly. (Unless there's another episode you're referencing that I didn't see.)

Now, if CW wanted to run Hudson and Rex, I could see that being a much easier sell, even if the quality of the show doesn't compare (despite Rex being a very good boy).
posted by sardonyx at 8:53 PM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

So... I remember when BBC America actually was real BBC shows, each night of the week, with a real primetime schedule of shows we'd never see here. And we LOVED it!

It's possible that the CW manages to resurrect itself as Canadian Watch or something and becomes a new BBC America with its own legion of fans.

That will eventually degrade into any Star Trek episode that has ever featured a Canadian actor and a lot of Anne Murray music specials.
posted by hippybear at 9:10 PM on May 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

I've spent the last decade (really, from the point where Netflix began to debut seemingly fifteen new shows a week) wondering what alchemy could possibly make it profitable to produce a hundred times more programming than any human could ever watch in a lifetime. I know that's only part of why TV networks are completely falling apart now (and I'm not even figuring in the writers' strike), but surely the glut of shows must be a factor in it. It all feels like a pyramid scheme that's finally caving in.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:27 AM on May 14, 2023

A lot of what makes Critch work (at least in my view) is that the show assumes a collective Canadian consciousness and experience.

For me the Cashiel episode sold me on the show but I think you're likely right with that show - I can't think of too many current shows that embrace their Canadianess as much. The second season had an episode where the kids go to St. Pierre - how many Americans would know that there is a little island of France off the coast of Newfoundland? Incidentally, the radio station the dad works at is a real station and it played a role in exposing the scandal to a wider audience so it is good that they at least said something.

In anycase Americans have embraced British and Irish shows (Derry Girls as a recent example) why not Canadian shows?
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:08 AM on May 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm an American and I know of St. Pierre (and Miquelon) because that's where the only use of the guillotine in North America was! Super common knowledge. It's on my to-go list.
posted by rhizome at 3:07 PM on May 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

The only use of the guillotine in North America.... thus far.
posted by hippybear at 4:35 PM on May 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

But what will happen to all the witness protection people who have been hiding out on CW shows certain that no one will ever find them?

That's a good joke, and a few CW shows actually hit the 0.0 rating, but generally the least popular CW show has a far larger audience than any streaming show, and streaming services also lost subscribers in the last quarter as streaming growth stalled.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:24 AM on May 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

I swear what passes for "super common knowledge" at MeFi isn't at all what I'd consider "super common knowledge" in the non-online world.
posted by sardonyx at 8:31 AM on May 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

More on CW's changes, this time via Variety: The CW 2023 Upfront Takeaways: Superheroes (Mostly) Fly Away While Acquisitions Rule — For Now

posted by Ashwagandha at 11:29 AM on May 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

> In anycase Americans have embraced British and Irish shows (Derry Girls as a recent example) why not Canadian shows?

Letterkenny has a definite following, although it's a lot more niche than what Derry Girls achieved. Certain clips from it have been very popular on tumblr.

Of course the biggest embrace of Canadian TV has been the plethora of sci-fi shows whose production is based in Vancouver but which don't have much onscreen indication of Canadianess.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:07 PM on May 19, 2023

That’s true, the CW could just become the new home of Stargate SG-1 reruns and still get a consistent fraction of the viewing audience.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:01 PM on May 19, 2023