Dawn Ostroff Expected To Leave The CW

The CW entertainment president Dawn Ostroff is expected to step down at the end of the season, according to sources with direct knowledge of her thinking.

A formal announcement is not expected to come until after next month’s Television Critics Assn. conference in Pasadena. Ostroff’s contract is up in June and network sources say she has informed both CBS Corp CEO Leslie Moonves and Warner Bros. Chairman and CEO Barry Meyer that she will likely leave the position. There is no discussion of a replacement yet.

For now, Ostroff will continue to lead the CW, which will launch a new unscripted series, Shedding for the Wedding, in February. She’s also looking at pilot scripts and plans to address ad buyers at the network’s upfront presentation in May.

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  1. I know, 7th Heaven over Everwood was flat out ridiculous. Too many shows outlived their welcome at the expense of shows that still had life in them, or pilots that were promising but didn’t get a spot on the schedule. I know she interferes a lot with the shows on the network. It’s obvious she prefers a certain type of show (usually rich teenagers living ~fabulous~ lives) and doesn’t understand the ones that aren’t like that. (Even Jensen Ackles said as much, that she doesn’t understand their show…) I think that’s why Life Unexpected changed so dramatically this season…

  2. Life Unexpected felt like an old school WB show to me which is why I fell in love with it. While I love Gossip Girl, Supernatural, and Vampire Diaries… those are the only shows I watch on the network. I don’t think we’ll ever have another Dawson’s Creek or Felicity again… and that’s part of the reason I fell in love with the network initially.

  3. I really loved Life Unexpected last season. Definitely old school WB, like you said. However this season has been very different. The network was definitely interfering, probably as a condition of their pick up this season. But the Lux character in particular has done a total 180 in my opinion. I really don’t see last season’s Lux hooking up with her teacher, taking advantage of Tasha, etc… Even her wardrobe changed. She had a quirky style last season with all those weird hats and now she’s all about tiny dresses and for some reason was the only girl at basketball practice with her tatas falling out of her shirt…? All of the changes this season just alienated a lot of people that watched last season and it didn’t help the ratings any, since the show was cancelled anyway. The great thing about The WB was they allowed their shows to find an audience and grow organically. They had a lot of variety, while The CW just finds a hit and then tries to remake it over and over. I wonder how different the CW would have been if the WB pres had taken over instead of Ostroff from UPN? The WB gave us years of great shows. All UPN gave us was Veronica Mars and I’m pretty sure that was a fluke…

  4. lol you and I are on the same page. 🙂 I completely wrote off Veronica Mars when I first heard about it because it was on UPN. I still have no idea how that happened. It was a brilliant show and the original format with the season long arches I thought were brilliant. I hated that they changed it in season 3. I loved that show because it wasn’t dumbed down… that I had to catch every episode. And while Season 3 was still good, I just saw a decline of overall quality because the storylines couldn’t organically evolve like you mentioned… all because CW told them to essentially dumb it down. I’m a little behind on Life Unexpected, from what I saw this season I can definitely see your comments. I understand the ultimate goal is high ratings so they gotta do what they gotta do to keep the numbers up so they can keep selling ads, but I believe there’s better ways to do it, and shows do need time when they’re not on CBS or ABC or any of the other networks that have much higher numbers. Shows have to have to time to grow, you’re completely right.

  5. I’m several episodes behind on Life Unexpected as well. The ones I’ve watched I pretty much had to force myself to do it. There have been a few bright spots but the rest has made me want to pull my hair out… Such a shame because it was really enjoyable last season. The only thing I ever watched on UPN was when they got Buffy and Roswell from the WB. I was skeptical about Veronica Mars too but heard so many good things about it that I had to check out the pilot. Was completely shocked to find out UPN had picked up a quality show! But season three was the worst season like you said… because once again they tried to make changes to a show to appeal to more viewers and get ratings. It just didn’t work. You can’t alienate the audience you have to get new fans, because whatever new fans you get are just going to fill in the gaps where the old fans left! The ratings system is incredibly broken anyway because it is reflecting an older generation. It’s already based on estimates as it is so the numbers are always going to be off. They just recently started counting DVR numbers but only a certain amount of days, so that isn’t reliable either. Then they don’t really take into account the fact that people watch shows on the network sites, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, etc. So how can they say a show “only” has the ratings that Nielsen counts? UGH. So, so flawed.