EXCLUSIVE: The 2025 Critics Choice Awards won’t be airing completely on the CW. The broadcast community has opted to not renew the awards present’s present possibility for subsequent yr, sources inform Deadline. However, it’s nonetheless potential to see the ceremony on the CW in 2025 because the community is in search of a path to proceed to hold it, shared with one other community or a streamer, I hear. There was an identical association for the 2022 Critics Choice Awards, simulcast on the CW and TBS.
The Critics Choice Association, run by President Joey Berlin, is alleged to already be in conversations with potential new broadcast companions.
After bouncing round numerous networks from 2001-2016 with stints on E!, the WB, VH1, the CW and A&E, the Critics Choice Awards returned to the CW in 2017 and had aired on the community ever since.
The information comes a few months after the 2024 Critics Choice Awards telecast on the CW rebounded a bit, up 14% from the document low 2023 viewership to only over 1 million viewers. In adults 18-49, this yr’s ceremony, which confronted a NFL Wild Card matchup, was up 50% vs. 2023.
Sharing the license payment with one other platform would enable the CW to proceed because the present’s longtime dwelling at these linear viewers ranges whereas additionally complying with the now-independent community’s drive to trim prices in a push towards profitability.
The Critics Choice Awards is an outlier on the CW, the one non-sports stay occasion on the community, which has been bulking up its stay sports activities choices since its October 2022 acquisition by Nexstar. Ahead of the CW’s 2023 upfront presentation, the community’s President of Entertainment Brad Schwartz praised the awards telecast.
“Creatively that show is something we’re very proud of,” he mentioned, highlighting its star-studded visitor listing and Chelsea Handler’s efficiency as host. “We are really proud to be a part of it, and we’re excited to keep going.”
He did admit that stay leisure was not an space the community was dedicating assets to.
“We’re looking at lots of different live events, and I think we will do a few more like them. But, as we re-imagine and reinvent the CW, we need to focus more of our money on things that can bring people back week after week, things that can bring people back season after season,” he mentioned. “And so, scripted and unscripted series is more where we should be placing our bets. Having said that, it is wonderful for us to be in the middle of the entertainment industry and host this amazing Critics Choice Awards.”