SHILO’S SUPERLATIVES
Most Promising Trailer: Nancy Drew. It looked like a stylish, slightly weird, likely compulsively watchable take on a character right in the CW wheelhouse. The trailer’s score was creepy, almost campy fun, while it did some cool things with its sound editing and direction. I do hope the show only takes some inspiration from Riverdale as far as the visuals, while I wonder about it becoming overly serialized with one case per year and having trouble integrating the supernatural stuff into the more humane drama. But give me a female-fronted CW show with this tone and that adult Scooby Doo cinematography and I’ll happily sample it.
Most Anticipated New Show: I’m more here for Katy Keene than I expected. I’m not a Riverdale viewer and I haven’t read any Archie comics, so I wasn’t expecting much from the teaser that The CW released. But it looked exactly like the type of show I miss them doing – light, fun, frothy, aspirational. There’ve been pockets of that in the Pedowitz era, but they’re few and far between and anything to help the network diversify its tone and content outlook is very appreciated by me. I also think it’s interesting that Nancy Drew looked more like I’d imagined a Riverdale spinoff than Katy Keene, which feels more like a cross between Fame and Gossip Girl. Or the canary in the Carrie Diaries revival coal mine. Fingers crossed.
Best Scheduling Move: I low-key like All American and Black Lightning Mondays. If The CW is this convinced that there’s something there as far as All American‘s social media buzz and Netflix performance, I won’t doubt them despite the show’s weak L+SD and non-linear ratings this season. Getting a show with buzz to 8:00 is a good thing, while I think there’ll be enough compatibility with Black Lightning to create a cohesive night. I do wonder about the impact of being a football drama going up against Monday Night Football, but All American is soapy enough and has enough going for it that I’m not super worried about it.
Worst Scheduling Move: I honestly don’t hate anything they’ve done. Would it be the scheduling I would’ve created were I in charge of the network? Probably not, but I feel like every night is thematically sound and the moves they’ve made make a certain amount of sense. I do think that this should probably be Riverdale‘s last season at 8:00 since its linear numbers aren’t looking as good as they once did, but with The CW finally developing something that looks compatible with it, I’m cool with them getting Nancy Drew sampled this season and then seeing where the lay of the land is in 2020.
Most Likely New Hit: Batwoman is a CW comic drama spun off from the mega-successful Arrow-verse and centered on a character that’s popular in the comic world. Its tone looks to be a little more Gotham-y, which expands what the Arrow-verse can do while still fitting in with the other shows, while it’s something that will easily generate a lot of social media discussion and non-linear interest. If that wasn’t enough, it’s getting to air at 8:00 – a true godsend for any CW show. I’d argue that Batwoman might be the biggest lock of the fall in terms of hitting for its network.
Likely First Cancellation: The CW just made it through a season where the only shows they cancelled were three pre-announced final seasons, so it’s the network I’m most confident won’t have a cancellation before at least pre-upfronts week 2020. With Nancy Drew and Batwoman both based on pre-existing IP and both seemingly likely to get streaming deals, and Katy Keene a spinoff of a show that’s done very well on streaming, I feel like The CW might end up in the same position as they were this season. The only thing remaining to be seen is which veteran would join Arrow and Supernatural as having a victory lap season announced prior to the season beginning.
What I’ll Be Watching in the Fall: Even though I found the first half of the season to be an unbelievable disappointment, Dynasty‘s 2019 run has been pretty solid and I’m excited to see where it goes in season three. I’ll probably end up sampling Nancy Drew because I am nothing if not predictable.
HOW DID WE DO?
So, in predicting the CW schedule in our fantasy scheduling a few weeks ago, who got it the most right?
Giving a point per hour for getting it on the right not, splitting in half if it’s the right night, wrong time slot, Shilo came out on top this time with 6.5 points out of a possible 12, and Craig ended up with 4.5. The CW was pretty unpredictable this year!
For the total across all networks, Shilo ended up with 43.75 points to Craig’s 41.75. That’s 56% accuracy for Shilo, and rounded up to 54% for Craig. Still not too bad!
