Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 07/14/23

Fisher of viewers. As reported here earlier, the worldwide streaming phenomenon known as The Chosen – which takes a unique episodic approach to presenting the life of Jesus Christ – has found a U.S. broadcast home on The CW as the previously youth-obsessed last place network – now owned by Nexstar – seeks to cast a wider audience net inclusive of all demographics. The premiere episode airs Sunday night at 8:00 PM ET. I spoke with The CW Entertainment President Brad Schwartz about his plan to grow the network and how he hopes The Chosen will advance it.   

JWK: You began your career working for SNL producer Lorne Michaels. I’m wondering what you did there and what that experience was like.

Brad Schwartz: It was wonderful. I was Lorne Michaels’ assistant at Saturday Night Live. That’s where I got my start in television really. Even though I was the low man on the totem pole as his assistant, being able to work close to him, watch him and learn from him basically gave me an MBA in television. It was just a thrilling year of my life. We were making movies – Wayne’s World 2 and Coneheads. We were making a couple of TV shows – Saturday Night Live and Kids in the Hall. Also, the year that I worked for him was the year that Letterman left NBC for CBS and Lorne Michaels was given 12:30 at night and we – I use the we very loosely – created the Conan O’Brien show.

JWK: Wow! That was an eventful time!

BS: Lorne created it and I brought him, you know, water and popcorn.

JWK: That must have been a learning experience. Since then you’ve gone on to a lot of success. You’ve been listed on a lot of lists, including Cable Fax’s Top 100 Power Players, Hollywood Reporter’s Next Generation, Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 Leaders and others. You know the list. Of course, you had a lot of success running Pop TV where you acquired Schitt’s Creek and picked up the reboot of Norman Lear’s One Day at a Time from Netflix which got a lot critical praise. How did all this lead to your new post at The CW and what do you hope to accomplish there?

BS: Thanks for all that. You know, when I got the job at Pop TV – it was originally the TV Guide Network – we rebranded the TV Guide Network to Pop TV and, as you mentioned, our big flagship show was Schitt’s Creek which went on and won more Emmys than any comedy in history and we had six consecutive years of growth. At that time in the cable industry everyone was going the other way. So, it was a great successful time in my career. That whole job began with me and a guy named Dennis Miller being co-presidents together at TV Guide Network.

JWK: And that, of course, that Dennis Miller is not Dennis Miller the comedian.

BS: That is not Dennis Miller the comedian. That is Dennis Miller who is now my current boss – which we will get to at the end of this story.

So, Dennis and I worked together. After he left and passed me the keys to keep it going, we stayed in touch. We remained very close…So, fast forward, years later Dennis Miller is on the board of Nexstar. Nexstar buys The CW. Dennis Miller comes off the board to be the new president of The CW and he and I connected and we chatted about doing it again – “Why don’t we go and build another one?” There was a lot of trust, respect and success that we had together in the TV Guide/Pop TV days and so I jumped at the opportunity of working with him again to take on this new challenge.

JWK: What do you hope to accomplish? How is the new CW going to be different than the old CW?

BS: That’s Part 2 of your question. You know, what’s amazing about The CW is it’s really an unduplicatable asset. There’s only five of these things – ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and The CW. The CW had always done some of the greatest pop culture content of all time. Whether it’s Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, Riverdale, The Flash or Arrow, it’s just had some of the great pop culture shows of all time. We also live in an age today where linear TV is more of an adult medium as opposed to a young adult medium. The CW had always made their mark on incredible young adult content. So, when Nexstar took it over – and Nexstar certainly understands the local broadcast business better than anyone; they’re the gold standard, they’re the largest, they (had) the best-performing media stock price on Wall Street last year (with) more free cash-flow than Paramount, I mean they’re just an incredible company – they were like “Look, we’re broadcasters. We know what works in broadcasting. We own 220 stations across the country. For us to make The CW successful and profitable we need it to get bigger.”

