I finished reading the book entitled Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall Of The WB and UPN. This was a really interesting book that followed the inner workings of both networks from beginning to end. I was a huge WB fan and looking back on it, I’m just about positive that most of my TV viewing over the last ten years belonged to the WB. What I always liked about the WB was that they were so great in promoting themselves as a network instead of just a network with shows. They would do the amazing network promos with all of their stars in it. I guess my introduction to the WB was Dawson’s Creek. I saw the promos airing for the series premiere of the show and thought that I definitely ought to watch the first episode. After the first episode, I was hooked on that show (and completely in love with Katie Holmes, LOL) and the story of the show was a lot of fun.. That was the first of many WB shows that I would get hooked on over the years. Several more would follow later that year. I definitely spent a lot of time watching shows on that network and seeing it go was just really bizarre. With UPN, I honestly just never got into too many shows on that network. I could probably count the number on one hand with the shows that I watched on UPN with Veronica Mars leading the pack. When I heard about this book, I figured it would be a lot of fun to read and to learn about the inner workings of both networks and also could get an idea of just what in the world happened as to why these networks are no longer around especially the very successful WB? The book is written by Suzanne Daniels, who was formerly the president of entertainment at the WB, and Cynthia Littleton, who is the deputy editor of news development over at Variety. The WB and UPN launched at basically the same time and were bitter rivals through their existence. Both had very different results for the most part. The WB had a better journey than UPN for sure. Two all time favorite shows of mine are Buffy and Dawson’s Creek which are covered big time and given all kinds of credit for launching the WB to that next level. The book talks about how both shows were gotten together and how several within the network fought to get the shows. The WB found the target audience to go after when seeing successes of those sorts of shows. It was fun to read how some of the shows got going including Buffy, Dawson’s Creek, Felicity, Charmed, Smallville, Gilmore Girls, 7th Heaven, and more. I thought I’d share some stuff about the WB shows instead of more of the UPN stuff cause, well, I’m biased. LOL. Funny story about Amy Sherman-Palladino, who is the creator of Gilmore Girls. The book talks about how she came into the network pitching ideas for half hour comedies. She mentioned that she had thrown the idea around of doing a different spin on a mother/daughter relationship. Daniels talked about how they loved that idea and pushed Palladino to do it. Palladino left the meeting knowing that she now had to work on this story of what would become Gilmore Girls. The idea came together pretty quickly but the network didn’t expect it to be a big hit especially in its timeslot on Thursday nights in the first season. It surprisingly held its own against Friends and Survivor. It was moved in its second season opposite of Buffy on UPN and defeated Buffy in the ratings. You know it had to be discussed and the hair cutting before season two of Felicity star, Keri Russell, is touched upon in the book. Did the hair cut end up cutting the ratings? Well, that topic will be debated for a long time to come but Daniels does point out that she thought the hair cut made the character of Felicity look too much older and that the appeal of Felicity was a young fresh faced girl starting her life out. For me, I loved Felicity in the first season. I watched some of the second season but started to get away from the show. I am not sure why I did but it just happened. The first season was great stuff though. The book talks of how Smallville might not have happened if they hadn’t had such trouble getting the rights to produce a Batman series instead. The pitch for the pilot of Smallville went over big with the network. Fox made a bid for it but the WB matched it and was not about to let it get away. The power struggle of Buffy going to UPN was really put over as the start of the downfall for the WB. It appears that no one wanted Buffy to leave the WB including people on both sides whether it was the network or the show. It was something that had to happen as the studio was wanting more money for the show. They do mention about what was talked about at the time with that if the WB decided to cancel Angel during the two year contract with Buffy and UPN that UPN would be obligated to bring Angel over to UPN as well. UPN was plagued with battles between partners and too many people trying to make decisions. UPN also had the problem of seemingly trying to figure out what audience to target. It’s amazing at how many shows that UPN turned down that they could have had. One of them was Survivor. I had heard rumblings about that