LOS ANGELES — Parties for the WB network have a recurring theme: You are no longer this young, and you were never this cool.

The network has, for a long time, filled its schedule with shows that could double as Gap ads. Gap ads - is that a cool-enough reference? Whatever is cool and hip. You get the idea.

The guests at the parties, which is to say, the stars of the shows, tend to go through a predictable progression. Since so many get their first big breaks here, they start out grateful for the attention, and arrive to the publicity parties early and chatty.

If their show lasts a second season, they may arrive a little later, with maybe a few more friends hanging around, a little less patient with the questions.

A third season? The Big Star ’tude: get there late, surrounded by a full-blown posse, and treat the press as either a bunch of yahoos (OK, the truth hurts sometimes) or an impediment to their efforts to ignore as many people who haven’t also appeared on the cover of Teen People as possible.

But this season the WB is branching out a bit, in its shows and its parties.

John Schneider, Christine Lahti (and her husband Thomas Schlamme, who directs The West Wing as well as Jack & Bobby, Lahti’s new fall show on the WB), Drew Carey and Mitch Pileggi were at the WB’s party at the Pacific Design Center Wednesday night, and not as chaperones.

In truth, the occasional over-20 star has always been a guest at these parties (Schneider’s showed up at several, as a star of Smallville). You still won’t confuse the WB with CBS, but, while seemingly loath to admit it, the network of the Beautiful People is showing a little age. On purpose.

"We are a broadcast network," Garth Ancier, the WB’s chairman, said. True, a critic pointed out, but this is the first time they’ve admitted it. Before, the focus was solely on young people, the hipper the better - an audience the network certainly wants to keep. But Drew Carey has a new show on the network (Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show), Lahti is in Jack & Bobby and Pileggi and Barbara Hershey are among the stars of The Mountain.

None of them are ready for their senior citizen discount cards, but they probably don’t get carded at the liquor store, either.

"It’s a new day," David Janollari, the network’s new president of entertainment, said.

A new night, too. One of the hallmarks of a WB party has always been trying to figure out whether the good-looking men and women roaming the place are cast members in the network’s shows or hangers-on hoping to bask in a little reflected glory, such as it is. There was still plenty of that going on Wednesday night, and the network’s shows are still loaded with hot, young, almost-famous folks.

But a little maturity is welcome, on-screen and off.