If you want it to get bigger then you need to broaden beyond what The CW always was – beyond just the young adult audience. Of course, we want to hold onto that audience. That’s why you’ve seen us renew three or four of our biggest shows – but to really get bigger and to compete with the other broadcast networks we have to get broader. That is what we want to accomplish. We want to bring new viewers to The CW that maybe haven’t watched it in ten years, twenty years or ever. To do that we need to broaden beyond young adult content to include drama, comedy, sports and big premium unscripted (shows to the network). That’s challenging to do.

JWK: I’m curious why you don’t just rename it The Nexstar Network and start anew with a new name.

BS: That could be a whole separate interview. I think I’m a marketer first. It’s how I view things. I come from marketing. I believe very strongly in brands. You cultivate content together in order to enhance your brand. I’ve rebranded six media networks in my life…Rebranding is tricky. Rebranding can be expensive. Rebranding has mixed results out there in the media world. We have a brand called The CW that’s been around for twenty years. People know it. What I would rather do in this circumstance is make The CW mean something bigger, make The CW more elastic but not change the name. Like I said, that could be a whole other thirty-minute conversation about the pros and cons of that but we really like the name. We think it has a lot of brand equity. Our job is just to make it mean more.

JWK: This being Beliefnet I’m, of course, particularly interested in why you decided to acquire The Chosen for your schedule.

BS: Look, I know (The Chosen creator) Dallas Jenkins and I’ve worked with Jon Erwin, the CEO of Kingdom Story Company. I’ve seen the success that people have when they create really strong content for the Christian audience. It’s a third of the world, as you know.

I think predominantly the audience has been served with lesser-quality content. Historically, that content has not been of the highest caliber. Along comes Jon Erwin with I Can Only Imagine, Jesus Revolution and American Underdog and along comes Dallas Jenkins with The Chosen and actually creates really high-quality, big-budget, well-told, well-acted, well-constructed stories for this audience and it’s huge. It’s huge. I Can Only Imagine is the third-biggest faith film of all time. You know the data and the stats on The Chosen as well as I do. That is a show that in, in my opinion, the biggest hit show in the country that nobody talks about. I believe that, beyond the very passionate audience that has found it on The Chosen app, has found it on the Angel app and has maybe found it on some other streaming platforms, there is still a monster audience out there – especially in the broadcast realm that has yet to hear of it.

If we can expand the reach of that show to new audiences, I think – whether it’s stories (like) The 10 Commandments or Darren Aronofsky doing Noah – The Bible is the biggest IP (Intellectual Property) in the world. You know, we talk about Harry Potter. Harry Potter has sold 500-million copies. That’s cute when (compared) to the five-billion copies that The Bible has sold…That was my reason. I think there is a large audience that has yet to experience this show and I believe it is an incredible high-quality, well-told, well-acted and well-constructed story that anyone would like to watch.

JWK: I’m impressed with your openness – and The CW’s openness – to content providers from outside what some would call the Hollywood bubble. You’re obviously open to faith-friendly programming. Have you looked toward suppliers such as Pure Flix or Fathom Events as possible places to acquire programming? Fathom, as you probably know, does a lot of limited-run cinema events, including movies. Some of them are very good. Are you looking toward any of those sorts of companies?

BS: Pure Flix not so much. Look, one of the biggest hit shows in the history of The CW was 7th Heaven. It’s not like The CW hasn’t dipped their two in faith-adjacent content before. Fathom Events is really interesting. We are in the middle of developing early days of production on some made-for-TV films. These are films that I feel like are – not faith but – family-targeted films. If any of them turn out to be as good as I hope they turn out to be then I totally believe there could be a Fathom Event audience for these types of films – to do like what Dallas has done with The Chosen or what Jon Erwin did the Johnny Cash documentary that they did. The idea (being) that you could take a film put it in as a Fathom Event for a weekend or two. I think there’s a business model there to make some money back. I think there’s an audience there that the majors are missing. Even it if works on a minimal level, it’s great marketing and great exposure for the film to then put on The CW a few weeks later. So, Fathom Events is an interesting one that I am looking at, for sure, just as a business extension.

