The CW's Great Purge Was Four Years Ago — Genre TV Still Hasn't Recovered
Born in 2006 as the successor to UPN and The WB, The CW broke the broadcast mold, zeroing in on young viewers with mid-2000s touchstones like 7th Heaven, Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill, Smallville, and Supernatural.
Remember when The CW actually felt like it was swinging for the fences every night? That era did not end quietly. It ended with a single, brutal day in 2022. And four years later, TV still has a CW-shaped hole it has not figured out how to fill.
The network that made weird, specific shows for everyone
The CW launched in 2006 as the offspring of UPN and The WB. It quickly carved out a niche no other broadcaster really touched: genuinely youth-aimed TV that somehow pulled in the rest of us too. Post-WB, it housed the mid-2000s staples (7th Heaven, Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill, Smallville, Supernatural), then became ground zero for genre TV in the 2010s with The Vampire Diaries, The 100, all things Arrowverse, The Originals, Roswell, New Mexico, Riverdale… the list goes on.
'dare to defy'
That was the network mantra, and yeah, it actually lived up to it. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (born at Showtime, raised by The CW) mashed rom-com with full-on musical theater to tell a messy, human story about mental health. It was never a ratings monster, but The CW let it breathe because it mattered. The 100 stumbled out of the gate, then hardened into a tough, morally gray survival saga. The Arrowverse didn’t just prove superhero TV could work; it made sprawling, comic-booky crossovers a yearly event and pulled off a Crisis on Infinite Earths so big it basically declared almost every DC screen incarnation canon. The production gloss was not always pristine (if you know, you know about the wigs), but the ambition was.
Depending on the night, you could get superheroes, a musical, a telenovela vibe, dark sci-fi, horror, or just plain comfort-TV nostalgia. Yes, the shows skewed young. Also yes, your whole household could watch and actually enjoy them.
Then 2022 happened: the day the axe fell
Nexstar officially took over The CW in 2022. With that came a hard pivot. On May 12 of that year, the network dropped what fans still call the 'Red Wedding' — a cluster of cancellations that took out a chunk of the schedule in one go.
- Already canceled in the weeks before: Batwoman, DC's Legends of Tomorrow
- May 12, 2022 'Red Wedding' cancellations: 4400, Naomi, Dynasty, Charmed, In the Dark, Roswell, New Mexico, Legacies
- More in the months after: Nancy Drew, Stargirl, The Flash, Riverdale
For a minute, four scripted series from the pre-Nexstar days were still standing. But those wound down too, and now The CW is almost unrecognizable, with a single pre-Nexstar holdover left: All American, headed into its final season this July. When that wraps, an era officially closes.
What replaced it
Post-takeover, the game plan shifted to linear-first strategy and sports. Instead of taking big swings on homegrown scripted shows, the schedule tilted toward acquisitions and co-productions — including imports like The Chosen and collaborations like Sullivan's Crossing and Wild Cards — plus a heavier diet of unscripted and live sports. That is a very different identity from the one that built the network’s audience.
Why the gap still feels huge
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the kind of broad-appeal, risk-taking genre TV The CW specialized in didn’t just migrate elsewhere. It vanished. You can find excellent sci-fi, horror, and drama across streamers and cable, sure, but not much that hits that sweet spot of edgy-but-accessible, week-to-week ensemble storytelling you could watch with younger viewers without regretting it five minutes in.
On The CW, the whole family could tune in while Oliver Queen tried very hard not to fail his city. Compare that to HBO ’s The Penguin or Peacemaker — great in their own lanes, but not remotely all-ages. The CW’s vampire/witch/werewolf ecosystem (The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, Legacies) was fizzy, melodramatic, and interconnected. AMC ’s Interview With the Vampire (gearing up for a 'The Vampire Lestat' rebrand) and Mayfair Witches are stylish, darker, and way less woven together. Different goals, different vibes.
The bottom line
The old CW operated as TV’s missing middle — not prestige, not blandly broad, just confidently specific and welcoming. The May 2022 bloodletting didn’t just end a bunch of shows; it erased that middle lane. Four years on, it still has not been rebuilt, and we’re only now realizing how much we lost when the network stopped daring to defy.
What CW show do you miss the most? Drop it in the comments — I’m curious which one still lives rent-free in your brain.