The CW, which debuts Wednesday, is aiming to be America's fifth network. But will the merger of two mediocre channels add up to one viable brand?

When it was triumphantly announced last January that the WB and UPN were merging into something called The CW, the media world was ... puzzled. After all, both mini-networks were semi-flops; the WB had just cancelled 7th Heaven, which held the distinction of being both its top-rated show and a $16 million loser.

But then the truly exciting news broke: This cocky, delusional new network, this CW (which launches September 20), would boast a fall 2006 lineup almost entirely composed of ... the same stale duds. The WB's tired teen dramas! UPN's marginalized black sitcoms! Just two new shows. All stitched together, Frankenstein's-monster-style: Everybody Hates Smallville!

Oh, and wrestling.

You'd think that whoever had to market this anticlimactic venture, dubbed the "Can't Win" network by Hollywood cynics, would be very depressed. Yet not only can Rick Haskins, The CW's Executive Vice President of Marketing and Brand Strategy, lift his head from his pillow, he can speak, rapidly, of challenges and "seismic differences." Where others may see a racially and culturally divided audience, he sees potential for MySpace-ish togetherness and connectivity. The Web metaphors don't stop there: Even The CW's adaptable slogan—"Free to be [insert adjective here]"—awaits data entry. The goal, Haskins tells Radar, "is to reach the target audience of 18 to 34-year-olds in a way that feels authentic to them and their lives." In other words, youth marketing that doesn't instantly repel the young.

The resulting identity—all friendly '70s curves, insistently fresh shades of green, and connectivity motifs—is certainly unmistakable. But can The CW's branding build true excitement where none intrinsically exists? Radar does the analysis:

THE NAME
Pros: A provisional handle adopted after it mysteriously tested well, "The CW" signifies nothing except the vanity of the parent companies (C for CBS Corp., W for Time Warner). "It's an empty vessel, which can be good," says Kriston Rucker of Imaginary Friend, a New York-based branding consultancy. "Now they just have to fill it with meaning." Other virtues? "It's short, it's easy to say, and it's better than UPN, which sounds like a trucking company."

Cons: This vessel isn't empty enough. To people like us, "CW" connotes "Conventional Wisdom" and, naturally, "Churchill, Winston." But for more typical Americans, those two letters will forever mean "Country and Western," as critics have noted. Why choose a name that evokes Garth Brooks's gut and, moreover, looks somewhat like "The COW"? What's youthful and energetic about a cow?

Buzz factor: None. But as Rucker points out, "It's hard to make a case that people watch a network's shows because of its name." Then again, the only major broadcast network successfully launched since 1953 had a pretty catchy moniker: FOX.

THE SLOGAN
Pros: Unifying the network's schizophrenic lineup of shows, the "Free to Be..." tagline effortlessly morphs from Free to be Tough (Friday Night Smackdown) to, um, Free to be Bald (for a Smallville poster featuring cueball villain Lex Luthor). "We wanted to celebrate the spirit of individuality and diversity, and the whole idea of people wanting to be heard ... blogs, personal websites, YouTube," says Dan Pappalardo, Executive Creative Director at Troika Design Group, the branding firm hired to create the estimated $50 million identity. Though reminiscent of feminine hygiene, "Free to Be" does improve on previous UPN and The WB efforts, from the dictatorial ("Be Young!") to the mentally challenged ("Dubba-dubba-WB") to the desperately jolly ("We're the Network, Baby!"). And, no, we're not forgetting, "Watch the Frog!"

Cons: Do the young really want to be reminded that they spend their lives in shackles, except when exposed to the liberating power of The CW? Apparently not. The slogan, which has been crucified in the blogosphere ("Free to be unpalatable" and "Free to be out of touch with your audience," are typically snipey posts at Entertainment Weekly's site), reaches its nadir with Free to be Scary, coined for the occult drama, Supernatural. "What?" moaned one incredulous TV blogger. "Is our scariness being repressed right now by the other networks?"

Buzz factor: Unless you count the thrills of mockery, slight. It's one thing to set up an arena like YouTube that truly facilitates freedom of expression; it's quite another to co-opt that concept and render it senseless, all in the service of Veronica Mars.

