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As it turns out, CBS was not the right place for "Supergirl."

Hey, lots of folks — including yours truly — were surprised when the network picked the show up last year.

"I know there was a lot of speculation as to — what were we thinking?" said then-CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler at the time.

Exactly. Not only are superheroes outside the realm of what one expects to see on CBS, but so are twentysomething females in lead roles.

"Supergirl" always seemed like a better fit on The CW, where it's moving this fall. "Where it should have been in the first place," said CW president Mark Pedowitz, whose network is home to "The Flash," "Arrow" and "DC's Legends of Tomorrow."

All four shows are produced by Warner Bros., which co-owns The CW with CBS. CBS manages the network.

A year ago, Tassler waxed eloquent about the "very broad appeal" of "Supergirl." Well, not so much. The show opened big but lost a lot of viewers. (As did just about every other hourlong show that premiered on TV last fall.)

Ratings for "Supergirl" were OK, but not great. It averaged 7.7 million viewers, 7.4 million if you exclude nearly 13 million who tuned in to the first episode — a figure it never came close to matching.

Not great by CBS standards, because it aims for "broad-appeal" shows. But more than twice as many viewers as the The CW's most-watched, "The Flash" — which, pending Tuesday's Season 2 finale, is averaging 3.5 million viewers.

Pedowitz expects "Supergirl" to do "a little less" well than it did on CBS, but be one of The CW's "top performers." It would be The CW's most-watched show even with half the CBS audience.

The CW has lower standards for success. And its audience is more attuned to comic books and sci-fi.

Freed of CBS expectations, executive producer Greg Berlanti and his team — who also bring us "The Flash," "Arrow" and "Legends" — can channel their inner comic-book geeks and, perhaps, make "Supergirl" better. It was a decent show in Season 1, but not a great show. Its best episode was the one in which Barry Allen/The Flash (Grant Gustin) crossed over, and that wasn't a coincidence.

Pedowitz said he doesn't think the network shift will have a "major effect" on the content of the show, but he also said Berlanti knows what works on The CW.

Yes, "Supergirl" will operate with a smaller budget at The CW. But just look at "The Flash" and you'll see that you can make a great superhero show on a CW budget.

Whether there will be cast changes because of the network switch is, perhaps, cause for concern. Pedowitz said Warner Bros. is in talks with Calista Flockhart, who played Cat Grant, and he'd be "happy to have her in whatever capacity is worked out" — which sounds like she may not be a full-time cast member.

CBS Entertainment president Glenn Geller (Tassler's former lieutenant, who took over when she stepped down in December) agrees with Pedowitz. He said he believes the show "found the right home."

And Geller said it wasn't so much that The CW saved "Supergirl" as it was finding the right network for it.

"Who's to say if we hadn't made that deal that we wouldn't have picked it up?" Geller said, indicating "Supergirl" was very much in the running for CBS' 2016-17 schedule.

Fortunately for fans, the move to The CW worked out. And they can look forward to more crossovers between The CW's shows — including, eventually, one involving all four shows, which Pedowitz promised we'll see in December.

Scott D. Pierce covers TV for The Salt Lake Tribune. Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.