The CW, ‘The Originals’ wage hilarious battle with ‘Pretty Little Liars,’ mocking ‘A’

Who doesn’t love just a little bit of network trash-talk? It’s all in good fun, really, and we also think that in this case, what is being cooked up here is a pretty great publicity stunt for a pair of Tuesday-night series to each be promoted heavily.

This week marks the first time save for a Halloween Special that both “Pretty Little Liars” and “The Originals” are each airing on the same night, and the general consensus out there is that these two are going to be bitter rivals given that they have a similar sort of young, Twitter-friendly audience. So the folks with “The Originals” thought it would be a funny idea to create an ad, with the same tone as something that would air on ABC Family, and then stick it on that network during a “Pretty Little Liars” episode.

As for how The CW managed to get this to air on ABC Family, they bought up local advertising for many cable providers, rather than getting some sort of national ad through the Disney-owned network and rival.

Of course, “Pretty Little Liars” managed to come up with a response of their own themed around their principal villain, along with the “oh no they didn’t!” sort of hastag in #unoriginal. Personally, we find all of this to be an awesome little battle between two shows with diehard followings. Not only that, but the folks over at The CW make it pretty clear that what they are really jealous of here is that “Pretty Little Liars” is the most-tweeted-about show on TV every week that it is on the air.

As for why this is really just all one big publicity stunt, know this: Both “Pretty Little Liars” and “The Originals” are owned by Warner Bros., even if they air on different networks. So from that standpoint, they both benefit.