Culture

The CW Gives 'The Flash' Prime Placement on Its Fall Schedule

The CW is hosting their upfront this morning, but before the network parades its new (likely gorgeous) stars, it released a fall schedule, which gives prime placement to its latest superhero venture. 

By Esther Zuckerman
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The CW is hosting their upfront this morning, but before the network parades its new (likely gorgeous) stars, it released a fall schedule, which gives prime placement to its latest superhero venture. The Flash, which gets the Tuesday at 8 p.m. spot, is one of only two new shows to debut in the fall on the network. The other is Jane The Virgin, a show based on a Venezuelan telenovela about a woman who gets accidentally artificially inseminated. It's the rare show for the network that has no supernatural elements.

Read out recap of the presentation below.

Fall Schedule

  8:00 p 8:30 p 9:00 p 9:30 p
Monday The Originals Jane the Virgin
Tuesday The Flash Supernatural
Wednesday Arrow The 100
Thursday The Vampire Diaries Reign
Friday Whose Line is It Anyway? Whose Line is It Anyway? (Encore) America's Next Top Model

Recap

Our best laid plans to live blog the presentation failed with our WiFi in City Center. With only four new shows, The CW's upfront presentation was short and sweet with a lot of filler. It was also the upfront equivalent of a sweet sixteen party.

Guests were given glowsticks as they arrived—The Wire chose a pink one—and were greeted by someone playing what were being called "DJ Drums," which are about as mystifying as they sound.  Alongside the DJ drum player an emcee/singer crooned the likes of Avicii's "Wake Me Up." He also said "booyah" a lot.

Even once the presentation started the random entertainment didn't stop. A performance from Neon Trees was the official start of the festivities. When the programming finally turned to the actual CW programming, the network went straight for what they hope will be big for them, bringing out Arrow's Stephen Amell to intro an extended trailer for The Flash. The network of Gossip Girl is now the network of superheroes, which is the point network president Mark Pedowitz wanted to hammer home. "You might have notice we’re a very different CW than we were a few years back," he said, noting that when he started the network was best known for Josh Schwartz's Upper East Side soap. Pedowitz touted the "highest concentration of adults and men in our audience than ever before." 

Of course, the network also has traded on identifier for another, and has recently been known for its many supernatural and sci-fi type shows. The Flash looks slick and fun, but is quite literally a formula the network has already successfully tried with Arrow. Jane the Virgin, which Pedowitz called "outrageous," diverges from what has become the norm for the network, with the story of a young Latino woman, saving herself for marriage at the wishes of her grandma. Things get complicated when she becomes accidentally artificially inseminated.  It's based on a telenovela, in case its soapy bona fides weren't already proven, but the promo shown at the presentation also makes it clear the show has a sense of humor. Jane and Flash are the only two shows premiering in the fall.  

The network also gave the upfront audience a look at its two midseason offerings: The Messengers and iZombie. The trailer for The Messengers, which has something to do with The Rapture, was basically unintelligible. That said, color us excited for iZombie, which is from the folks behind Veronica Mars, and may just have a heroine that fills the Veronica-shaped hole in our hearts.

Trailers

The Flash

Jane the Virgin

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.