Thoughts on The CW Fall 2010 Sked

MONDAY
8 - 90210
9 - Gossip Girl

Monday night becomes the last bastion for the rich kid soaps, I guess. I think there's a pretty good chance 90210 got moved off of Tuesday because they felt American Idol was killing it, and yes, it was probably detrimental to its ratings. Then again, in the fall, I think this hour is tougher...

TUESDAY
8 - One Tree Hill
9 - Life Unexpected

This evening will likely do worse than Monday in the CW's coveted demo, but not by much. I'm happy to see Life Unexpected back, but it's hard to deny that it was a pretty close call of a renewal. One Tree Hill keeps eking out renewals, but it gets to be the Idol bait this time around.

WEDNESDAY
8 - America's Next Top Model
9 - Hellcats

A newbie gets what will be one of the two largest lead-ins on the network. Hard to complain too much when you compare it to airing after anything on Monday or Tuesday.

THURSDAY
8 - The Vampire Diaries
9 - Nikita

A newbie gets what will be one of the two largest lead-ins on the network. Hard to complain too much when you compare it to airing after anything on Monday or Tuesday.

FRIDAY
8 - Smallville
9 - Supernatural

It's "not in our target demo" night! In total viewers, this night will be competitive with Monday and Tuesday. That doesn't matter, but sadly, most people who will talk about this night will think that it does, so there won't be a lot of intelligent conversation about CW Friday night. The reality is that this will be their lowest-rated night in what they care about. You can question "what they care about," but that doesn't really get us anywhere, because they still care about it.

OVERALL

As with several other non-CBS nets, there are some really marginal returning players that would seem to indicate The CDub doesn't have a lot of development that they want on the sked. I don't really see the 90210/OTH swap being all that beneficial, especially not in the 4th quarter. The only other thing that's really worth comment is the placement of the new shows. And they go after the net's highest-rated shows. Can't complain too much about that, I guess. It's not like this was really a hard schedule to screw up, and I don't think they did, in terms of scheduling the shows they had. That's about it.