The CW is changing its course and putting more of its content into its own hands. Its first shift seemed outright risky. While Hulu was one of a fe proven safe places for content to live and be discovered by those who watch TV without a set schedule CW made a bet on itself that people would seek out its hot DC comics based shows on its own app. So it fashioned one of the earliest pure AVOD based streaming services. The CW App. And boy has it been a success.
The CW basically made a bet that while none of its shows could win their time slots they could make enough money in the days following their broadcast via people using their app to catch up later. And it did. The CW even went as far as to put new content on 6 days a week. That just meant that they could justify more shows on the schedule to fit into the streaming channel.
This did not mean the CW was abandoning streaming heavyweights as it made a deal with Netflix to stream all of its “Arrowverse” shows as soon as their runs were over on the network. That meant that viewers could skip the season and watch it all commercial free on Netflix over the summer. But the deal worked out as CW continued to grow its numbers and viewers. Eventually you could watch a CW show without seeing the exact same commercial twice in a row.
Well, now the CW is entering a different stage. Maybe we can call it self-actualization. The CW’s newest shows like Batwoman, Star Girl and Nancy Drew are not available on Netflix. Their seasons are finished but viewers can still find them on their home app for a while. And better yet, they can see the full season of the shows as well. This was a big departure from the policy for the already established shows that saw only the last 5 aired episodes available for streaming.
In fact this is still the case for The Flash, Black Lighting, Supergirl, and Arrow. But the new shows will still pull in the commercial bucks for CW until the two DC based series take their places at HBO Max and the already cancelled Katie Keen sets up shop at CBS All-Access.
