The CW will finally turn a profit sometime in 2026, parent company Nexstar‘s CFO, Lee Ann Gliha, said Monday.
Echoing sentiment from Nexstar execs team in recent months, Gliha said the former 50-50 venture between the owners of CBS and Warner Bros. has found its footing even if it is breaking even later than initially expected. In 2022, Nexstar took a 75% stake in the broadcast network, with Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery each retaining 12.5% stakes.
At the time of the deal, execs projected 2025 as the year of break-even, outlining a top-to-bottom revamp of the network. The company took control of the network for no up-front consideration, and instead by agreeing to take on The CW’s debt. In the intervening years, the hour-long scripted dramas that were longtime staples have been replaced by live sports and unscripted fare. (All American, one of the few holdovers from the previous era, recently got renewed for an eighth and final season.)
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“We’re getting there,” Gliha said in an appearance Monday at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference. “We started with a very, very negative business, and quarter after quarter, year after year have been improving it.”
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In 2025, she said, profitability will increase by 25% over 2024 levels, and in 2026 “we will achieve profitability at some point during during the year.”
The corner has been turned by “more than halving” the network’s programming costs, Gliha said. At the same time, total programming hours have gone up by 40%, with sports now accounting for 40% of the total.
The variable that wasn’t known at the time of the CW transaction was sports rights, with The CW moving aggressively to license LIV Golf, NASCAR, college football and basketball as well as the sports-adjacent WWE NXT. While Nexstar CEO Perry Sook favors the term “Moneyball” when describing the company’s approach to sports rights, the sector has inherent volatility.
“We feel very proud of what we’ve done so far” with The CW, Gliha added, and “the profitability discussion only tells you part of the story.”
Coupling the network with an industry-leading number of CW affiliates is another key strategic goal of the acquisition, the exec noted.
Owning The CW enabled Nexstar to “bring back a number of those affiliates onto Nexstar stations, and that’s been very profitable for us,” Gliha said. “So, when you look at the sort of totality of everything, it’s been a good deal for us.”
Not sure how they are interesting to anybody. They do 1-2 scripted every six months – maybe 2-3 shows per year with a bunch of non-scripted that seems to be lazily generated.
well the sad thing is I remember when the cw had good storytelling and it was an escape for teenagers and young adults now it has nothing but sports and no original programming only imports it has hurt the southern economy of NC greatly
WOW… Paramount only cancelled Colbert for not making money.
Good thing for CW they only own a small part now. 😂😂😂😂
There isn’t anything left on CW to watch anymore. 😥
“we feel very proud” …. of destroying the livelihoods of all the writers/casts/crews who made this business what it is
glad we can now program sports
While the network is spending less on third rate sports rights vs. expensive scripted shows, local stations made more revenue with their local news or even paid programming. These financial analysts need to look under the hood.
Congrats to Nexstar for taking a boutique network that took risks with original programming and turning it into a dumpster fire built to leach off people who don’t know how to watch a streaming app.
That’s right. Original programming that was expensive and that no one watched. Niche, younger-demo programming that they didn’t care about, or want to purchase yet another streaming ap. Nexstar did the right thing. Perry Sook got it right again.
Do you understand that The CW existed to allow WB and CBS studios to make more shows they could sell internationally and that The CW was actually insanely successful for both parent companies?
If it was insanely successful, why did they sell it?