JWK: I agree with you about the sometimes erratic quality of faith-based productions. I think that the audience that reads this blog isn’t necessarily looking for a broadcast version of Pure Flix but, rather, programming that kind of acknowledges their existence as respectable members of society. I think a good example of that Young Sheldon on CBS. I think that’s the kind of show they like. Is that…?

BS: Not to cut you off but Heartland is one of the biggest streaming shows on all of Netflix.

JWK: So, are those the kind of shows that you’d be looking to do in the future?

BS: You know, I think there is a place on Sunday nights – specifically as counter-programming to football, etc. – that you could build a family night. Whether it’s movies or TV shows, I do believe that there is an audience in broadcast television for family-targeted content. We will start with The Chosen (this Sunday). Hopefully, it works. Hopefully, it finds an audience. If and when it does, I think you would have the proofpoint that you need to go make more. Like I said, it doesn’t necessarily have to be faith or faith-adjacent content but could be, like you said, Young Sheldon-like family-friendly content (so that viewers will) know that there’s a destination on broadcast television every certain night of week – it doesn’t have to be Sundays – where you can go to The CW and expect that type of emotion. I do think there is a strategy there and, for us, The Chosen is maybe the first step into that strategy.

JWK: What sort of programming do you personally like?

BS: Me? I’m a little bit of a comedy nerd – obviously going back to my Lorne Michaels/Saturday Night Live days. That’s why you’ll see on my resume some of my big successes have been (shows like) Schitt’s Creek or One Day at a Time. So, I do love comedy. We have a comedy night at The CW on Mondays this summer and fall.

What do I personally like? My wife and I watch TV together. I think we like things that are fun and edgy. Just finished Based on a True Story on Peacock. I do love The Bear on Hulu. I think my personal taste does tend to lend itself to being very character-based and, maybe, a little on the edgier premium side.

JWK: Going forward, do you see The CW leaning into more acquired programming, co-financing or will you be doing more homegrown stuff?

BS: It will mostly be homegrown stuff but every deal we do needs to have an interesting business model to it. We’re not gonna be a place where we just greenlight five-million-dollar-episode shows. If we want to do a five-million-dollar-an-episode show, we need to find partners. We need to find someone to deficit it. We need to find someone that can put up a minimum guarantee. Maybe we co-produce it with Canada or the U.K. or Australia. If we find a show that we really love and want to do we then have the extra step – or the extra burden – of also trying to figure out a smart business deal to get it done.

So, we have to be a little scrappier. We have to be a little more efficient. The model for us is to compete with everybody (and) to be as big as anybody. We just have to do it with a really efficient type of production model. That can be unscripted – which can usually be done less expensively. It can be co-productions, it can be productions that have international co-financing and – like you said at the beginning of your question – it can be some acquisitions. I would prefer to be creatively involved with the shows rather than just picking up something that’s completely finished.

JWK: Where do you see The CW in five years?

BS: Wow! That’s a great question! I think CBS – which is America’s most-watched network – has ten shows that do eight-million viewers or more. In linear we have two shows that do more than a million. I would love to see us have ten shows that do more than a million. I would love to see us have some shows that get into the cultural conversation like Schitt’s Creek did. I would love to have some shows that get into the quality and award conversation. Not that we do anything for awards but for what I think is a re-imagination – almost a start-up again – that The CW is to get some awards recognition would be really wonderful. Just to be someplace where your out for dinner and you hear people at the table next to you talking about the shows, that we’re proud of what we’re doing, that we’re growing, that we’re competing with titans and that everyone that works here feels excited about being at The CW, feels excited to come to work every day and (about) what they’re working on – and that we accomplish what Nexstar has set us to accomplish, which is to make this a profitable business and a growing business that helps all of our local affiliates thrive.

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.