I'm just incredulous at the time investment the CW is expecting people to put in to keep up with everything. Or do they expect most people to just watch one of the shows?
Of course, why not? Nobody doing a shared universe expects every single member of the audience to follow every single part of it. They're designed to work
either individually
or as a whole, depending on the preferences of the individual viewer/reader/etc. After all, different audience members have different interests, so it's only good sense to try to appeal to a range of different tastes in order to enlarge your audience. For instance, look at the modern
Doctor Who franchise. You had
Doctor Who itself for family viewing,
Torchwood for adults only, and
The Sarah Jane Adventures and the occasional
Who animated video release for younger viewers. Naturally there were many fans who followed all three, but it was always expected that many other fans would just watch one or two, depending on their age and tastes.
After all, the current superhero multiverses we're getting onscreen follow the longstanding model of superhero comic books. And while DC's or Marvel's various distinct comic titles have occupied shared universes and crossed over with each other, it was always understood that very few readers would be buying
every title in the entire series. After all, each company had literally dozens of distinct titles coming out on a monthly basis. Hardly anyone's going to be able to collect all of those. So it was a given that any reader would probably just follow a few titles rather than the whole interlinked universe. There's no reason a shared TV or film universe should be any different.
