Posted on 07/01/2022 3:28:55 AM PDT by TigerClaws
It feels like Nexstar has been flirting with buying The CW for longer than some of the broadcast network’s viewers have been alive. The acquisition, which two individuals told IndieWire is likely to close next week after the Fourth of July holiday, will cost Nexstar all of $0 for 75 percent of The CW.
Pretty sweet deal, right? It becomes a little more sour when factoring in The CW’s current losses, which sources who spoke with The Wall Street Journal, the publication that first reported details on this round of negotiations, said could exceed $100 million. But that’s the burden Nexstar would be taking on, and the relief for the respective balance sheets of current CW parents Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global.
Spokespeople for Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount Global did not immediately respond to IndieWire’s request for comment on this story. A spokesperson for Nexstar declined comment.
Our readers certainly know The CW, though the channel may have been called The WB or UPN the last time they actually watched it. The CW is a youth-skewing free over-the-air network, a joint venture that was originally created by CBS and Warner Bros. The entities that house The CW’s mom and dad, now named Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global (fka ViacomCBS), would retain individual 12.5 percent stakes apiece under the current terms of the ongoing talks.
The CW as a business had two entities trending in very different directions. As a broadcast network, it’s been losing money. As a content feeder for Netflix and other global platforms, The CW is profitable.
If you don’t know Nexstar Media Group, well, you probably should. The publicly-traded corporation (market cap: $6.69 billion) is the largest owner of local television stations in the U.S. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nexstar owns the most CW affiliates.
Following the deal’s closure, Paramount’s CBS and WBD’s Warner Bros. studio plan to continue creating content for The CW. But not only will The CW have a new majority owner, it will have a new approach — one intended to attract older audiences, like Nexstar’s local stations do. The CW had already been inching that way anyway with rebooted efforts such as “Walker” and “Dynasty.”
Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will keep “several hundred million dollars” in long-tail licensing revenue from previously existing deals, WSJ wrote, most notably from The CW’s lucrative deal with Netflix. A source told IndieWire that nine-figure ballpark was accurate.
How vital has the Netflix pact been? Not only did it bring in huge money for the joint venture, the bingeing of low-rated CW shows on Netflix single-handedly kept series going for additional seasons on the broadcast network.
“All American” is an excellent example. From May 30-June 5, 2022, the 20-episode fourth season of the high school football drama, based on the real life story of former NFL player Spencer Paysinger, racked up 30.64 million hours of viewing on Netflix. That tally counted just six days of availability, and was good enough to rank sixth on all of Netflix that week. The following week, the season came in ninth place on Netflix with 26.69 million hours streamed. Both of those weeks, individually, tallied more viewing hours than Season 4 racked up during its original run on linear television.
During its original run on The CW, “All American” Season 4 episodes averaged 1.062 million overall viewers per week, according to Nielsen; that includes one week of (mostly) DVR-viewing per episode.
“All American” Season 3 was on Netflix’s Top 10 for five weeks, ranking as high as number two. Netflix did not release viewership statistics in time for Seasons 1 or 2. While Netflix’s in-house metric vs. Nielsen’s does not provide a perfect apples-to-apples comparison, it is clear where the majority of the “All American” audience consumes the program. And frankly, without the catch-up opportunity via Netflix, “All American” probably would have been a one-and-done broadcast show that very few people ever experienced.
CW shows that have launched in recent years won’t see the same Netflix bump — or at least, not from Netflix specifically. In 2019, The CW ended its licensing deal with Netflix; new (-ish) shows are instead heading to Warner Bros.’ HBO Max or Paramount Global’s Paramount+. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to monetize streaming content in 2022.
Soon, we may be talking about Nexstar originals in the same way. Nexstar has been moving into content creation, notably with the launch of the NewsNation cable channel in 2020. The media analysts at Wells Fargo see “terminal value,” a term used to mean the value beyond the period for which future cash flows can be accurately estimated, there.
“We think [Nexstar] is looking to balance [free cash flow]/shareholder returns with a focus on content creation which is seen to have terminal value,” they wrote in a note on Thursday about the pending acquisition.
Fireworks to come next week.
CW did the lesbian DC Batwoman show and a bunch of other total garbage. Then insulted the 'toxic fans' who complained about the ridiculousness of the woke garbage they created.
Now Worth: -100 million.
Will these idiots be hired to run other companies into the ground?
Once libs take over the HR department it's a death grip on a company and they'll suck the life out of it until it's worth less than nothing. Amazing.
CW = CBS and Warner Bros. Don’t you love it when they start throwing around acronyms without explanation.
It’s as predictable as the sun rising. Hire woke liberals, watch your stock price tumble.
I am betting more than a few investors make money off this scheme, and that some of the ‘woke’ CEO’s are in on it.
