The WB

• 1. Introduction

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  The WB Television Network launched on the 11th of January 1995, with Michigan J. Frog - a classic Warner Bros. cartoon character - hopping onto American television screens as its official mascot. Animator Chuck Jones drew him live on air, while Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck argued about which of them should have the honor of launching the new network. It was a playful beginning for something that would become, for a generation of teenagers, the place where their favorite shows lived.

  For eleven years, The WB carved out a very particular niche in American broadcasting - a network that bet heavily on young viewers, on teen drama, on the idea that a demographic being ignored by bigger networks was worth chasing. It would produce some of the most talked-about television of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then, in September 2006, it went dark forever. What made it distinctive? What drove its biggest successes? And why, after those successes, could it not survive?

• 2. Why a New Network

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  The Federal Communications Commission's April 1993 decision to repeal the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules - known as fin-syn - set off a chain reaction in the television industry. Those rules had prevented networks from owning the programs they aired, which had protected independent studios from being squeezed out. When fin-syn fell, studios like Warner Bros. Television worried that networks would stop buying their shows and simply make everything in-house.

  Warner Bros. was not alone in reading that threat. The WB's main competitor UPN was born from the same fear at roughly the same time. Both networks looked at what Fox had done since its October 1986 debut - capturing audiences that the Big Three had underserved - and concluded there was room to try again. The success of first-run syndicated shows like Baywatch and Star Trek: The Next Generation in the late 1980s and early 1990s also suggested that audiences would find new programming if it found them.

  On the 2nd of November 1993, Warner Bros. Entertainment formally announced The WB Television Network, with the Tribune Company taking a minority interest. Tribune brought something crucial to the table: a group of independent television stations in major cities that needed a network identity. Tribune signed its New York City station WPIX and its Los Angeles station KTLA to carry the new network - two of the biggest independent stations in the country. To run the venture, Warner Bros. recruited Jamie Kellner, who had served as president of Fox from 1986 to 1993, alongside Garth Ancier, who had been Fox's programming chief from 1986 to 1989.

• 3. Building from Scratch

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  Tribune's Chicago flagship WGN-TV presented an unusual early arrangement. The station had concerns about carrying network programming while maintaining its existing sports commitments, so rather than becoming a traditional affiliate, WGN's national superstation cable feed would carry The WB to homes in markets where the network had not yet found a local affiliate. It was a way of filling in the map while the network slowly signed up stations.

  The network's original ambitions were scaled back considerably before it even launched. Early planning had called for a multi-year expansion to seven nights of primetime programming. What actually launched was far more modest: a single two-hour Wednesday night lineup running from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time. The WB's first programs were predominantly Black sitcoms, and four of the five shows that debuted in the network's first nine months were renewed: The Wayans Bros., Unhappily Ever After, The Parent 'Hood, and Sister, Sister. The fifth, Muscle, was canceled after one season and replaced by Sister, Sister, which The WB had rescued from ABC following its cancellation there in the spring of 1995.

  On the 17th of August 1995, Tribune formalized its investment by acquiring a 12.5 percent limited partnership interest in The WB for $12 million, with an option to increase that stake to 25 percent. The network added Sunday programming for the 1995-96 season and launched the Kids' WB children's programming block in September 1995, featuring Warner Bros. animated series that had previously run on Fox Kids or in syndication - including Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. Kids' WB targeted children aged 4 to 12, while the main network aimed at the 13-to-34 range.

• 4. The Teen Formula

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  Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuted as a mid-season replacement in March 1997, and its premiere delivered the highest Monday night ratings in the network's brief history. Based on the 1992 film of the same name, the series attracted not only teenage viewers but new advertisers looking to reach that demographic. The WB's executives took note.

  What followed was a deliberate pivot. Fox had long been the destination for teen television with shows including Beverly Hills, 90210, Party of Five, and Parker Lewis Can't Lose. As Fox began chasing older viewers with programs like Ally McBeal, The WB moved into the space Fox was vacating. The network's signature series of that era was Dawson's Creek, which debuted in January 1998 to what were then the highest ratings in The WB's history. The show made stars of its four lead actors - James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams, Joshua Jackson, and Katie Holmes - and quickly became the most-watched program on the network among teenage girls. Produced by Columbia TriStar Television, it also boosted companion series like Buffy, which launched on a new night of programming in January 1998 under the brand "New Tuesday."

  7th Heaven, an Aaron Spelling-produced family drama centering on a reverend and his family, saw an 81 percent increase in viewership that same season. Then came Felicity, starring Keri Russell, and Charmed, also produced by Aaron Spelling and co-starring Alyssa Milano, Holly Marie Combs, and Shannen Doherty. Charmed premiered to 7.7 million viewers - a network record at the time - while Felicity drew 7.1 million. Both records would eventually fall to Smallville, which debuted in October 2001 with 8.4 million viewers. For one season, the 1999-2000 broadcast year, The WB was the only major broadcast network to show gains in total audience viewership across every key demographic.

