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thefifthnetwork · 6 days ago

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About This Project

The Fifth Network is a project where I watch The WB and UPN on a 30 year delay. The WB and UPN were both attempts to launch a fifth broadcast television network in the United States in 1995 following the success of Fox (the fourth broadcast network) in the prior decade.

While a single fifth broadcast network might have been successful given the TV landscape of the late 90s, the two simultaneously-launched fledgling networks largely ended up competing with each other rather than challenging the Big 3 or Fox. While both networks had some successful shows, they constantly lost money, and both threw in the towel in 2006 after 11.5 years, replaced with The CW, a new single fifth network co-owned by Time Warner and CBS (the final owners of The WB and UPN, respectively).

The Project

Who are you?

My name is Jen Lastnameredacted (she/her). You can follow me on Tumblr @nullpointerintime or on Bluesky @nullptrintime.bsky.social.

Is this a nostalgia thing?

Nope! I was only 10 when The WB and UPN ended, and I didn't watch anything on either network while they were actually on the air. Prior to starting this project, the only UPN shows I had watched were Voyager and Enterprise [1] and the only WB show I had watched was the first season of Supernatural [2].

Why then?

I find this period of TV history fascinating. It's a transitional period where there was clearly more demand for TV shows than the Big 3 could fulfill (as demonstrated by the success of Fox and various first-run syndicated shows), but TV itself was also changing as you started seeing more serialization in stories and eventually fully serialized shows.

Maybe a single fifth network could have found a sustainable place in the TV ecosystem, but the hubris of media executives launching two new networks ultimately doomed them both. By the time they got their act together and merged in 2006, the broadcast landscape was firmly established as a Big 4 (now including Fox) and cable networks were now also producing their own series.

Like its parents, The CW found modest success with niche audiences [3] but continued to constantly lose money. Sports seem to be the only thing people are willing to watch live these days, so maybe pivot to live sports that The CW's new ownership is making will pay off? [4].

Meanwhile, the whole cycle has repeated with streaming, as Netflix became the Fox that demonstrated the new market and then every other media company assumed they could replicate that success with their own streaming service even if they all launched at the same time.

Anyway... another goal of this project is to force myself to watch shows without bingeing them. In August 2023, I started watching Survivor, and by the end of the year I had watched all of Survivor. Shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer have been on my list for forever, but I don't want to just watch all seven seasons in a blur. This project forces me to slow down while also giving me a sampler of a wide variety of other shows I might not otherwise watch.

Will you watch everything that aired on these two networks then?

Definitely not. For one, it's literally impossible, as there are some shows where I'm unable to find a source to watch them today. Aside from that, I do expect to end up watching most of what aired for the first year or so while both networks were limited to just a day or two of programming each week. As the schedules expand to more days, I'll probably continue watching roughly the same amount each week and be more willing to drop shows that I'm not feeling.

These are the rules I'll generally try to keep myself to:

I should watch a least a couple hours of programming each week, unless everything scheduled is either unavailable or a rerun of something I've already seen.

I should watch at least one episode of each show that aired on The WB or UPN and is available in some form. This will typically be the pilot, unless the pilot is unavailable and some other episode(s) are.

For shows that last more than one season, I should generally check in with them at least once per season, even if I'm not watching otherwise. This rule is relaxed for reality shows.

This whole project is supposed to be fun though, so I reserve the right to change these rules if they become too restrictive. No guarantees that I actually finish all 11.5 years either. If I finish this project I'll literally be 40 when it's done. Even if I'm still fully enjoying it, it's possible that it becomes too much work to continue depending on what else is going on in my life. If this project becomes a chore rather than something I enjoy...

When are new recaps posted?

A recap post of what I watched in the preceding week will be posted when it's Saturday thirty years ago, since neither network ever scheduled anything in primetime on Saturdays (even The CW only started scheduling Saturdays in the past few years).

This means that recaps will initially go out on Tuesdays in the present day. Due to leap years and 30 not being a multiple of 4, this will switch between Mondays and Tuesdays in March of every even year.

The new networks didn't expand to Thursdays and Fridays until Fall 1998, so posts may occasionally go up earlier if I finish a week's writeup early.

How strict are you about watching week-by-week?

I won't watch any episodes from beyond the week I'm currently on. A large part of the motivation for this project was to avoid binge watching, so I plan to be fairly strict on this.

That being said, I may occasionally watch ahead of the actual 30-year gap in order to build up a buffer before some weeks where I know I'll be traveling or otherwise too busy. Posts will still go up 30 years later, and I'll make sure to finish one week's watching completely before moving on to the next one. I expect this to be particularly common with summer reruns where there is less to watch and it's easier to just batch weeks together in my actual watching.

Within each week, I'm giving myself flexibility to watch in whatever order works best to allow for things like coordinating watching a particular show with friends, or leaving shows I'm marginal on/have already seen until the end of the week if I have time.

