The ninth and final season of The Flash premieres on The CW Wednesday, February 8. There will be 13 episodes. The show premiered in 2014.

"The Flash will be remembered as one of the greatest shows in the history of The CW, and everyone involved in its excellent nine-season run should be very proud," said Brad Schwartz, president, entertainment, The CW. "The team has delivered an epic final season, filled with plenty of twists, guest stars and surprises that will delight every fan. Now is the time to catch-up and enjoy this fantastic final ride alongside the fastest man alive."

The season picks up a week after the defeat of the Reverse Flash. Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and Iris West-Allen (Candice Patton) are growing closer than ever before. But when a deadly group of Rogues descends on Central City, The Flash and his team–Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker), Meta-Empath Cecile Horton (Danielle Nicolet), light-powered meta Allegra Garcia (Kayla Compton), tech-nerd Chester P. Runk (Brandon McKnight) and reformed cryogenics thief Mark Blaine (Jon Cor)—must once again defy tough odds to save the day. But just as The Rogues are defeated, a deadly new adversary rises.

The Flash is based on characters from DC.

The show is produced by Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television. Executive producers are Greg Berlanti, Eric Wallace, Sarah Schechter, Sam Chalsen and Jonathan Butler. ■

Season eight of The Flash and season six of Riverdale begin on The CW Tuesday, Nov. 16. Both shows start with five-episode “events”, in The CW’s words. The Flash’s event will feature different heroes from The CW. Riverdale’s will have a horror theme and goes under the title Riverdale. 

The Flash is based on characters from DC. Grant Gustin plays Barry Allen, a crime scene investigator who picks up super-human speed after being struck by lightning. Candace Patton, Danielle Panabaker, Danielle Nicolet and Kayla Compton are also in the cast. Bonanza Productions produces the show in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television. Greg Berlanti, Eric Wallace and Sarah Schechter executive produce. 

Riverdale comes from Archie Comics. KJ Apa, Lili Reinhart, Camila Mendes and Cole Sprouse are in the cast. 

Berlanti Productions produces the show in association with Warner Bros. Television and CBS Television Studios. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Jon Goldwater executive produce. 

The CW has shared its seven-night schedule for the 2021-2022 season. New fall shows are 4400, The Legends of the Hidden Temple remake and Killer Camp. 

Sundays will have Legends of the Hidden Temple, an adult-focused remake of the Nickelodeon competition classic, and a U.S. edition of Killer Camp, a competition series that sees 13 campers navigate through deadly twists with their eye on a cash prize. 

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Mondays have season four of All American and 4400, about 4,400 people who fell off the face of the planet. 

On Tuesdays it’s season eight of The Flash and season six of Riverdale. 

Wednesdays have Legends of Tomorrow season seven and Batwoman season three. 

Thursdays offer the sophomore season of Walker and season four of Legacies. 

On Fridays it’s Penn & Teller: Fool Us and season three of Nancy Drew. 

Saturdays have two episodes apiece of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and World’s Funniest Animals. 

Also Read: The CW To Program Saturday Nights Next Season

The CW is adding Saturdays to its lineup, three years after it added Sundays. The Saturday schedule starts with iHeartRadio Music Festival Oct. 2. 

“This year, as we begin to return to more normalized production schedules, The CW is firing on all cylinders," said Mark Pedowitz, chairman and CEO of The CW Network. "The CW dares to defy by expanding our primetime schedule to include Saturday night and becoming a full 14 hour, seven-day-a-week broadcast network for the first time in its history, offering more original series on both our linear and digital platforms, providing more opportunities for our advertisers and affiliates. We are rolling out an exciting lineup of our signature returning series which will be joined this upcoming season by the new, reimagined 4400 and the highly anticipated, brand new revival of Legends of the Hidden Temple along with new series slated for mid season, All American: Homecoming and Naomi.” 

Joining All American spinoff All American: Homecoming and Ava DuVernay drama Naomi in the mid season are Charmed, DC’s Stargirl, Dynasty, In the Dark, Kung Fu, Roswell, New Mexico and Superman & Lois. 

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Every episode of 4400; All American: Homecoming; Batwoman; DC’s Stargirl; Kung Fu; Naomi; Nancy Drew; Superman & Lois and Walker, as well as Killer Camp; Legends of the Hidden Temple; Penn & Teller: Fool Us; Whose Line Is It Anyway? and World’s Funniest Animals on this season will be available to stream on The CW’s free digital platforms. 

The CW has three original specials lined up for the fourth quarter of 2021: movie The Waltons’ Homecoming, set in 1933 and told from John Boy’s perspective; The Scooby-Doo Reunion Special, which sees the Scooby gang reunite at Warner Bros. Studios to reminisce about their favorite cases; and animated holiday special Beebo Saves Christmas, about a fuzzy toy turned furry god. Ben Diskin voices Beebo. 

Pedowitz said The Waltons' Homecoming offers "a touch of Americana and a touch of Middle America."

Programming Saturdays gives viewers and advertisers another night to connect with The CW, Pedowitz said, and another night for the network to promote its content. 

“The CW continues to grow and innovate on a multiplatform basis with more original programming and more ways for advertisers to connect with our audience,” summed up Pedowitz. 

BET’s telecast of its 2017 Hip-Hop Awards turned up a lot of social media noise last night, according to Nielsen.

The special generated 5.8 million social media interactions from 2.5 million unique Twitter and Facebook accounts, according to Nielsen’s Daily Top Five report.

NBC’s This Is Us finished a distant second with 288,000 interactions, followed by USA’s WWE SmackDown!, CW’s The Flash and FX’s American Horror Story:Cult, said Nielsen.

