When Warner Bros. and CBS announced the merger of the WB and UPN on the morning of Jan. 24, 2006, the industry was shocked. There had been no rumblings that it might happen, as the two sides behind the deal somehow managed to keep it a secret.
\n\n“Even then there weren’t many surprises that you could really pull off,” says Dawn Ostroff, who was president of UPN, and after the merger, became the CW’s entertainment president. “Nobody expected it. Those two networks had been competitors for 10 years, going after the same audience and had really been at each other’s throat. People were astonished!”
\n\nNow, the CW has hit its 20th anniversary — living twice as long as its predecessors. And although the network has evolved under its new Nexstar ownership, for most of those first two decades the CW was known as the home for young adult-oriented series, including “Supernatural,” “Gossip Girl,” “The Vampire Diaries,” “Arrow,” “The Flash,” “One Tree Hill,” “Riverdale,” “Jane the Virgin,” “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and “All American” — which just wrapped as the final drama from that two-decade era.
\n\n“The CW was always a place where you knew that the people loved the stories they were…
Original source: https://variety.com/v/tv/