MyNetworkTV, the mini network hastily assembled last year, is getting another face-lift.

Inexpensive, over-the-top prime-time telenovelas — translated versions of Spanish-language soaps — filled the network's entire lineup last fall and proved a disaster. A pair of dramas that had aired five nights a week were gradually reduced to one night.

They'll be gone by October, when current series "Saints & Sinners" and "American Heiress" complete their runs on Wednesdays. In their place are mixed martial arts, movies and, new this fall, a handful of reality shows, some borrowed from other networks.

Station executives had "great optimism" about the telenovelas, says Bill Carroll, an analyst at Katz Television Group, which advises them; Fox Stations chief Jack Abernethy last summer called the series a can't-miss proposition: "People watch soaps in the day, and they're very popular, so why wouldn't they be popular in prime time?"

The network trotted out Morgan Fairchild and Bo Derek along with other actors, most of them unknown. But as the season started, "it became pretty obvious" that the strategy was doomed, Carroll says. "There was not enough of an audience, or the audience was not intrigued."

How were telenovelas doing in Hawai'i?

"Not well," says John Fink, general manager of local Fox affiliate KFVE. "Our results were similar to those of the rest of the country, and in keeping with the rest of the country we're happy they've quickly rectified it."

MyNetwork was created by Fox's station group to fill a void left on 11 of its major-market outlets when UPN was shut down last summer, along with WB, to create the new CW network. Other stations left in the lurch signed up as well, and MyNetwork now claims 175 affiliates.

Last season, MyNetwork averaged just 830,000 viewers, about one-fourth of the audience UPN and WB each commanded a year earlier.

"It was a valiant attempt," says Greg Meidel, a syndication veteran who became MyNetwork's president in January and immediately set out to reshape its lineup. "But it was very difficult to get viewers to sample (the same) shows five days a week. It was an uphill battle from Day 1."

The new lineup, which Meidel says will be even less costly than the telenovelas, will add four reality shows this fall. Tuesdays will bring "The Academy," following sheriff's trainees in Los Angeles, and "Jail," from the producers of Fox's "Cops," which follows criminals from booking through incarceration.

Wednesday's schedule includes "Divorce Wars," in which couples enter on-camera therapy to save marriages, and "Meet My Folks," a former NBC series in which parents have a say about who their kids date.

Next spring, MyNetwork also will resurrect Fox's "Paradise Hotel" with a new cast, and plans up to 10 more "instant" news specials on celebrities under an agreement with Access Hollywood, which produced others last season on Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears.

"IFL Battleground," the martial-arts series, continues on Mondays, where ratings jumped 40 percent when it premiered in March; movies will remain on Thursdays and Fridays.