Kiss the frog, baby.
OK, everybody, it's time for a song from the little network with a really big sign!
—Michigan J. Frog at the beginning of a music video promoting the network
A joint venture between Time Warner and Tribune Company. As
a reaction to the success of the fledgling
Fox network, TW launched their own network in 1995, with Tribune's then-independents (WPIX in
New York, KTLA in
Los Angeles, WGN in
Chicago, etc.) serving as the network's nucleus. This network was rolled up with
UPN to form a new network called
The CW in 2006, with The WB's final primetime block,
A Night Of Farewells And Favorites, airing on September 17, 2006.
The network is remembered differently depending on how old you are. If you were a kid in the mid-'90s, you may fondly remember The WB as the host network for
Animaniacs after it was acquired from
FOX, along with other
Steven Spielberg-helmed
Saturday morning cartoons such as
Freakazoid! and the
Animaniacs spin-off
Pinky and the Brain. If you were a kid in the late '90s and early 2000s, you remember it for pretty much
selling out Saturday mornings to
4Kids. Those who were teenagers during the late '90s or early 2000s will remember it for giving the world such
teen dramas as
7th Heaven,
Dawson's Creek, and
Everwood — shows that the network is, without a doubt, most famous for. Still others (teenagers and genre fans alike) remember the network for
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
Roswell until those two series were picked up — perhaps ironically, in hindsight — by UPN (The WB still held onto
Angel at least). And of course, the network churned out quite a bit of
Sitcom and particularly
Dom Com flavored shows during its life.
And of course, many still remember it for reducing
Michigan J. Frog into a cheap corporate shill for the network (to the point where some TV writers referred to The WB as "The Frog") until the frog quietly exited the stage from advertisements and promotions during the last two years of the network's life (though his image was
one of the last transmitted by the network; the last thing shown was the end credits of the pilot episode of
Dawson's Creek).
Lately, The WB has been reborn as
an online network
, airing both older shows (including most of their old teen dramas) and original programming.
Shows featured on The WB included:
Shows featured on Kids' WB! included:
