Vampires, it turns out.

The Vampire Diaries, based on the L. J. Smith book series about vamps in the high school crowd, has sent Smallville - tales in the life of an aged Superboy - packing off to the sulky corner of Fridays on the CW's fall schedule, which the network announced Thursday.

Formerly the home of rock-em, sock-em wrestling, now it's a place almost as lonely as The Fortress of Solitude, where two-day-old reruns of America's Top Model mournfully stand watch before the 10 o'clock news.

Speaking of Vampires, the CW, which means "Can't Wait" (to go to ridiculous lengths to try to rope in more girls and young women), is also resurrecting Melrose Place, slipping it in Tuesdays after 90210. The network's desired audience is too young to recall the popularity of both shows on Fox in the '90s, when Heather Locklear, and that tightly wound redhead from Desperate Housewives gave Melrose its bite. Neither Locklear nor Marcia Cross will be in the new version, but, like the new 90210, it will pick up a couple of stragglers from the original.

First among them: Laura Leighton. She's "still beautiful at 40," says the CW. Can you imagine?

To be fair, the network synopsis of the show sounds hilarious: blackmail, betrayal, affairs, lots of drinking, a trendy restaurant named Coal, a student in desperate need of money, and Ashlee Simpson-Wentz. Just the thing for all the teen girls in the CW audience.

The network has a third new drama filled with pretty boys and cutie pies: The Beautiful Life, which features "a stunning beauty with a secret past," "a strikingly handsome Iowa farm boy," and Mischa Barton from The O.C. (who's pretty stunning herself), all battling it out in the New York City modeling world while trying to stay off the radar of that back-stabbing Gossip Girl.

The network put a stake through the heart of comedy (unless you watch its dramas as satires of themselves), canceling Everybody Hates Chris and The Game. Freshman Privileged, which was thought to have a shot, wasn't privileged enough, and Reaper also got scythed.

The CW officially threw in the towel on Sunday nights, which may allow Reaper to rise from the ashes as ABC, which produces the show, seeks to syndicate it, station by station, to CW affiliates.

Though it's hard to understand what Superboy, played by 32-year-old Tom Wellig, who looked 32 when Smallville premiered in 2001, has in common with the re-running models, shows on the other four nights of the CW schedule are designed to complement each other. Mondays: absurdist teen soap opera. Tuesdays: absurdist teen soap opera with a past. Wednesdays: models! Thursdays: spooky stuff.