over the years but had forgotten that as I was reading the book. To be fair though, the reason that Survivor wasn’t brought on to UPN had more to do with battles within the network partners than it did as a programming decision. UPN wanted Survivor but they couldn’t get the money or commitment to Mark Burnett that he was wanting and it caused a lot of frustration within UPN especially when it became a huge hit on CBS. WWE is given a ton of credit for helping UPN and giving them an identity on the target audience that they wanted to go for. UPN built a lot of their programming around the young male audience following wrestling. The addition of Smackdown to UPN was known to be a strong move especially with how strong wrestling was in 1999. The move of wrestling to UPN was highly underrated by Jamie Kellner of The WB of what WWE could do for UPN. I found that ironic considering that Kellner was the one that canceled World Championship Wrestling on TBS which killed the sale of WCW to the Fusient Group who decided not to buy the company with there being no TV. It was odd that toward the end, UPN started to climb and become a force while the WB was free falling and having troubles that UPN suffered through most of its time. Too many people trying to make too many decisions and it became the downfall of the WB. The book goes into the failures of the WB with several shows that they thought would be hits including Birds Of Prey, Jack and Bobby, Related, and many more. Birds Of Prey got some discussion with how that show was a failure really before it began. The audience was big for the premiere but the ratings dipped following that. Among opinion at the time, there was definite excitement about the show but many viewers didn’t like what they saw and never came back. In fact, I have a couple of friends that checked out the premiere and hated it vowing to never watch it again. I didn’t seem to hate it as much as everyone else did but I also hadn’t followed it in the comics either. The WB was looking so much to change their image that they did away with their frog mascot which was the personality of the network. Yeah, looking back on it, the decisions of the WB near the end really made no sense and that was probably why there were fewer shows that I was watching on the network at the end as I had been years earlier. It was really ironic that the WB ended up being the one to close its doors after they were winning the battle for so long. One thing that I really enjoyed at the ending of the book was the coverage of the final gathering of the WB crew, that built the network, getting together on the final night of the WB to see the network off. If you don’t remember, the WB signed off with showing some of their best shows including Buffy, Angel, Dawson’s Creek, and Felicity. They didn’t want to pick any shows that were moving on to the CW or ones that had just ended. It was really a special night to watch as a viewer reflecting back on good times of watching the network and reading about their gathering to see what it was like from their point of view was special as well. There were some things left out of the book that I would have liked to have seen covered. As I said, they spent a lot of time on the Buffy move over to UPN but nowhere was there a mention of Roswell also moving from WB to UPN at the same time after the WB canceled it. In fact, Roswell is not mentioned at all in the whole book which was disappointing as I would have liked to know what the WB reaction was to the fan campaigns that saved the show after its first season. Then, the fan campaigns that saved the show as UPN picked up. Another show isn’t discussed much and that is Angel although they spend a lot of time on Buffy. I was hoping to learn more about what the thinking was in canceling Angel but it isn’t touched upon. From what I gather in the book and what I gathered then, the WB was really getting desperate in developing new hits that they started cleaning house on old shows. That was basically the excuse given at the time that infuriated Angel fans including myself especially coming off such a strong season. Buffy was clearly coming to an end in season seven but Angel clearly had more stories to tell. The book also didn’t cover what I thought was big moves by the WB at the time and that was the addition of bringing over ABC’s Sabrina The Teenage Witch and then getting a up and coming star, especially with the teen viewers, in Amanda Bynes on a sitcom with What I Like About You. So, why did the WB close up shop? How did UPN end up making a comeback and end up basically being the control in the merge to form the CW? What went wrong? Well, there are a lot of factors that go into answering those broad questions. This book does a good job of telling the story and answering those questions. It is also a fun book to read to think back on all of these great shows and learn how the shows got started. If you were a fan of the WB or UPN or are actually just a fan of the industry in general that likes to hear about the inner workings in television, I highly recommend the book.
About the Author
