Frank Ockenfels/ The CW At 36, Jennie Garth must have gotten onto the CW on a special waiver.
The network today unveiled a new fall schedule that, from the Garth-graced 90210 redo (new cast shot above) to a Project Runway-aspiring new reality show, focuses almost exclusively on wooing women no older than 34.
As previously announced, the male-oriented Smackdown goes. The male-fronted Smallville and Supernatural stay, presumably getting by on their good looks.
Also coming back: Watercooler shows Gossip Girl and America's Next Top Model; barely rated shows Everybody Hates Chris and The Game; and the once-endangered One Tree Hill.
Reaper won a reprieve, and a sophomore season, as a midseason replacement. Aliens in America wasn't so lucky; the comedy didn't win anything but a cancellation.
Of the three new fall shows announced, one was hardly new to anyone paying attention.
90210, the update of Beverly Hills 90210, has been buzzed about for weeks. Even Garth's hire—she'll play her old, sorry, former 90210 self, Kelly Taylor, on a "guest star" basis—was leaked. As previously noted, the new show will focus on a pair of siblings à la Brandon and Brenda Walsh, who enter West Beverly High as the new kids on the expensive block.
90210 will be paired on Tuesdays with the CW's other new scripted show, Surviving the Filthy Rich, about a young woman (natch) who trades in a career in journalism to become a tutor to a pair of rich kids—sorry, rich girls.
Stylista, the third new show, could fuel a rivalry with the Lifetime-bound Project Runway.
The CW reality series, from Tyra Banks and the creators of, yes, Project Runway, is set at Runway judge Nina Garcia's old, sorry, former magazine, Elle, and features 11 Lauren Conrad-types competing for a job at the publication. The show's early winner is Banks, who earlier today saw ABC pick up her and Ashton Kutcher's untitled reality competition series as a midseason replacement.
The fall schedule is the CW's third. The network has yet to put together a season as "big" as either of its ancestors, the WB and UPN. After scrapping Saturdays, the CW plans to downscale even further, turning Sundays over to an independent studio that'll produce four as-yet unspecified series for the night.
So far this season, the CW is averaging 2.6 million total viewers, including the pesky old and occasionally male kind.
Here's a night-by-night look at the network's 2008-09 fall lineup:
Monday: Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill
Tuesday: 90210, Surviving the Filthy Rich
Wednesday: America's Next Top Model, Stylista
Thursday: Smallville, Supernatural
Friday: Everybody Hates Chris, The Game, America's Next Top Model (reruns)