WB network fares well at start of new season

NEW YORK -- Thanks to dramas about a teenage Superman, a transplanted widower and a romantically challenged mother-and-daughter team, the WB television network is on a hot streak.

Just two weeks into the new season, the network had 29 percent more viewers than in the comparable period last year. The season's second week was the WB's best ever among people age 18 to 34, the network's target audience.

"I think the brand has come into its own now as standing for a place where young people -- and the young at heart -- know where to turn," said Jed Petrick, the WB's president.

Wednesday's premiere of the series "Birds of Prey," with the daughter of Batman fighting another generation of criminals in Gotham, drew the network's second best ratings ever in the 18-to-34-year-old demographic, according to a preliminary Nielsen Media Research tally.

The second-year drama about a hunky young Superman, "Smallville," has been one of the surprise strong performers for the WB. Petrick said "Smallville" gradually built its audience through summer reruns and fans were primed for a new season.

This week, "Smallville" gave the WB its biggest Tuesday night audience in the network's history.

With "Everwood," a family drama that stars Treat Williams as a neurosurgeon who moves with his two children to Colorado after his wife dies, the WB finally has a worthy ratings partner on Monday nights to "7th Heaven."

In its seventh season, "7th Heaven" has remained consistently the network's most popular show.

Ratings for "Gilmore Girls," the drama about a quick-quipping mother and daughter from Connecticut, finally seem to be catching up to the show's critical praise.

The supernatural drama "Charmed" has also helped the WB set some ratings benchmarks on Sunday night.

"You put Alyssa Milano in a Mermaid outfit and you'll get viewers," said Brad Adgate, senior vice president of the advertising firm Horizon Media.

The new shows are enabling the WB to make a smooth transition from another era. The drama "Felicity" ended last season, and "Dawson's Creek," while it started strong this fall with a long-sought romance between lead characters Joey and Dawson, is considered near an end.

The WB has so successfully built itself as a destination for teenage girls and young women that "it's a training ground for Lifetime viewers," Adgate said. But now some of their boyfriends are showing up too; the network has seen ratings increases among young men.

As is often the case with two networks that began operations within a week of each other in 1995, the WB's good fortune is matched by suffering at UPN.

UPN's ratings are down 26 percent so far this season. Ratings for professional wrestling and the previously popular "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Enterprise" have faded.