Friday, November 5, 2021

You may need a scorecard for all of the CW's changes

 To illustrate how the CW is run by incompetent programmers these days, the network hasn't fully launched its fall schedule, but they're already planning for winter.

The Flash & Riverdale will be partnered for five weeks, November 16-December 14, before going on a 3 month break. Each series will open their seasons with 5 part "event" arcs. 


Grant Gustin (l) as The Flash and KJ Apa as Archie Andrews from Riverdale. Photos courtesy
TV Line via Yahoo!.

"Armageddon", the 5-part Flash arc, will bring back Cress Williams as Black Lightning for one more go-round, among other guests. Over on Riverdale, Kiernan Shipka reprises her role from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for the 5-part "River-Vale" storyline. Being that November is a sweeps period for ad revenues, the network needed to kick-start both shows' seasons with the arcs that will lead into the holiday break.

After that, it gets crazy.

Superman & Lois returns on January 11, and moves up to 8 pm (ET), replacing Flash, while freshman drama Naomi, based on the short-lived DC series of the same name created by Brian Bendis, David Walker & Jamal Campbell, follows at 9. Naomi currently appears in Justice League, currently written by Bendis, so there figures to be some cross-promotion between DC & CW before January.

The Flash, which has led off the Tuesday lineup since its launch, shifts to Wednesdays, starting March 6, where it will be coupled with the returning Kung Fu, while Batwoman & Legends of Tomorrow, which have started their seasons, go on break or finish their current seasons. Riverdale then changes nights again, and moves to Sundays. That means that if Riverdale & Flash have full season orders for this season (season 6 for Riverdale, season 8 for The Flash), their seasons will bleed into the summer months again.

Ye scribe's take: I've felt for some time that Flash has run out of legitimately solid story ideas, and this could conceivably be the final season. Riverdale being shuffled twice in the same season suggests the end is near for Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's dark alternate reality soap as well. There usually is no rhyme or reason to how CW schedules their programming, and if that sounds familiar, well, they had the same problems with children's programming until they gave that up a number of years ago.

Then again, this is why they invented On Demand.

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