What's your spoiler policy?

Since I'm watching week-by-week anyway, I won't even know any spoilers for future episodes of most shows, but for the few shows I have watched before, I'll try to avoid any explicit spoilers. I may discuss vague spoilers around the direction of shows to the extent I'm aware of them. How long each show actually runs is obvious from the embedded schedules, so that's completely fair game.

I'm watching 30-year-old shows here, so I don't expect to completely avoid spoilers, but I'd appreciate it if you don't send explicit spoilers for something I'm watching directly to me. Things like "you'll really like where this show ends up going" or "you should definitely make sure to watch this episode" are great though! I'd prefer if you don't tell me bad things about the future direction of shows I'm enjoying though. Let me be disappointed when I get to the bad stuff rather than preemptively telling me something sucks.

The Website

While I'm cross-posting on Tumblr, my posts about this project primarily go up on my website, which includes interactive schedule elements that can't be included in Tumblr posts.

In addition to the specific elements embedded in these posts, the site also contains a fully interactive schedule for the entire runs of both networks, which you can browse here.

The Tumblr versions of each recap post will include text-based versions of the relative schedule entries, with links to the interactive versions on the site.

What's included and what's not?

Every primetime schedule slot for The WB and UPN should be filled, and I also filled The CW's schedule for the rest of 2006, as well as most airings of most WB/UPN shows that continued on The CW for the rest of their run. Initial airings of episodes that premiered on another network and later re-ran on The WB or UPN are included in infoboxes, but won't appear on the calendar.

The following is not included:

anything that aired outside of primetime (8-10 PM on weekdays; 7-10 PM on Sundays)

any shows or specials that premiered on The CW in 2007 or later

any continuations of WB/UPN shows on other networks, including airings of episodes that were ordered for WB/UPN, but never aired on them

new episodes of WB/UPN reality shows on The CW in 2007 or later

Supernatural season 6 and later (I didn't feel like adding all 15 seasons, especially given only one season aired on The WB, and season 5 seemed like a decent stopping point).

some reruns of other WB/UPN shows in 2007 or later

Where-to-watch info is added on an ad-hoc basis. I did a cursory search for streaming and DVD availability of all shows, but I've only searched more extensively for shows that I will be watching soon. All streaming info is for the United States; if you live outside the US, you'll need to look up availability on your own. If a given show is available on multiple services of the same type (paid, subscription, and free), I may not include all of them, especially for shows that I won't get to for a while, given availability changes regularly.

Links to taped episodes on YouTube or the Internet Archive are only included when I'm unable to find a legal streaming service or in-print DVD. I don't host pirated content on this site, but I don't have any qualms about linking to it when it's the only way to watch it.

Where did the data come from?

All schedule data was manually compiled by me from a variety of online sources, particularly TV Tango, IMDb, TheTVDB, and Wikipedia. These webpages by Aaron Greenhouse were also useful references.

When sources conflicted, I made judgement calls/guessed to decide what to include. I'm fairly confident that I got the airdates and times for most first-run episodes right, but reruns may be less accurate. Some reruns only list a show rather than a specific episode. If you have evidence that I got something wrong, please send it to me here.

What do the different colors and indicators mean?

Purple schedule entries are for UPN. Yellow schedule entries are for The WB. Green schedule entries are for The CW. Most reruns will use faded versions of the network's color [5].

The interactive schedules on the website include additional indicators, such as when a given schedule entry is the last known airing of a given episode. See the website version of this post for more details.

Example schedule that demonstrates these elements:

Monday January 18, 1999 Malcolm & Eddie S3E05: "Dream Girl" - 8 PM on UPN 7th Heaven S3E12: "All That Jazz" - 8 PM on The WB Guys Like Us E12: "Good Old Days" - 8:30 PM on UPN The Sentinel S1E01: "The Switchman" - 9 PM on UPN Buffy the Vampire Slayer S3E06: "Band Candy" - 9 PM on The WB

Can I browse the calendar if I don't have JavaScript enabled?

Clicking on a schedule entry relies on JavaScript to dynamically generate the infobox, but you can see pre-rendered calendars for each year here and pre-rendered infoboxes for each show here.

How can I follow you to see when new recaps are posted?

You can follow this blog on Tumblr, where I post auto-generated conversions of each new post here. You don't get the interactivity of the embedded schedule, but each post will appear on your dashboard. I also post a link to each new post on the site's Bluesky account.

At some point, I'll try to get an RSS feed up on this site directly. If that's something you're interested in, let me know so I can prioritize it.

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Both binge-watched in 2020 ↩

Binge-watched during high school, because I was active enough on Tumblr back then that of course I did. ↩

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend my beloved ↩

Hearing about college football on The CW was one of the sparks that got the idea for this project going in my mind. ↩

The exception is when an episode premiered on a different network. In that case, the first time that episode is aired on WB/UPN, it will be colored like a first-run episode. ↩

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