CW's The Beautiful Life never given a chance

The first show of the fall season has been canceled – and after only two episodes.

The CW canceled The Beautiful Life on Friday. According to cast member Ashley Madekwe’s blog, they learned about the cancellation and an order to stop production while on set working on their seventh episode.

The Beautiful Life debuted two weeks ago on Wednesday night following America’s Next Top Model with 1.5 million viewers. This week’s ratings dropped to 1 million, and sources say lost 60 percent of its lead-in from ANTM.

Here are Ashley Madekwe’s thoughts on the cancellation from her blog post I linked to above:

"I think all of us (and I’m talking about everyone- not just cast) are sad that something we invested our time, effort and talent into was thrown away so abruptly by the network but the reality is the ratings were VERY low. Nobody knew this show was even on. The advertising campaign for TBL was small to non existent." "We were the last pick up of the season and that’s just the way it goes sometimes. The CW had Melrose Place and Vampire Diaries and had already allocated the publicity budget to those shows. We were on after Top Model and we had the draw of Mischa. They never had any plans to advertise us. I guess we were an experiment to see if ratings can fall out of the air…… um, they can’t." Now I’m sure lots of other factors contributed to the cancelation but all I can tell you is what I know and my opinion. I think ‘The Beautiful Life’ was an amazing idea and it really did have all the elements to be a great show but it just never got to realize it’s full potential."

I don’t think the show was given a chance. The CW’s other new shows this fall include The Vampire Diaries and Melrose Place. The Vampire Diaries, of course, is super hot right now. Who didn’t see that coming? Vampires are uber-hot right now with the Twilight craze. That’s almost a built-in audience. It’s like getting to watch Twilight every week! I’m not downing The Vampire Diaries, I’m just saying it wasn’t too hard to develop a following for that show.

As for Melrose Place, it’s based on a popular show from the 90s. So right there you also have a built in audience. Then, you are pulling stars from the original – and The CW just got Heather Locklear to commit to guest starring on the show. There’s no way in hell The CW would cancel Melrose Place now, at least in this season. But what if they DIDN’T have the old stars coming back?

I like Melrose Place but I liked it just as much as I liked The Beautiful Life. To me, they were on the same level. What made The Beautiful Life different was we’ve never seen stories about young models – and the concept of the show was drawing me in. Plus, I liked how Mischa Barton’s character Sonja Stone was dealing with many of the issues she deals with in her personal life. And I liked the blooming romance between Raina (Sara Paxton) and new model prospect Chris (Ben Hollingsworth). I thought the show had potential.

This week’s ratings to me were expected. Why? Because so many shows debuted this week. And, the show is against Glee, which already has a big following.

There is a petition to sign if you want to try to save The Beautiful Life. It probably won’t help, but it does show that you support the show. When networks cancel a show, you have to show them you are upset. That’s the only way they know how an audience feels.

You also can send a message via Twitter to The CW here: cw_network