Network Upfronts Day 2: Surviving With the CW
Surviving the Filthy Rich by Joseph Viles/The CW
In one of those last-minute instances that occur in a network scheduling session, someone at the CW decided to change the title from one of its new series from
How To Teach Filthy Rich Girls to
Surviving the Filthy Rich.
Perhaps the CW has survival on its mind. As the struggling network served drinks before unveiling its new schedule to advertisers on Tuesday (thank you!), industry types were wondering out loud if the CW would be around a year from now.
That being said, the network appears to be going into 2008-09 a bit leaner and more focused. The new version of
90210 looks like "Gossip Girl West."
Surviving Filthy Rich takes the decadent teen milieu to Palm Beach, Florida.
One Tree Hill lives on. The marketing campaign theme could be: Horny Teens Welcome Here. We kid. When you include
America's Next Top Model and the new
Stylista (a reality competition where young people compete for a job at
Elle magazine and be subjected to
Devil Wears Prada-type abuse), CW will have a pretty good audience flow of young female viewers through the first three days of the week. If it makes it to 2009-10, it can build that out to a fourth night and beyond.
As of now, the rest of the week will be a hodgepodge of what's left: the aging
Smallville and
Supernatural on Thursday and
Everybody Hates Chris, The Game and a repeat of
America's Next Top Model on Friday.
Sunday has been handed over to production company Media Rights Capital (sounds like something you'd hear about on CNBC), but the actual shows were not announced.
Over at ABC, entertainment president Stephen McPherson is going for a do-over of the strike-interrupted 2007-08 season, with a few tweaks. The final 13 episodes of
Boston Legal will play out on Monday at 10 where its older audience appeal is more compatible with
Dancing With the Stars.
Every year ABC picks up a show that its execs like but that most viewers are ignoring. This year, it's
Eli Stone, which gets another chance on Tuesday at 10 pm/ET.
Life On Mars, based on the BBC series about a cop transported back to the 1970s, lands in the 10 pm/ET slot on Thursdays after
Grey's Anatomy. The other new show for the fall is
Opportunity Knocks, a series from Ashton Kutcher in which a neighborhood is transformed into a game show set. Think of it as "Extreme Makeover: Goodson-Todman." It will air Tuesday at 8 pm/ET, before
Dancing with the Stars. ABC has also thrown in the towel on scripted series for Friday, moving
Wife Swap and
Supernanny onto the night with
20/20.
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