'The Beautiful Life: TBL' is DOA

The winner — make that loser — of this year's cancellation derby is The CW's "The Beautiful Life: TBL." It got the ax after only two airings, becoming the first show of the 2009-10 season to be yanked off the air.

The premiere drew an anemic 1.4 million viewers; Episode 2 fell to barely a million. And, by any measurement, those are terrible numbers.

Other than the ridiculous, redundant title, this soap about young models wasn't significantly worse than a lot of what's on The CW. It wasn't even as bad as some of the new shows on other networks. Like "Brothers" and "Hank." But canceling "TBL" is not a tragedy for anyone other than the people who lost their jobs. (Production was shut down; there are no plans to telecast the unaired episodes that were already shot.)

For now, The CW will air repeats of its low-rated "Melrose Place" revival on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Which means that the network has only eight hours of original programming, along with repeats of "Melrose" and "America's Next Top Model."

And, by the way, The CW has picked up its other two new series — "Melrose Place" and "The Vampire Chronicles" — for full seasons.