Nexstar Media Group is making a management change after ending its acquisition of the CW community.
The Irving, Texas-based mostly station group proprietor introduced Monday that it has closed the deal to amass a majority stake inside the CW and that Mark Pedowitz is stepping down as its chairman. Nexstar is placing in Dennis Miller, a former govt from Sony footage tv whose background is in non-scripted programming.
Nexstar agreed in August to amass a seventy five% stake inside the CW from Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount worldwide, which nonetheless personal 12.5% every. The CW was created in 2006 out of the merger of two smaller networks — UPN, which belonged to Viacom, and the WB, owned by Warner Bros.
Pedowitz, who headed the CW community for eleven years, will revive his impartial agency, Pinestreet leisure. Pedowitz beforehand headed enterprise affairs for Disney’s tv studios.
whereas the CW community did not flip a revenue as a broadcast community, it did carry out an environment nice launching pad for packages that generated vital income for its studio owners, who had been ready to promote the sequence to streaming providers and overseas broadcasters.
Pedowitz developed style programming, using properly-recognized properties from the DC Comics universe, to current the CW community the youngest viewers on community tv and a particular mannequin identification. Many CW reveals, which drew small audiences on broadcast tv, grew to become wildly properly-favored on Netflix, the place youthful viewers had been extra extra probably to discover them.
Pedowitz additionally elevated the quantity of real programming on the community, growing it from 5 to seven nights per week. He additionally improved variety on the CW, bringing extra women and folks of colour into its casts and behind the digicam.
“This upstart community with its distinctive mix of programming launched The CW into the forefront of properly-favored tradition and social media,” Pedowitz mentioned in a memo he despatched to his workers Monday. “We made water cooler tv in a multi-platform world. We embraced what the viewers needed and gave it to them.”
Miller is a member of Nexstar’s board of directors. He was chairman of enterprise Media, a agency specializing in non-scripted programming that was purchased to Sony footage leisure earlier this yr. Industrial’s titles embrace “ninety Day Fiance” on TLC, “American Idol” on ABC, “Matchmaker” on Netflix and “The Climb” with Jason Mamoa on Apple tv+.
Nexstar is anticipated to maneuver away from youthful-skewing scripted packages and in direction of extra broad-based mostly fare that is extra probably to be extra appropriate with the ten p.m. native newscasts on its stations.
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