A British psychologist has calculated mathematically that Jan. 24 is the most depressing day of the year. (So if you felt as melancholy as we did last Tuesday, don’t blame it all on The CW.)
But if anyone found a silver lining in that gray day, it was Ravindra Bala.
As far as we can tell, Bala is something of a prospector of Web addresses, scooping up unregistered domain names in the hope of finding a nugget or two that someone wants to buy from him. On Tuesday, it appears, he struck gold.
Word circulated around media blogs that THECW.com was registered by Bala last November—only weeks before the now fabled Thanksgiving weekend dinner party where Moonves and Meyer hatched their master plan.
Flash! reached Bala last week. He declined to discuss the matter, allowing only that sudden interest in THECW.com was "unexpected" and that he’d received more e-mail than usual. (We don’t know if he saw reports last week that the domain name sex.com, which someone had the foresight to register in 1994, sold for as much as $14 million).
When asked how CBS and Warner Bros. planned to deal with Bala, a source close to one of the networks didn’t mince words.
"Obviously," the source deadpanned, "he’s going to have to be tracked down and killed."
