The CW Finally Turns a Profit — Three Years After Axing the Arrowverse
Teen dramas, vampires, and superheroes couldn’t save The CW’s bottom line: by the time Nexter Media Group took control in 2022, SEC filings show the network was hemorrhaging $300–$400 million a year on just $370–$405 million in revenue.
The CW used to be the place you went for teen angst, vampires, and people in leather fighting crime with lots of hallway speeches. It was also a financial mess. Now, the network says it is finally on track to make money again. The turnaround is real, but it came with a total identity swap.
The money whiplash, and how Nexstar steadied the ship
When Nexstar Media Group took control of The CW in 2022, the numbers were ugly. SEC filings showed the network was bleeding between $300 million and $400 million a year while only bringing in around $370 million to $405 million. That is... not a sustainable business model.
"We are getting there. We started with a very, very negative business, and quarter after quarter, year after year have been improving it."
- Nexstar CFO Lee Ann Gliha
The plan, according to Nexstar, pays off starting in 2025, when The CW is expected to flip to profitability for the first time in ages.
How they made the math work (and what got lost)
The short version: The CW stopped being The CW as you knew it. In the streaming era, those long-running, mid-budget, 22-episode superhero and genre dramas started to feel outdated and expensive. Nexstar swapped that playbook for cheaper, faster wins.
- Scripted-to-cheap pivot: Fewer original scripted series, more low-cost unscripted, live sports, and acquired shows.
- Catalog cleanout: Most of the old-school CW lineup was cleared out to cut losses.
- Financial reality check: In a world of streaming saturation and superhero fatigue, the new mix is simply cheaper to produce and license.
Does it feel less like The CW that built its name in the 2010s? Yeah. But it is the version that keeps the lights on.
The Arrowverse rise, wobble, and slow fade
Give credit where it is due: when big-screen heroes were dominating theaters, The CW made shared-universe storytelling work on TV. Arrow laid the tracks, The Flash sped things up, and for a while, those annual crossovers were appointment viewing.
When did it start slipping? Depends who you ask, but a lot of fans point to The Flash season 3 or Arrow season 4 as the moment the cracks showed. The shows began leaning hard on the same rhythms, and the differences that made each one pop early on got sanded down by formula.
Meanwhile, the late-2010s brought in a new kind of comic-book TV: shorter, tighter seasons with a premium feel. Netflix rolled out its Defenders corner with that less-is-more approach, and suddenly 22-episode CW seasons felt stretched thin by comparison. There were flashes of course correction (Arrow season 5 still hits), but the larger trend line was a slow, mostly downward slide.
The Arrowverse did last roughly a decade, which is no small feat. But the network around it didn’t evolve fast enough, and the business side eventually forced a reset.
Where to watch, and your turn
Arrow and The Flash are currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S. Drop your favorite Arrowverse show in the comments — and yes, Legends fans, I know you have thoughts.