The CW
American broadcast television network
The CW Network, LLC, commonly referred to as the CW, is an American commercial broadcast television network that is controlled by Nexstar Media Group, which holds an 81.1% ownership interest. The network's name is derived from the first letters of the names of its two founding co-owners, CBS Corporation and Warner Bros. (which operated as a division of Time Warner at the time of the network’s founding). Nexstar acquired a 75% controlling stake in the network on October 3, 2022, with Paramount Global (now Paramount Skydance) and Warner Bros. Discovery, the respective successor companies of CBS Corporation and Time Warner, each retaining a 12.5% ownership stake. By June 2026, Nexstar had upped its controlling stake in the network to 81.1%, leaving Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery with 9.45% each, respectively.
The CW debuted on September 18, 2006, as the successor to UPN and the WB, which had both shut down that month. Its first two nights of programming—on September 18, 2006, and September 19, 2006—consisted of reruns and launch-related specials. The CW marked its formal launch date on September 20, 2006, with the two-hour premiere of the seventh cycle of America's Next Top Model.
“The CW” enters the record as american broadcast television network. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what American, broadcast and television can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The CW” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, American, broadcast and television provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q212252. VIAF identifies the subject as 123013172. The Library of Congress control number is no2017080906. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2022, 2026 and 2006.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “The CW” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.