The CW has announced Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious, the second season of its Pussycat Dolls Present reality competition series, will premiere on Monday, February 18 at 9PM ET/PT.
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The CW's Gossip Girl drama will serve as Pussycat Dolls Present's lead-in on Monday nights. According to The CW, a desire to prevent Gossip Girl -- which due to the Writers Guild of America strike, will actually be in repeats during midseason -- from having to air against American Idol's Wednesday broadcasts is part of the reason for the show's move from Wednesdays to Mondays.
"The Wednesday night competition is tough, and it will get tougher with American Idol moving in," Kelly Kahl, the CBS executive who oversees scheduling for both CBS and The CW, told Daily Variety.
"We're employing a similar strategy to the last time we had Pussycat Dolls on," Kahl told Variety. "We aired an original earlier in the week [Tuesdays], then a repeat behind Top Model. The repeats did almost as well as the original. Add the audiences together, and that's a nice little number for the show."
Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll premiered last March on The CW and aimed to find a new member for the all-female dance troupe/singing group. Asia Nitollano, an 18-year-old former New York Knicks dance team member from Mt. Vernon, NY, was crowned the winner during the show's April finale. But she quit after the pre-taped finale broadcast aired, instead choosing to "do a solo career."
The CW announced plans in May to air a second Pussycat Dolls Present edition as part of the network's 2007-2008 midseason schedule but remained mum on the show's format until early June, when Pussycat Dolls founder and choreographer Robin Antin revealed that -- rather chronicling the search for yet another Pussycat Dolls member -- the show's second season would feature the creation of an all-new, all-girl trio named Girlicious.
The CW entertainment president Dawn Ostroff confirmed those reports at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour, adding Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious was scheduled to premiere in January with first-season judges Antin; Geffen Records chairman Ron Fair; rapper Lil' Kim; and choreographer Mikey Minden all reprising their roles.
The CW has also announced Beauty and the Geek's fifth season will premiere on Tuesday, March 11 at 8PM ET/PT. Beauty and the Geek -- which had traditionally aired during the Wednesdays at 8PM ET/PT time period when Top Model was on hiatus -- first aired during the Tuesdays at 8PM ET/PT time period as part of The CW's Fall 2007 schedule.
In addition to Gossip Girl, several other scripted The CW programs -- Everybody Hates Chris, Aliens in America, Girlfriends, The Game, and Reaper -- will move to new time periods for the network's new midseason schedule.
"We are really trying to take advantage of admittedly a very changed schedule now because of the [ongoing writers] strike," Kahl told The Hollywood Reporter. "With the strike, we have an interesting opportunity to experiment, and with the nice stability from our reality shows, we can get a look at how some of these [scripted] shows do in other time periods."
Farmer Wants a Wife, a new Outback Jack-like reality dating series that The CW had originally planned to air as midseason programming, will now likely to debut in May, according to Kahl.
About The Author: Christopher Rocchio