On the live sports front, BeIN Sports’ coverage of the Trinidad and Tobago-United States FIFA World Cup 2018 Qualifying soccer match drew 1.7 million social media interactions to top all events. The US team lost that game, officially eliminating them from 2018 World Cup competition.

Last night’s tearjerker episode of NBC’s freshman series This Is Us was a big hit on social media, generating more than 1.3 million interactions on Twitter and Facebook from more than 800,000 unique accounts, according to Nielsen’s daily social content ratings.

USA’s WWE SmackDown! series finished second with nearly 200,000 social media interactions, followed by MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, Fox News Channel’s Hannity and The CW’s The Flash, according to Nielsen.

NBCSN’s live coverage of the Chicago Blackhawks/Minnesota Wild National Hockey League game was the most social live sports telecast for the evening, generating more than 109,000 Facebook/Twitter interactions, said Nielsen.

Last night’s premiere of BET’s The New Edition Story drew the most interactions on social media for any television show on Tuesday, accoding to Nielsen.

The show, the first of three episodes chronicling the exploits of legendary R&B music group New Edition, drew more than 2.1 million interactions across Facebook and Twitter from 936,000 unique social media accounts to easily top all TV shows airing yesterday, according to Nielsen's daily social content ratings report.

REVIEW: The New Edition Story

The New Edition Story’s final two episodes will air tonight and Thursday, according to BET.

NBC’s This Is Us drew 378,000 social media interactions, followed by USA Network’s WWE SmackDown! (177,000), MTV’s Teen Wolf (84,000) and The CW’s The Flash (67,000).

ESPN2’s live coverage of the Kansas/West Virginia college basketball game was the most social live sports event of the day, averaging 262,000 social media interactions, according to Nielsen.

Millennial-targeted series dominated the TV twitter ratings last night, led by Freeform's drama series Pretty Little Liars, according to Nielsen.

Pretty Little Liars generated 131,000 tweets reaching 1.5 million unique Twitter users Tuesday night, making it the most talked about TV show on Twitter, according to Nielsen’s daily Twitter TV ratings for Jan. 26.

MTV’s horror-themed series Teen Wolf drew 124,000 tweets to finish second, followed by superhero-themed shows The Flash (CW) and Marvel’s Agent Carter (ABC).

NBA TV’s live coverage of the Oklahoma City Thunder-New York Knicks NBA game was the most tweeted live sports telecast of the night, drawing 81,000 tweets reaching a unique audience of 3 million Twitter users, said Nielsen.

Although it was overshadowed by the news that its Home Box Office unit would launch an over the top service next year, Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes managed to drive home a simple message at the media conglomerate’s investor day Wednesday: “Just don’t worry.”

He was joking when he said it, but there is a grain of truth in that statement, made as Time Warner’s investor day meeting drew to a close. For about four hours at its Manhattan headquarters Bewkes and his top executives – Turner Broadcasting System chairman and CEO John Martin, HBO chairman and CEO Richard Pepler, Warner Bros. Entertainment chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara  and chief financial officer Howard Averill walked shareholders and analysts through a series of presentations geared toward calming their fears of the present and giving them hope for the future.

Bewkes started off the meeting by reminding investors of the past – Time Warner has grown earnings per share at a faster pace in the past five years than the S&P 500 Index and since 2009 has returned $25 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to shareholders while investing $75 billion in the business – and showing them a glimpse of the future – he pledged that EPS would double over the next several years.

Bewkes has been under pressure to show that Time Warner can stand on its own since his board rejected 21st Century Fox’s $80 billion unsolicited offer back in July. While he and the rest of his team have a ways to go before they can definitively prove that, the meeting seemed to show that the company was at least paying attention and is making moves to right the ship.

At Turner, which has been rocked by poor ratings and a sense that its steady stream of Big Bang Theory reruns aren’t resonating with viewers anymore, Martin said that the programmer will double its original programming budget to $1 billion annually by 2018. That, coupled with a streamlining and cost efficiency program dubbed Turner 2020 – which will involve laying off nearly 1,500 workers – will put the programmer back on track.

 On the ratings front, Martin blamed some of the softness on broadband-only homes being included in the ratings mix, increased video on demand usage and a rise in online and mobile viewing. For example, Martin said that Turner’s The Last Ship, a ratings hit over the summer, saw a recent decline as viewers began catching up with the series on VOD.  Online, PC and mobile viewing also increased in the period, which affected TV ratings.

“We’re working hard with Nielsen,” Martin said adding that he was confident that any ratings measurement issues could be cleared up.

Martin also pledged to step up consumer products sales, licensing and merchandising on the kids’ front. He noted that Turner derives about 5% of total kids’ revenue from consumer products, licensing and merchandising , while other similar channels get more than half their revenue from those sources. Martin said Turner will take a collaborative approach – its Boomerang channel for instance will be the flanker network around the world for Cartoon Network. And he said Turner and Warner Bros., owners of such iconic brands as Looney Tunes, will approach the kids market as one company.

“We’re making a concerted effort on building global franchises with global characters,” Martin said.

While Plepler’s announcement that HBO will go over the top next year took most of the attention, he added that HBO and sister premium channel Cinemax  are having their best year in more than a decade – the 2.5 million subscriber added so far this year are putting the channels on their biggest growth path in 18 years.

Warner Bros. chief Tsujihara outlined new movie slates heavy with DC comic book characters – The Justice League, Aquaman, Shazam, the Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman all will headline their own films between 2017 and 2020 – and three movies between 2016 and 2020 from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts series.

Investors seemed pleased  – the stock was up about 4% in early trading and closed at $72.21 each, up 2.2% on a day when the Dow dropped 400 points earlier in the day – it too rebounded later in the day to close down about 173 points. Now it’s up to shareholders to decide whether there is reason to worry or not.