The Night of Favorites and Farewells
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The Night of Favorites and Farewells was a one-time special aired on The WB on September 17, 2006. This special took a look back at the 11-year history of The WB and some of their biggest hits. The 5-hour special was aired on all affiliates of The WB with the exception of those which had taken affiliation with MyNetworkTV, unless they kept the WB as a second affiliation. This was The WB's last nationally broadcast schedule, as the network officially closed down after the program Dawsons Creek ended.
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[edit] Schedule and format
The night began with the announcer, Hal Douglas (who had become the "voice" of the WB for the majority of its history, and would not continue as announcer for the CW...but instead moved to ABC), introducing the viewers to the night's schedule, and began with the premiere episode of Felicity. The schedule of the night was:
5/4c Felicity
6/5c Angel
7/6c Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2 hours)
9/8c Dawson's Creek
Before each show, there was an introduction to the show, followed by the Night logo displayed with the year the show premiered on the bottom. During commercial breaks and after shows during the credits, flashbacks would air that would feature actors and other memorable stars on The WB, usually from stock footage or from commercials and image campaigns the network had. The names and the year when they became big on the network would also appear.
Commercials also included promo spots for each series' TV-on-DVD box sets as well as promo spots given to cable networks broadcasting the shows above in off-network syndication.
[edit] Final moments
After the last act of the pilot for Dawson's Creek (and a short commercial break) concluded, a final 60-second clip montage aired featuring many of the network's previous stars, and several taglines including "And Now, We Say Goodbye". The final image broadcast before the network permanently shut down was that of a silhouetted Michigan J. Frog, who had been the network's mascot from the beginning until 2005 (the year before The WB shut down), taking a final bow.
The clip montage officially ended the network, as the studio credits for Dawson's Creek were shown afterwards instead of The WB's standard credits scheme, which had been used on the other pilots that aired during the night.
[edit] Themes and marketing
The WB had limited marketing for this one last program on their network. Commercials mainly aired on the network itself.
Major themes for this program included "Names you'll always remember.", "Faces you'll never forget.", "The WB says goodbye", "A Network that defined a generation says farewell." and "Join us one last time". The music playing in all the flashbacks and other promos for this event was "Crawl" by This Way.
[edit] Viewer reaction and ratings
Over the next few days, there were many discussions about the night on The CW's forums, most of which expressed sadness. Additionally, many recalled memories of watching the WB. However, The Night of Favorites and Farewells was a disappointment in ratings; The WB that night scored a 0.9 household rating and a share of just 2. The main reason for this mostly lies in certain areas where former WB affiliates became MyNetworkTV affiliates, thus leaving The WB's final two weeks of programming unavailable in such areas as Philadelphia, Seattle and Atlanta, whose WB affiliates switched to MyNetworkTV.
[edit] See also
- The WB Television Network
- The CW Television Network
- MyNetworkTV
- 2006 United States broadcast TV realignment
