The CW Eyes ‘Dateline’-Style True-Crime Strand

The CW, which is under new ownership following Nexstar’s acquisition last year, is developing its own true-crime strand.

Heather Olander, Head of Unscripted Programming at the CW, told Deadline during an hourlong keynote panel at Realscreen West on Tuesday that the network is currently working on its own version of NBC’s Dateline, CBS’ 48 Hours and ABC’s 20/20.

“What’s nice about true crime is it also can be scaled, you can do a lot of episodes, and it’s very efficient,” she said.

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“Broadcast does crime under banners, mostly in conjunction with their news groups, there’s 20/20, Dateline and 48 Hours. We are working out what is our overall brand in which we can insert all sorts of different crime stories,” she added.

Olander, who joined the network in January, said that putting various true-crime stories under one strand gives it efficiencies, so it can market the overall brand rather than continuing to market individual programs. “Then under that you can put an endless number of crime stories,” she said.

She said it would likely begin with multi-part docs but could also include splashy one-offs.

It would introduce an interesting new buyer to the true-crime market, which runs the gamut from the cable networks such as Investigation Discovery and Oxygen to the likes of HBO and the streamers.

Olander said there was no concerns about running out of crime stories. “People are endlessly interested in the crimes that we’ve all read about because new details keep emerging. If you find one exclusive thing, even if it’s a story that you’ve seen a dozen times, one person or one witness, suddenly it makes it fresh again and pulls in audiences,” she added.