• 5. Peak and Erosion

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  The single most-watched episode in The WB's history aired on the 8th of February 1999, when a 7th Heaven installment attracted 12.5 million viewers. That number proved to be the high-water mark. By the 1999-2000 season, the network had dropped to sixth place among all major broadcast networks - behind its direct rival UPN - losing 19 percent of its household audience.

  Network executives pointed to a specific decision as a major cause: Tribune's October 1999 choice to remove WB programming from the WGN superstation cable feed. Tribune's reasoning was that the network's national distribution was now large enough to make the national feed unnecessary. The practical consequence was that The WB lost access to roughly 10 million homes overnight. The WB 100+ Station Group, launched in September 1998 to serve the 110 smallest Nielsen media markets via a cable-only distribution system, had been growing, but it could not immediately replace that lost reach.

  The programming side of the business was also changing. Shows like Popular and Roswell had premiered strongly but then shed viewers rapidly in their second seasons, and the network canceled both. Flagship dramas Felicity and Dawson's Creek were also losing audiences. Network executives understood that they could no longer rely on the tastes of young teenage girls alone and began pushing toward more family-friendly and broadly targeted content. Gilmore Girls, which debuted in 2000 and struggled in a Thursday time slot competing against NBC's Must See TV, found its footing after moving to Tuesdays in 2001 and remained in that slot for six seasons. Reba, starring Reba McEntire and launching in October 2001, was arguably the network's most successful comedy and became a cornerstone of a new Friday night sitcom block.

• 6. The Final Years

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  Michigan J. Frog was retired as The WB's mascot in 2005. David Janollari, the network's president of entertainment, explained the decision at the network's summer press tour in July 2005, saying the frog was a symbol that reinforced a young-teen image the network was trying to move away from. The problem was that retiring the mascot did not change the underlying ratings picture.

  Between November and December 2005, the network laid off approximately 40 employees. Viewership was down 12 percent by November 2005, and the network expected to lose roughly $35 million during the 2005-06 fiscal year. During the 2004-05 season, The WB had finished behind UPN in the ratings for the first time in four years, and both networks then fell behind Spanish-language broadcaster Univision in the 18-34 demographic. High-profile drama launches - Birds of Prey, Tarzan, Jack & Bobby, The Mountain, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Just Legal, the Marta Kauffman-created Related, and the Rebecca Romijn vehicle Pepper Dennis - all failed. The three shows from this period that proved viable were One Tree Hill, Beauty and the Geek, and Supernatural, but their ratings could not approach the peaks of the Dawson's Creek era. Dawson's Creek itself had ended its run in May 2003.

  On the 24th of January 2006, CBS Corporation and Warner Bros. Entertainment announced they would shut down both The WB and UPN and merge their best programming into a new network called The CW. Seven WB series were selected to make the transition: 7th Heaven, Beauty and the Geek, Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill, Reba, Smallville, and Supernatural. The WB aired its final night of programming on the 17th of September 2006, with a five-hour block called The Night of Favorites and Farewells. The closing montage featured stars from across the network's eleven-year run, and its final image was a silhouette of Michigan J. Frog - retired the year before, so shown only as a shadow - taking off his hat and bowing. The network's final statement read: "For 11 years, you brought us into your homes. We made you smile and tugged at your heart. And now, we say goodbye. From all of us at The WB, thank you."

• 7. Life After Broadcast

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  Warner Bros. revived the WB brand as a streaming website, TheWB.com, which launched in beta testing on the 28th of April 2008, and officially opened on the 27th of August 2008. The site offered ad-supported, free-to-stream episodes of shows from the original network's run, including Gilmore Girls, Smallville, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson's Creek, and One Tree Hill. Its audience skewed female, with data from comScore Video Metrix showing that 62 percent of visitors were women.

  The site also commissioned original short-form web content from television producers including Josh Schwartz and McG. Each of these short series ran for ten episodes of five minutes each. McG's Sorority Forever premiered on the 8th of September 2008, and had accumulated more than 7.3 million views from TheWB.com and partner sites by 2012. Clothing retailer H&M sponsored the series and had its clothing worn by characters on screen. The site drew around 250,000 unique viewers per month, according to tracking data cited by Mindshare.

  Two of The WB's biggest original shows, Charmed and Felicity, were absent from the streaming site. Distribution rights to Charmed were held by CBS Television Distribution, while Felicity's rights belonged to Disney-ABC Domestic Television. The WB website shut down in December 2013, closing the book on the brand after more than eighteen years of use. Supernatural, the last surviving WB-originated series to air on The CW, ran until the fall of 2020 when it completed its fifteenth season - by which point it had outlasted the network that first put it on the air by fourteen years.