The CW’s Fall Schedule Only Has One DC Comics Show

It’s a new era at The CW, that’s for sure. For the first time since Arrow premiered in 2012, The CW only has one DC Comics TV planned for its Fall primetime schedule. The sole survivor is DC’s Stargirl, which will air Wednesday nights at 8pm ET. The rest of the DC Comics on The CW (The Flash, Superman & Lois, Gotham Knights) won’t be airing until 2023. If it wasn’t clear before that The CW is going for some sort of big rebranding of its network, it should be clear now. 

Here’s The CW’s primetime schedule for Fall 2022: 

What The CW’s new fall looks like is something more akin to the programming blocks on a streaming service. Monday is the All American block, with the main All American series and All American: Homecoming; Tuesday has Supernatural prequel The Winchesters and the long-delayed Professionals with Tom Welling and Brendan Fraser; Wednesday will get more in the genre lane with Stargirl and Kung Fu; Thursdays  are all cowboy with Walker and Walker Independence; Friday is game night with Penn & Teller: Fool Us and Whose Line Is It Anyway?; Saturday is reality TV with Chris Angel’s Magic With The Stars and World’s Funniest Animals, and Sunday is for procedurals with Family Law and Coroner. 

It will be interesting to see if this new programming model has the intended effect. On the one hand, The CW is throwing all forms of popular TV content at the wall, and even though each of them already has big potential to stick with its core audience demographic, the larger question is whether this varied programming will all combine to create the sense of The CW as a network and a brand. It will be just as interesting to measure what it looks like if each content block draws a sizable audience for itself, and if those individual peaks create a strong ratings impression for the overall network. 

For DC fans, this is no doubt a blow. As stated, Arrow’s premiere in 2012 turned The CW into THE go-to source for superhero TV for much of the 2010s. While Marvel TV programming come in spurts (Marvel Netflix binges) and trickles (Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter), DC and The CW launched an entire comic book franchise universe on TV, complete with epic crossover events.