TCA: Pedowitz On Riverdale Returning The CW To A Genre

There was once a time when series like Gossip Girl and 90210 ruled the roost at The CW and superheroes would get banished to Fridays with little promotion. Now, the pendulum has swung in a different direction, but could the coming of Riverdale be the start of a return to the high school drama genre for the network?

Well, yes, Riverdale is a drama, but don’t discount it as a high school show, Mark Pedowitz stressed this morning at the TCA Winter Press Tour. “We didn’t quite look at Riverdale as a high school drama,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons we’re actually running the original pilot at 46, 47 minutes instead of 43, because we felt it was imperative to show that there were these adult storylines. You can see there is an adult level to it; we looked at it from that aspect,” he continued, pointing out that other shows that have been very popular with young people — Pretty Little Liars and Teen Wolf — are currently in or soon approaching their last seasons, which may open the door for a need for a series of that nature.

“For us, it was very simple,” he said of the decision to pick up Riverdale. “We had grown enough that we could go back into a genre that we thought we’d edge up a little bit and put it as part of our programming mix. We’re really good at it. Based on our marketing, I would say Rick and his team are great at it. It’s a great show. So, you know, we’ll see what happens,” he said, adding that serialized dramas are a priority at The CW.

“One of the reasons we’re doing Dynasty with Josh [Schwartz] and Steph [Savage] is basically to give us more serialized network [shows]. We’re not a procedural network. So all of our series, even our DC shows, are serialized in basis. So we think it’s a great way to go,” he affirmed.

Riverdale premieres January 26 on The CW.