‘Supergirl’ Might Have Been Renewed by CBS if It Had Not Moved to CW

When “Supergirl” moved to the CW, the common wisdom was that CBS was done with it after one season. But that’s not the case, according to CBS Entertainment President Glenn Geller.

“There’s nothing to say that, if we hadn’t made the right deal with CW, we wouldn’t have put it back on Monday nights,” the exec told reporters after his panel at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour on Wednesday.

The CW announced that it had picked up the second season of “Supergirl” in May, after weeks of rumor and speculation and after an appearance by Grant Gustin’s the Flash on the show unequivocally connected the CBS superhero drama to its CW counterparts.

Subsequently, production on the Melissa Benoist-led superhero drama was moved to Vancouver, where the other CW superhero dramas are filmed.

But Geller doesn’t see the move as a loss for CBS or a sign that it didn’t work there.

“I wouldn’t say ‘Supergirl’ didn’t work for us — it actually worked very well. It averaged over 10 million viewers per episode,” he said. “At the end of the day, we looked at the situation and said, ‘How can we both win from this?’ We co-own the CW, so this was an opportunity for both CBS and Warner Bros. to really benefit from the success of the show; they produce it and we co-own the network.”

Benoist, Mehcad Brooks, Jeremy Jordan, Chyler Leigh and David Harewood are all returning, while LA-based Calista Flockhart, who was a series regular on Season 1 as Cat Grant, will be back in a recurring capacity.

Geller said CBS is open to other superhero shows in the future, but he declined to specify what it would take for the network to say yes.