Plus: tipsy scenes from the Fox party.

Yesterday, discussing the strong possibility that CBS's Viva Laughlin will crash and burn after its fall debut, this column referred to that network's Cold Case as a "macho procedural drama." Michelle Elwood of Skillman, N.J., has written in to correct the record, offering that Cold Case is "the girliest (and lefty-est) of all the procedurals, with no techno-beat lab scenes but plenty of flashbacks to times of oppression and stories of tragic lost love." The column regrets the error. Further, the column blames it on the fact that most powerful thing about Upfronts Week, despite the overriding emphasis on new shows, is the way that the individual programs blur into a mass and hypnotize attendees with each network's brand identity.

The CW, for instance, is fresh and female—the only network whose numbers are up with young women—and so much more. It's hip and wired and experimental. (Yesterday, execs announced both a commercial-free celebrity-and-style show called CW Now and a plan for five-second ads.) It's proudly multicultural and casually eco-conscious. It's kinda slutty. The Thursday-morning pitch kicked off with a performance by the oily fembots of Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll, soon to be tramping around for a second season. I don't want to underrate the entertainment value of leggy dancers dressed up like skanks, but the Pussycat Dolls are a bit much to take at 11 a.m. "I wanna hear all my girls sing," the lead singer, Nicole Scherzinger, called to the audience in the middle of "Don't Cha." But none of her girls sang. "C'mon, CW!"

Nicole introduced Dawn Ostroff, the CW's president of entertainment, as "an honorary doll," and she was flattered. Ostroff, the shrewdest presenter of the five network entertainment chiefs, is warm and brisk and engaging—easily a better speaker than Hillary Clinton. It was charming to hear her outline Kevin Smith's Reaper, an hour-long action comedy that gets in on the supernatural trend: "Before he was born, Sam's parents begrudgingly sold his soul to Satan." It was even better when she cracked up while stating the title of a forthcoming The Bachelor-meets-Green Acres reality show, Farmer Wants a Wife.

In unveiling Gossip Girl, based on the series of trashy young-adult novels, Ostroff was selling a hormonal soap (The O.C. meets Cruel Intentions) and, with it, a whole multiplatform strategy. Digital this, MySpace that, text-messaging all of Times Square, ad infinitum. The show's Web site will feature a virtual reality where one can attend to the care and feeding of an avatar. "This is your chance to live on the Upper East Side." Without approval from a co-op board? Rad school! Other notable debuts include Aliens in America (Freaks and Geeks meets Little Mosque on the Prairie), and Crowned, a mother-daughter pageant competition destined to rake it in hand over fist. Best moment of the clip: "Welcome, ladies, to your first de-sashing ceremony. …"

The Fox thing started at 4 p.m. at the New York City Center with Peter Ligouri, perhaps the smoothest of the five presidents, incarnating the most appealing element of the Fox aesthetic—its lack of pretension. He sold Canterbury's Law—a legal drama with Juliana Margulies—by telling an unshowy story about taking her to an Italian dinner. He bragged about the Mets. Even his jargon was agreeable: The reality show Nashville (Laguna Beach meets Music Row) will be part of a Friday-night block of "aspirational unscripted shows," along with an Idol successor. Said Liguori, "We should probably do another competition called The Search for a Shorter Title for The Search for the Next Great American Band." He got the thing over with fast. On one level, this was a necessity; last year's presentation started late and never ended. On the other, it didn't matter—as the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, the notorious awfulness of the Fox upfront made no difference to the bottom line.

About 4,000 of us, it seemed, walked into Central Park for an after-party at Wollman Rink—an insanely lavish affair that nonetheless must be a rounding error on Rupert Murdoch's personal T&E budget. I went partying with some guys from the Farrelly brothers' new Rules for Starting Over—another show about four guys and their dating lives, but in Boston this time, and with an orangutan. A 20-foot-tall balloon depicting Brian from Family Guy stood sentinel at the entrance.