W hile you weren&rsquo;t paying attention, two TV networks launched their fall seasons this week, ahead of the pack. </p><p>The CW and ABC Family are both aiming at the same narrow slice of the viewing audience of girls and very young women, albeit with two very different approaches to TV drama. Needless to say, I fit neither viewer profile, but at least ABC Family pretends to acknowledge my existence. </p><p>While ABC Family tries to live up to its name with shows that portray contemporary families in stressful times, CW series like &ldquo;Gossip Girl&rdquo; and &ldquo;Top Model&rdquo; &mdash; and that soap opera that&rsquo;s like the original &ldquo;90210&rdquo; in numbers only &mdash; treat grown-ups as sidebars to the main attraction, namely all the hot action that the under-25s are getting.</p><p>Tonight the CW debuts the not-so-long-awaited TV adaptation of the 1990s &ldquo;Vampire Diaries&rdquo; novels. Good timing, eh? Yet despite the fact that the sexy bloodsucker subgenre is more crowded than a Transylvanian graveyard at sunrise, I can see what the network is thinking. It&rsquo;s what the network is thinking every weeknight this season: Find a new show that reminds viewers of another show on the schedule, and pair them off like Noah would.</p><p>So, on Mondays the CW has two teen-angst soaps (&ldquo;One Tree Hill&rdquo; and &ldquo;Gossip&rdquo;); Aaron Spelling may be dead, but on Tuesdays his shows live on (&ldquo;90210,&rdquo; &ldquo;Melrose Place&rdquo;); Wednesdays are skinny-girl night (&ldquo;Top Model&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Beautiful Life&rdquo;) and Thursdays the &ldquo;Vampire&rdquo; show is matched with &ldquo;Supernatural,&rdquo; a show that seemingly no one can put a stake through.</p><p> It doesn&rsquo;t hurt that Ian Somerhalder, aka dear departed Boone from &ldquo;Lost,&rdquo; who plays the diabolical vamp to Paul Wesley&rsquo;s bleeding-heart sensitive vamp, is a dead ringer for &ldquo;Smallville&rsquo;s&rdquo; Tom Welling. (But that&rsquo;s Friday night.)</p><p>Do I even need to recap this show for you? Lonely girl (Nina Dobrev) is still mourning her lost parents when she falls for the handsome if suspiciously older-looking new kid at school (Wesley), who in turn feels all soulmatey about her, pending the interferences of Fangbanger No. 2 (Somerhalder). Add acoustical guitar music and pulse until blended.</p><p>I&rsquo;ve got nothing against &ldquo;Vampire Diaries.&rdquo; Since it lacks broad appeal and hasn&rsquo;t a clever bone in its body, it will probably be a hit, unlike CW shows I&rsquo;ve stuck up for (like &ldquo;Reaper&rdquo; and &ldquo;Aliens in America&rdquo;).</p><p>Insofar as it has an audience, the CW seems to know what it likes.</p><p> Speaking of ratings, if the CW did as well nationally as it does in Kansas City, I doubt its future would be as tenuous as it seems to be. The CW broadcasts over a local station, KCWE, which is partnered with KMBC-9 and gets pretty good ratings as a result. In the May Nielsens, for example, CW in prime time drew a larger audience than any cable channel save USA, Fox News and FSKC back when the Royals were winning.</p><p>&bull;&bull;&bull; </p><p>Next week, ABC Family rolls out a new season of &ldquo;Lincoln Heights&rdquo; to go with the new season of &ldquo;Greek.&rdquo;</p><p>These two shows have helped ABC Family in recent years to redefine itself as something rather different from what Pat Robertson had in mind when he started the Family Channel 30 years ago.</p><p>Like all &ldquo;family&rdquo; shows, there&rsquo;s a certain subtlety missing in &ldquo;Lincoln Heights,&rdquo; which revolves around an LAPD cop living in inner-city Los Angeles. People tend to be good eggs or rotten ones.