…and, yet, somehow, they still managed to slip one of the best shows of the upcoming season into their lineup: “Reaper.” But more on that in a bit…along with details about a surprisingly promising comedy called “Aliens in America.” (I haven’t seen the whole episode yet, but the preview was hilarious.)

First up were the pair of announcements from The CW’s executive VP of communications, Paul McGuire, who looks a little bit like Darrell Hammond and, to the relief of the gathered critics, had pretty decent comedic delivery as well. (There’s really nothing more excruciating than watching a network exec get an attack of the flop sweats as they attempt to be funny when it goes against every fiber of their being. Well, maybe watching the pilot for “Cavemen.” But not much else.)

* Supergirl will be flying onto “Smallville” this season, played by Laura Vandervoort. She’s hot, she can fly…what more do you want?

* There’ll be two new cast members on “Supernatural” this season: Lauren Cohan and Katie Cassidy. Katie’s dad, it turns out, is David Cassidy. I was so, so tempted to find her at the party later that night and ask her what her dad’s deal was about only wanting to talk to press who give rave reviews to his albums – back story: I only kinda-sorta liked his recent Target-exclusive album of remixes, and my indifference led to the cancellation of an already-scheduled interview – but I restrained myself…mostly because my wife was with me.

After McGuire’s comedic monologue, he introduced Dawn Ostroff, President of Entertainment with The CW, who dropped the following tidbits:

* On September 18th, the new season of “Beauty and the Geek” premieres with a new twist: this time, there’ll be a male beauty and a female geek.

* The CW has extended their deal with Tyra Banks through the 2009-2010 season, which means that as long as it keeps performing, you’ll keep seeing her within the context of “America’s Top Model.”

* Waiting in the wings: an ensemble comedy called “Eight Days a Week,” starring Christina Milian, Mario Lopez and Justin Hartley and produced by “Will & Grace”‘s Sean Hayes.

* “One Tree Hill” will be back with 22 new episodes…much to the annoyance of several of the critics, you could tell, since they – like me – would rather have seen the return of “Veronica Mars,” instead.

* This season’s new cringe-worthy reality show concept: “Farmer Wants a Wife.” Big city girls move to the country, and “Green Acres”-styled comedy hijinks almost certainly ensue.

* This season’s new cringe-worthy reality show in practice (or, at least, based on the clips I saw): “Crowned: The Mother of All Pageants.” Mother-daughter beauty pageants. It’ll probably be huge. But it made me want to run far, far away.

* Casting changes to new shows: Missy Peregrym, formerly the shape-shifting bad girl from “Heroes,” is now going to be on “Reaper,” while Scott Patterson – a.k.a. Luke from “Gilmore Girls” – will now be the dad on the sitcom “Aliens in America.”

* Chris Rock will finally appear in front of the camera on “Everybody Hates Chris” rather than simply serving as the show’s offscreen narrator. He’ll play a guidance counselor in the season premiere. (Further appearances aren’t currently scheduled, unfortunately.)

* No further movement on that long-rumored “Spike” movie. Says Ostroff, “We typically do not do movies of the week or miniseries. I never say never. You never know. Something could come up that just, you know, feels so right for us. But we have not had any conversations with Joss about the ‘Spike’ movie, although we would love to be in business with Joss in any way.”

* Asia, the winner of last year’s Pussycat Dolls series, has decided to go solo, thereby completely defeating the entire purpose of going through the season to become a member of the group.

* On the subject of “Gilmore Girls” wrapping up last season rather than lingering on for one for year: “We were looking at (the show) as the season was going on,” said Ostroff, “and I think that we all felt that the show had lost about 25 percent of its audience. Lauren Graham, who is, you know, the consummate professional and was truly fantastic to
deal with, as was Alexis — you know, we all talked about it. And I think that, at the end of the day, we just didn’t want to see ‘Gilmore Girls’ go on for another season and see the ratings go down even further. And I think we just felt that a lot of the stories had been told, and it was just time to move on. I was happy that the show ended on the two women, on the girls, because I felt that’s where the show started, and I was happy that that was the focus of how the show ended.”

* On the quick dumping of the much-tauted “Hidden Palms”: “We had ordered it as eight episodes,” explains Ostroff, “and we really saw it as probably a miniseries, a serialized miniseries of eight episodes. And if it were to catch on, we would have had the ability to do more episodes, but that’s really one of the ways that we talked about marketing it and having it on the air.”

* On dumping “Veronica Mars” after only three seasons, despite the loud clamoring of the show’s fans: “I can honestly sit here and I say I can not look back and have any regrets. I feel that we gave ‘Veronica Mars’ every chance,” declares Ostroff. “And as many of you here know, there was no stronger champion of that show than me. You know, we gave it a better time slot to follow up every single year that it was on the air. And eventually, we just had to say how much longer do we go on without the show really catching on? So the taking the show off the air for a while was not the demise of the show. We really tried every single year to figure out how we can bring more viewers in. We just weren’t able to crack it.”

To just close on a personal note, sorry, but I absolutely don’t buy that. “Veronica Mars” was a smart, funny, exciting series, and I refuse to believe that the network couldn’t have tried another timeslot or two to see if any of them worked any better. I mean, the diehards would’ve followed it anywhere they put it, so what would it have hurt?