Just because the economy has gone to the dogs doesn’t mean we can’t turn to the catwalk for some distraction. The twelfth season of “America’s Next Top Model” (7 p.m., CW) opens in Las Vegas. After a photo shoot in the gambling mecca, host Tyra Banks will anoint the top 13 would-be worthies and send them back to New York. Drama ensues when they discover that there are only a dozen beds. A photo shoot in Central Park re-creates the pleasures and cruelties of childhood games before the baker’s dozen convene before the panel to face the first elimination.

I’ve never been convinced that “Top Model” has turned anyone into a top model, but the show does a great job accentuating the high-strung anxieties of young women in a competitive group dynamic. There will be tears.

In contrast, the people on “Make Me a Supermodel” (9 p.m., Bravo) are more grown up and project a modicum of professional ambition. They’re also much more pretentious, and so is the show. For their first competition, a foppish photographer named Perou puts them in a transparent plastic cube and dangles them, in pairs, over Brooklyn. Act naturally.

A naive waif who has recently fled her Mennonite community makes an immediate impression on the judges and becomes a juicy target for the rest. The catty infighting just doesn’t seem as believable or consequential coming from these quasi-adults as from Tyra’s gaggle of emotional basket cases.

• Turner Classic Movies dedicates every Wednesday in March to the movies of Ronald Reagan, airing 31 films, major and minor, starring the Warner Bros. leading man who would serve two terms each as governor of California and president of the United States. Tonight’s roundup includes four in which Reagan portrays government agent Lt. Brass Bancroft, including “Secret Agent of the Air” (7 p.m., TCM). The Reagan marathon runs well into Thursday morning and includes “That Hagen Girl” (8:15 a.m.), in which Reagan plays a small-town lawyer accused of being the father of an illegitimate teen (Shirley Temple).

TCM host Robert Osbourne will be joined by Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis for this month-long festival.

Tonight’s other highlights

• Three more finalists emerge on “American Idol” (7 p.m., Fox).

• Arsenio Hall hosts “World’s Funniest Moments” (7 p.m., MyNetwork), a round-up of clips from the Internet.

• A long-imprisoned gang leader claims he’s about to go straight on “Lie to Me” (8 p.m., Fox).

• Sawyer weaves a web of lies to protect the survivors from past misdeeds on “Lost” (8 p.m., ABC).

• “Kitchen Impossible” (8 p.m., DIY) explores renovation innovations.

• “Mantracker” (9 p.m., Science) follows professional outdoorsmen in the remote Canadian wilderness playing an involved game of hide and seek.

• Radicals threaten the precinct house on “Life on Mars” (9 p.m., ABC).

• Ellen has misgivings as Patty challenges the FBI on “Damages” (9 p.m., FX).

• “Hudson Plane Crash: What Really Happened” (9 p.m., Discovery) offers a minute-by-minute account of the dramatic water landing.

• Chairs become the topic on “Important Things with Demetri Martin” (9:30 p.m., Comedy Central).