An appreciation of The CW's "deeply mediocre" lineup -- if a sale does spell the end

Mic

"If your back kind of hurts, you fondly remember it as the WB, and its Michigan J. Frog mascot has haunted at least one of your nightmares," says Chloe Stillwell. "Warner Brothers’ foray into its own station began in 1995, and grew into a staple television network for younger viewers into the aughts. In 2006, a merger with CBS rebranded the network as the CW, which it has remained until the news was released Thursday that its parent companies, Warner Media and ViacomCBS, are looking to sell it due to a lack of profitability. I say nay, though. The WB/CW is worth its weight in gold to millennials who were raised by its brand of salacious and candid teen programming. Everything ends at some point or another, but we need to pour one out for the network that was every early 2000s latchkey kid’s solace in a big, scary world. It filled the gap where MTV’s hard-hitting reality antics, Cartoon Network’s LSD strangeness, and the Disney channel’s family-oriented corniness left off. It was formative, for better or worse. I know this might be hard to believe for you younger folks, but we used to have TV channels. Now in the age of streaming, where shows new and old cross pollinate across platforms at will and there’s always something to watch, remembering how we used to get our entertainment feels like a memory from a dream. But as kids, we would memorize station numbers and their schedules. Our shows came on once a week, and if you missed it you were totally F’d around the cafeteria the next day as friends rabidly discussed the latest installment of teen programming that you hadn’t seen. Maybe you’d catch a re-run. And if you were extra bougie, you had TeVo and life was easy. But beyond how the logistics of old school television used to keep us patient and honest, it was the programming of everyone’s favorite network that made millennials the un-woke elders Gen Z loves to mock now." ALSO: Why is Nexstar, the nation’s largest TV station owner, interested in the youngest-skewing linear broadcast network — and why now?