ALL THAT GREEN
Pros: In an unprecedented move, The CW's entire brand campaign is bathed in green, a color chosen for its inherent fun and happiness, according to Dawn Ostoff, The CW's President of Entertainment. Green says "new." And "different." No other network, after all, is even slightly gangrenous. Says Pappalardo, who's branded or rebranded countless networks, "Red is vibrant and sporty. Blue is corporate and calming. But green is a fresh, scary color for a network." And, as we've learned, it's wildly freeing to be terrified.

Cons: The German psychologist, Max Luscher, who spent decades researching human reactions to color, found that green represents "obstinacy," "possessiveness," and "resistance to change," not ideal for a network trying to merge two somewhat conflicting audiences. In her classic 1981 book, The Language of Clothes, Alison Lurie connected the shade to "outlaws, fairies, and Irishmen," also not ideal unless The CW is specifically courting mystical/gay criminals in County Cork.

Buzz factor: Potentially decent. No one, except perhaps Alison Lurie, is griping about the green. And, although Radar's own signature hue is red, reflecting our vibrant love of racquetball, we like the color scheme. It's just too bad that another corporation already closely tied to happy fun already owns green.

THE PROMOTIONAL SPOTS

Pros: The network's first 60-second ad, viewable at right, has several things going for it: Tons of verve, inventive graphics, and an infectiously catchy Black Eyed Peas anthem ("Connectin' with everybody, so all you can join the party!") that borrows heavily from The Temptations' '60s hit "Get Ready." As The CW's Director of Publicity Paul Hewitt helpfully explains, "What's popular in music now is doing remakes."

Cons: For all its insistence on freedom, this ad more powerfully suggests entrapment. Those lines that zip twistily across the frame keep cruelly lassoing the network's young stars; at one point, a couple is literally bound by duct tape. No wonder Tom Welling looks aroused. And please note how the final animation transforms the "ew" in "new"—as in ewww—into CW.

Buzz factor: Extremely high among members of the S&M community and fans of newfangled pop "remakes." Otherwise, not so much.

THE ADS THE CW DOESN'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT

Pros: When told that staffers at The CW's affiliates nationwide were making their own actually cool grassroots promo videos and posting them on YouTube, Hewitt was taken aback: "Really?" Yes, really: While assistants at Boston's affiliate have been busy defacing gas station signs, the kids down in Austin are crumpling up paper. But our favorite has to be the hilariously unslick effort by three summer interns out in San Francisco who very slowly lug The CW logo around town, a nice inversion of the official promo's hackneyed "energy."

Cons: Most people will never see these spots. And how long before one of these experiments challenges the network's comfort level? Dusty Caruso, 23, who helped cook up the pro-lethargy San Francisco clip, was given free rein but admits there are limits. When asked how his bosses would react if he videotaped dogs fucking on the logo, he concedes, "That would probably be nixed." Caruso's value as a CW marketer may have its own limitations, however: "I don't really watch the shows," he says. "I kinda like that Girlfriends thing, the one with Diana Ross's daughter. It's horrible, but I like it."

Buzz factor: Decent, if limited. After discovering these homemade efforts, Haskins says he's thrilled to cede control of the brand in such cases: "They really captured the spirit. I think this is the future of marketing." Bring on the fucking dogs!

CUMULATIVE AMOUNT OF EXCITEMENT CREATED BY THE ENTIRE CAMPAIGN: Not nearly enough. Until good new shows arrive (a scheduled mid-season reality show called The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll isn't moving us), it's going to take a lot more than "Free to Be Bald" to transform this network into must-see TV. In marketing terms, the most telling parallel may be The Gap, a company obliged to convince Americans that boring old khakis are exciting new khakis, and whose fall 2006 campaign is built around an almost identical Myspace-ish concept, "Long Live Individuality," with a similar data-entry slogan: "Your [fill in the blank]"—as in, your attitude, your spirit, your seduction, yourself. Gap sales fell 7 percent this August, the month the new ads kicked in.

Even by typical "youth marketing" standards, The CW's campaign is just too bullshitty. We all know Veronica Mars isn't capable of freeing a restless hamster, let alone an entire demographic. And what can you say about a network that nearly kills itself celebrating diversity and togetherness "so all you can join the party," then schedules every show about African-Americans on Sunday night in a three-hour ghetto?

So all you can join ... which party?