Ta-Ta, UPN. So Long, WB. Hello, The CW.

Fans of WWE's "Smackdown!" and "Gilmore Girls" will have a lot in common come September when UPN and the WB are shuttered and their most successful programming is used to launch a new network called The CW.

The network, announced yesterday at a news conference in New York, will be a 50-50 partnership between CBS, which owns UPN, and Warner Bros., a division of Time Warner, the majority owner of the WB.

Like UPN and the WB, The CW (named in tribute to CBS and Warner Bros., and if you think that's lame you should see the new network's logo) will chase the elusive 18-to-34-year-old viewer with such shows as "America's Next Top Model" and "Smallville."

UPN and the WB will continue to operate independently until September, reporters at the news conference in the St. Regis Hotel learned from CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves and Warner Bros. Entertainment Chairman and CEO Barry Meyer.

Dawn Ostroff, who has been in charge of programming for UPN since February 2002, was named president of entertainment for the new network.

And yet the list of series featured in the promo reel and news release shown at the unveiling included more WB programs than UPN ones. Shows like "Gilmore Girls" and "Supernatural," "One Tree Hill" and "Smallville," "Everwood" and "Reba," as well as the reality series "Beauty and the Geek."

The UPN shows mentioned were "America's Next Top Model," "Everybody Hates Chris," "Veronica Mars," "Girlfriends" and "Smackdown!" ("Veronica Mars," the least watched of these shows, reaches an anorexic audience of 2.6 million viewers on average. However, it's also produced by Warner Bros.)

The CW will adopt the WB's scheduling model, programming a total of 30 hours each week: Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. and 8 to 10 p.m.; Sunday, 5 to 10 p.m.; and a five-hour Saturday-morning animation block.

Like UPN and the WB, The CW will not program Saturday prime time. But then, as Moonves joked yesterday, neither do the other broadcast networks.

NBC reruns weekday programming and occasionally burns off theatrical inventory on Saturday nights, ABC mostly burns off theatricals and has done some "repurposing" of original programming, and CBS runs something called "Crimetime Saturday" -- just another way of saying "crime-drama reruns." Fox actually wins the night most weeks among the 18-to-49-year-olds the broadcast networks target with low-budget fare, including "Cops" and "America's Most Wanted."

Meyer said the new network is expected to reach more than 95 percent of the country at launch. It already has lined up stations reaching about 48 percent, including the 11 major-market UPN stations owned by CBS, which have signed a 10-year affiliation deal with The CW.

Making the same long-term commitment are the 16 major-market WB stations owned by Tribune Broadcasting, which has given up its 22.5 percent stake in the WB. Tribune partnered with Warner Bros. to launch the WB network 11 years ago this month. (UPN launched that same month.)