The CW: “Cable-Worthy”

While we’re kicking the dead horse of network ratings, let’s send out some special props to The CW, who achieved historic lows Sunday evening with its blockbuster lineup of “CW Now,” “Online Nation,” “Gossip Girl” (repeat) and “America’s Next Top Model” (repeat).

The network averaged a paltry 855,000 viewers last night, breaking a million only (and only barely) with its “ANTM” rerun. These are basic-cable numbers, and not particularly inspiring basic-cable numbers.

Its original programming – “CW Now” and “Online Nation” – “achieved” historic lows with 780,000 and 698,000 viewers, disrespectfully. Put it this way: If everyone watching The CW last night was in Los Angeles, The CW still wouldn’t’ve won the night in the L.A. market. I’m not sure which is worse: Those ratings or the idea that some 700,000 people are willing to watch a 30-minute embedded commercial for Wal-Mart (“CW Now”) or a show basically imploring you to turn off your TV (“Online Nation”).

Perhaps we have a new game: Imagine trying to locate a CW viewer in a nation of 300 million. Five in Los Angeles (the network’s top executives), one in Sherman Oaks and a couple more in Burbank and Glendale (their more dedicated publicists), a group of four pals in Brooklyn who watched just to smirk, two in Helena, Montana (hometown friends of a P.A. on one of the shows), eight more scattered throughout Iowa (including an elderly lady who just happened to die with her TV tuned into The CW), a guy in St. Louis with crappy TV reception for the other channels, a pair of young, single, knocked-up twentysomething sisters in Biloxi, Mississippi who believe The CW represents their only contact with trendiness and a family in Nebraska who had heard about this “online” thing and was curious to see what it was all about.

Well, we’re up to 30.