'Joan' Will Shift to Friday Debuts on CW & Streaming

Since taking over CW, new owners Nexstar have been experimenting with co-producing shows, mostly with the CBC in Canada. However, there have been a few U.K. series: Leonardo, Everyone Else Burns, Joan, and the forthcoming Sherlock & Daughter. However, they haven't fared well. Leonardo barely made a dent. Everyone Else Burns Season 1 was delayed to air with Season 2, and both were canned. Now Joan is being shifted to a new night after it already premiered, shifting from Wednesdays to Fridays, switching time slots with (of all things) Inside the NFL.

As Anglophiles, we here at Telly Visions are usually excited, if not delighted, when a U.K. series we're looking forward to lands an American distributor. However, not all distribution platforms are created equal. A show landing on Netflix is almost certainly to be a bigger deal than one on BritBox, purely due to audience reach; if there's a show snapped up by AMC Networks, it has better odds of finding a fan base on Acorn TV because it has a wider audience than Sundance Now. However, of all the places for a British show to go, actual broadcast networks, like PBS, are all the best bet to have the most expansive marketing and reach maximum viewers.

However, CW may be proving the exception to this rule. The never officially recognized "fifth broadcast network" that formed in the mid-aughts out of the WB and UPN was always an odd stepchild on American television, with ownership split between two major production studios (Warner Brothers and Paramount). It could never be recognized as a true broadcast network because the FCC has an explicit rule that no studio can own two broadcast networks, and Paramount already owns CBS. Moreover, when Netflix made single-studio-streamers all the rage, the CW hindered both companies, who eventually sold it to Nexstar, bringing us to the current situation.