Making a successful company is hard. Crashing one is easy. Why not do it on purpose and make lot of money.
I always thought it meant Cartoon World as so many of their programs originated in the comic strips and “funny books”.
Never watch it.
Now I think of it, the only channel I watch is TCM.
This is a big question for conservatives to ponder: these woke ventures keep losing money, but they don’t seem to care. They care far more about the globohomo propaganda than they do anything else, and they appear to have vast resources to keep this going. Meanwhile, there’s a market for quality entertainment, but it’s not really being met, not like you would think.
The sequence is reverse; they're losing money as the broadcast television medium dies and go woke in a desperate attempt to reach out to anyone that might watch.
It's not "Get Woke, Go Broke"; it's "Go Broke, Get Woke to Slow Down the Inevitable Go Gone".
The Country Western? The whole Country Western? That’s a lot of songs about wives and girlfriends leaving.
What is weststar going to do with that many Chicken Wings? Will they all be mild or hot?
I like both kinds of music ... country AND western!
That’s a reasonable take. The pattern seems to be that they roll out a new show that’s pretty good, gain an audience, then start shoe-horning in their agenda as the writing turns to garbage. Arrow and The Flash certainly followed this pattern. Many series have a strong first season, then start a decline into propaganda.
That's what I thought they were talking about. LOL
As costs go up, the original owners jump to the next venture and repeat the same process.
There's a pattern; new show, new faces in an ensemble cast, viewership drops, show goes woke. Many of those faces don't show up on television again because the other new shows are looking for cheap labor.
These shows, in addition to competing with every other form of entertainment/distraction, are competing with "reality TV" shows that don't pay the cast as actors. The shows are created as a "competition" with contestants, not actors and actresses.
-who will delivery the most loads on the ice road?
-who will cut down the most trees?
-who will get voted off the island?
-who will make the most on their weird delivery?
TCM is about the only thing I watch as well. Most of the rest is garbage.
yep. They had to ruin what could have been very good and successful channel with a built in, automatic audience...had they stuck to being focused on providing quality entertainment instead of pushing a political and social agenda.
Will it be any better under Nexstar management, though?
Amazing how people love to waste money - paying to watch things available for free...both over the air and on the CW app.
“There’s a pattern; new show, new faces in an ensemble cast, viewership drops, show goes woke. Many of those faces don’t show up on television again because the other new shows are looking for cheap labor.”
I think that plays out a lot of the time. The ultimate example is probably Game of Thrones, though that had the added element of source material. It started off as one of the best adaptations from page to screen that I have ever seen. It literally got worse every year until it ended as a woke CGI crapfest that they took an extra year to screw up.
The CW superhero shows seem to have followed a pattern (from what I have read). The writing team that made the first season of Arrow was moved to write the (also good) first season of The Flash, then moved again for the first season of D.C.’s Legends of Tomorrow (which had a first season that was only decent, but it got worse after that). Then, my kids got older and I didn’t have to watch that crap anymore.
Your "big question for conservatives to ponder" is actually quite insightful to a certain degree and it goes to one of the big reasons why I started recording audiobooks and putting them online as free / open source many years ago.
Media companies actively do not want our money. They literally don't want it. They don't want to service/cater to our half of the country. In that regard, it's not that we have a failure of the markets, we have full on neglect. It's refusal, it's not failure, and understanding that distinction is a big deal.
What I discovered way back in 2010 was this:
Here's millions of people marching on the Capital, holding Gadsden Flags, and many more millions at home supporting them. We can see these people, journalists are demonizing them. How many movies and TV shows did you see pop out of the wood work about the Founding Fathers? A grand total of zero.
Why would they ignore such a ready made customer base? In one sense, it's kind of practically begging for it. Now love him or hate him these days, but back then Glenn Beck was at the height of his popularity and his "Founders Fridays" were the one single, one and only attempt to cater to this huge customer base. And the ratings are through the roof. Not a surprise. But with such huge ratings, this market is now proven. What is a surprise is this:
How is it that these companies could ignore such a ready made and proven market?
Well, I had a choice to make in my educational venture. Some people know the Founders. Nobody knows the progressives. I didn't initially like it in the beginning but focusing on the progressives (with some work of the Founders here and there) turned out to be the correct call.
If the market as it actually exists refuses to serve us, so be it. They are not a limitation. We can serve ourselves.
I'll do it. Even if I have to do it for free. I don't care. I'll do it. I can reach more people through media than I can in forums.
Walker is blah. Walker has a gay brother, wow how original! If someone took over CW who was Conservative, and have shows geared towards Americans, you might have a winning network. Reboots are 99% crap...
Thanks for the ping, ProgressingAmerica. I’ll read this.
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