TVSquad

The cancel hammer fell faster this season than I expected. After only two episodes, even The CW's lower ratings expectations couldn't save The Beautiful Life. The real reason The CW canceled The Beautiful Life: TBL is right there in the title. How pretentious do you have to be to put your acronym in your title?

Acronyms are earned. Acronyms like OTH, VD and MP. Those stand for shows that are doing much better for The CW. The network has tossed a full season order to the veteran One Tree Hill. They came a little short of that with The Vampire Diaries, ordering nine more scripts, but a full-season pick-up can't be far behind. While TBL slipped to one million, VD achieved 3.8 million and growing.

As for Melrose Place, it's not doing nearly as well, but The CW is maybe hoping that Heather Locklear can save this iteration the way she did the original. I'm not so sure, but they've got six more scripts to prove their case.

Like most people in this world, I often turn to master geek musician Jonathan Coulton when I'm trying to figure out how I should feel about something (you can smell hair burning when I try to think for myself).

So imagine my horror when the Fall schedule started filling out and Mr. Coulton was still dealing with strictly music-related matters. Well, I can finally have a restful night of sleep, because John Sellers of True Slant has gotten Jonathan Coulton's take on Fall TV.

Each year, as the new fall season approaches, I go through all the magazine and online sources talking about the various shows to try and figure out which ones I'm going to be excited about, and which I'm going to avoid like the plague.

Inevitably, I wind up sampling plenty of shows from which I should have steered clear. At the same time, a few shows will slip between the cracks, and then I'm bashing my head against the wall because I missed out on the beginning of something special. I hate coming into things late.

This year, I decided to share my top and bottom five selections. I'm sure the rest of the Squadders and you will have differing opinions than mine, but that's what makes America great, right? Chime in with your own lists in the comments.

The networks have had a quiet summer, quietly introducing scripted bomb after scripted bomb, so they're certainly ready to jump into the new fall season. And It looks to be an interesting one. ABC is scheduling a two-hour block of new comedies on Wednesdays as the sitcom tries to make a comeback.

Even more risky is NBC handing 10:00 to Jay Leno every night of the week. Everyone's waiting to see how that one plays out. FOX is banking on huge positive buzz for Glee to make it a hit, while ABC is hoping FlashForward can pick up where Lost is leaving off when it wraps its run this season.

To help you with it all, TV Squad has put together a handy calendar of all the premieres so you can schedule responsibly in this busy time of TV watching. Some nights have as many as twelve premieres scheduled, so you might need to invest in a few more DVRs to catch all your favorites; Monday's still look grim. Bookmark this page and you'll have it handy to help see you through.

It's CW day at the TCAs, and network honcho Dawn Ostroff presented her executive session in the middle of the day, after a parade of panels that included one pretty face after another, including Ashton Kutcher, Elle Macpherson, the cast of Vampire Diaries and a few alumni from the original Melrose Place. Ostroff fully admitted that the network is courting 35-and-under women with their shows, trying to build on the "one tweet per minute" success of shows like One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, and 90210.

But what about two of the network's more veteran and male-oriented shows, Smallville and Supernatural? Does the network still believe in them? Ostroff tried to give a definitive "yes," but the rest of her panel, and the promos shown before she appeared, say otherwise.

There has been a delay on the new CW series The Beautiful Life, which is a new drama about a bunch of models sharing a house in New York. It sounds very much like the usual show found on the CW, doesn't it? Anyway, it is executive produced by Ashton Kutcher and stars Mischa Barton (formerly of The O.C.).

While Mischa Barton has been having some personal problems recently, the network claims that the reason behind the nine day delay of the start of production is that some of the sets were not completed on time. This is what they say.

I have nothing against Mischa Barton and I hope she solves whatever problems she is having and goes on to a long and prosperous career. However, I'd have to be pretty naive to think that Barton's emotional issues were not a factor in any delay of the start of her new show.