Hot on the heels of NBC's announcement that The West Wing will not return in the fall, CBS and Warner Bros. announce that they plan to merge UPN and The WB! They're creating a new network, The CW. Presumably this means both current networks will lose at least half the shows they air now. This could affect Smallville, Veronica Mars, Supernatural, Gilmore Girls...I'm betting it means that Smackdown! is gone from prime time broadcast at the very least, since the WWE's deal with Paramount is up anyway.
And it probably means a new Star Trek show has less chance than ever of being developed in the near future, since the new network intends to keep current UPN and WB target audiences...namely, young women. UPN was launched on the strength of Voyager and canned Enterprise when Dawn Ostroff -- who will be head of programming at The CW -- decided to target female viewers instead of the fickle young male demographic. Apparently she believes women don't watch SF; she must not look at Sci-Fi and USA's audience numbers. Hmmph.
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