CW Renew/Cancel: A Lesson on Netflix, Plus Let's Talk About iZombie

Welcome to a new installment of the CW Renew/Cancel Watch. Let's take a look at what to go from there.


Final Season
Certain to be Canceled
Likely to be Canceled
Watching
Likely to be Renewed
Certain to be Renewed
Renewed
The Originals
Life Sentence

iZombie


Arrow

Valor




Black Lightning






Crazy Ex-Girlfriend






DC’s Legends of Tomorrow






Dynasty






Jane the Virgin






Riverdale






Supergirl






Supernatural






The Flash

Dynasty: I gotta say, this is the first season I missed a prediction since I missed both Crazy Ex and iZombie during my first season. Although I am more cautious on putting shows in certain cancelation territory, this was still a miss. The most common explanation cited during its renewal was its lucrative Netflix deal. The deal was also said to be more lucrative than Riverdale's was. But let's break that down. We do not know how much money it makes per episode from Netflix itself other than it made enough to get renewed. The exact financial details are not in the public knowledge other than what was allowed to be reported. Netflix also does not release streaming numbers publicly in terms of how well it did internationally. So, I cannot speculate on Netflix other than what everybody was told. As I do think the information is questionable at best due to low domestic ratings linearly and non-linearly, we can go on and on about this all season. But it is not wise to continue with the assumption or explanation that Netflix saved the show. Even if it did, we do not know the exact details and thus it will be a disservice to TVRG readers to provide speculation. Here's what I do know.

Dynasty is the first 100% CBS-produced show on the CW to get renewed for a second season since Beauty and the Beast aired. Since the CW is a 50/50 partnership between CBS and Warner Bros., CBS Studios distributed and produced shows usually get more leeway and patience for ridiculously low ratings than WB shows. This means that the studio with the higher rated shows is WB and the studio with the lower rated shows is CBS. Since there are more WB shows on the air than CBS, there are two different ratings thresholds. Typically if you are produced by CBS and you score low ratings and have some sort of plausible explanation for renewal, you typically get renewed no matter what ratings you get. This is called CBS Affirmative Action. Unless you are No Tomorrow. Now, No Tomorrow was a special case last season in that it was fighting against Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for the renewal but still ended up getting canceled despite being produced in Vancouver. Crazy Ex's critical acclaim gave it a third season while No Tomorrow did not have such luxury. In a sense, profits versus ratings applied to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for both seasons despite being the lowest rated show on broadcast. Now Dynasty has surpassed the title of lowest rated CBS show (the lowest rated overall show on broadcast is Life Sentence), and will live to see another season. Adding on to the CBS studio politics, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin are rumored to air their final seasons next year, so the CW needed one more returning CBS show in the mix. That show was Dynasty. Those of you needing more reasons to explain Dynasty's renewal, including myself, it was clearly renewed for non-ratings reasons. For those still touting the Netflix deal, there is no further need for speculation other than what is public knowledge. 


iZombie: Since Jane the Virgin got renewed for a fifth season, I have to revisit iZombie. The 70-80 episode rule is becoming unreliable at this point, so I decided to test this once again by putting it into the Watching column. Ratings do not warrant another season, but we still have The 100 coming up. Even though it only will reach 58 episodes at the end of the season, will this rule matter? At this point, I think it may be down to the wire for the show. The fact that it was left out of the mass renewal party is strange at best. So, I need to keep an eye on the show to see what happens next.

What do you think about the predictions? Let me know in the comments below!


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