• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, March 6, 2008

Is the CW getting off easy?

Some TV business journalists and columnists are saying the two-year-old network should be held accountable for a bunch of things -- not least of which is its poor ratings.

It was supposed to be the near ratings equivalent of the combined numbers of UPN and WB, CW's predecessors.

The bad news: Total viewers (live plus same day) are down 21% to an average 1.82 million. And, now there are layoffs, as the network is looking to save costs. That's not the direction it was supposed to be going in, say some journalists.

Admittedly, the writers' strike had a big effect, as it did on other networks. But CW wasn't doing all that well beforehand. CW is currently pulling in 700,000 viewers of its core demographics of 18-34 viewers. UPN and WB were doing around 850,000 each -- and both were still losing tons of money.

That's not the math you'd like to see.

What does this say? That maybe CW should have been reconfigured as a half-cable/half broadcast network? As we know, cable networks can keep in the black because of a dual revenue stream.

Just as its part owner, CBS, is aggressively looking to get millions for retransmission agreements, CW perhaps needs it more. But then again, it has to convince cable operators it is a worthwhile addition to their lineups. Maybe a little CW advertising time could convince cable operators -- though stations would probably scream.

And just in case you want to bash only the CW, look around. Don't forget about MyNetworkTV.

After teasing stations into giving them all that local advertising time when it launched -- a whopping nine minutes of local advertising time an hour -- MNTV now wants to take two minutes back. That is already the deal that MNTV has with stations in getting WWE's "Smackdown."

MNTV's ratings are up a bit. But, as experts explain, it is "from a low base" -- now some 843,000 total viewers. By way of comparison, CW gets 1.82 million.

No matter. MNTV realizes things must change. Five minutes of national advertising time per hour isn't enough to buy much network programming -- apart from cheap reality shows.

A better perspective is looking at the combined viewers of the CW and MNTV: currently 2.66 million viewers. This only barely beats out just one of those previous mini-networks: WB, in its final year, was pulling 2.4 million and UPN, 2.3 million.

With math like this, journalists will write business stories. You can't blame them for that .