Death to models: The CW cancels 'The Beautiful Life'

The 2009-10 TV season has its first casualty, and it's not much of a surprise: The CW has pulled the plug on "The Beautiful Life" after two weeks of ugly ratings.

 [Sept. 25, 6:44 p.m. UPDATE: The CW has announced that encore airings of "Melrose Place" will fill the vacant time slot on Wednesdays at 9 p.m.]

The drama about models in New York drew anemic numbers in both of its telecasts. The Sept. 16 premiere scored only 1.4 million viewers, while this week's episode barely scraped above 1 million viewers.

Production has been shut down, and The CW has no plans to air any of the remaining finished episodes. There's no word on what will fill the 9 p.m. Wednesday time period yet; the network is expected to announce a replacement by Monday at the latest.

The CW has announced a pair of unscripted shows in the past couple of days -- "Fly Girls," following a group of flight attendants for Virgin America, and an untitled series about socialite Tinsley Mortimer -- but they won't be ready to go in five days' time. Nor will "Life Unexpected," the network's sole midseason scripted show. The network does have the unscripted show "Blonde Charity Mafia" in the can.

"The Beautiful Life" had a bit of a rocky ride before even making it onto the air. Star Mischa Barton was hospitalized in mid-July, putting production on hold, and the network didn't even send a complete copy of the first episode out for review. Promotion for the show was also scant compared to the net's other new shows, "The Vampire Diaries" and "Melrose Place."

Both of those shows received orders for additional scripts earlier in the week.

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