BROADCAST BLUES WILL THE LAST NETWORK TO ACTUALLY TRY PLEASE TURN OFF THE LIGHT?

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

``Any popular pastime is soon replaced by another of the same sort, so that the competition we are contemplating should be between similar kinds of empty amusement or consoling kitsch in one corner, and the pot of paint lately flung in the public's face in the other ... and this contest is no contest; it is a mismatch of monumental proportions: the balance continues to favor whatever is compliant, cheap, and easy.''

- William H. Gass, ``The Test of Time''

Trust me: The above quotation will be the closest this fall season comes to academic discourse. Let's just say there are compelling reasons that the working title of an MTV News story about the fall TV season was ``Where Crap Comes From.''

I wanted to like the new season; honest, I did. Granted, I wrote nasty things about it in May, just after the networks had announced their fall schedules. The news shows looked essentially wanting, and derivative, and boring, I wrote, and the networks - who are, after all, facing terrible challenges from cable and the burgeoning technology - should be trying a lot harder. But I watched all the pilots the networks submitted for my approval - or, more often, disapproval - in late June and early July, and my suspicions were confirmed.

And then came TV Press Tour, the semi-annual Chinese water torture of journalism, and I spoke to other critics whose opinions are respected by not just me, but the industry. I was hoping for someone to point out some glimmers of aesthetic hope that I, in my barreling through pilot after pilot, had been too sloppy or witless to see, but these folks essentially told me the same thing: Yep, it's ugly out there. The networks need to be significantly more worried than they appear.

Then I spoke to people dotted around the industry - friends on the periphery, solid citizens on the front lines - and they assured me that the networks are, indeed, not just whistling past the graveyard. One friend reported that in his experiences with networks, he has observed what could he dubbed ``perpetual crisis management.''

So, the networks realize they're in trouble; it's just that acknowledging it would be considered bad form.

Particularly, it seems, if acknowledging it would mean coming up with some really killer, great new shows that force viewers to pay attention. Instead, the networks this fall have assembled perhaps the most listless, take-it-or-leave-it collection of new programs in memory. And yes, I realize that it's de rigueur around this time of year to lament how lame the networks' new shows are, but this year, hang the critics - the season should come with a warning from the surgeon general.

Here's how bad it's getting: Over the summer, ABC took to airing repeats of the USA Network's hit dramedy ``Monk,'' starring Tony Shalhoub as a quirky San Francisco detective suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (and it actually got decent ratings opposite Fox's reality sensation ``American Idol''). ``Monk,'' which was initially developed for but rejected by ABC, is easily better than any of the new shows that will actually be debuting on the network this fall.

ABC has also entered into a deal with HBO to develop programming for the broadcaster, which seems both a throwing-up-their-hands admission of defeat and a critical tactical mistake: HBO doesn't need to develop hits (which, of course, it has) but simply smart, high-profile shows that convince a moderate number of viewers to keep subscribing to the service. ABC would have canceled HBO's ``The Sopranos'' or ``Six Feet Under'' long before those shows became the sensations they are today. Want proof? Two seasons back, ABC canceled an acclaimed series set in a mental hospital, ``Wonderland,'' after two airings.

At any rate, even if network executives aren't showing it, their schedules are betraying signs of flop sweat everywhere you look. You see it, most obviously, in the number of new cop shows - most following the procedural element popularized by both ``Law & Order'' and its spinoffs and ``CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.'' That most prognosticators picked ``CSI: Miami'' as the only sure new series on the fall schedule underscores that, but other shows - CBS' ``Without a Trace'' and ``Robbery Homicide Division,'' NBC's ``Boomtown'' and ABC's midseason retread of ``Dragnet'' - fall under that umbrella, as well.

Curiously enough, ``Robbery Homicide Division'' cribs from ``Law & Order'' and ``CSI,'' but comes from Michael Mann, who created ``Miami Vice,'' which is being re-created from whole cloth by the makers of Fox's ``Fastlane.''

Maybe the best, most heartfelt new series of the season - the WB's ``Everwood'' - is an admitted (by its creator Greg Berlanti) amalgam of previous WB series, from ``Dawson's Creek'' to ``Smallville'' to ``Gilmore Girls'' and even ``7th Heaven.'' That it's able to take all these disparate influences and create something that's simultaneously sweet, involving and funny speaks well of the art of borrowing. But while you can get dizzy trying to assign all the various influences old shows have on the new programs, you're hard-pressed to point to debuting series that are original and may influence TV in the future.

ABC Entertainment president Susan Lyne - no doubt mouthing corporate wisdom coming from further up the Disney food chain - suggested in July that viewers don't want smart, innovative television. We're happy with just any old thing with sparkly lights that makes noise in the background while we're switching off our brains.

But that doesn't explain why HBO is doing so sensationally right now (or, for that matter, ABC's pact with HBO), or, of course, all the truly great shows that became appointment television and made an impact on pop culture. There's a reason certain shows are remembered and others quickly forgotten, and if ABC is content to merely broadcast video wallpaper, then they're merely hastening that day when the networks will be considered irrelevant.

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Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) fall TV preview

It's try, try again time for the television networks

(2 -- 5 -- cover -- color) From left: ``Everwood'' (WB), ``Less Than Perfect'' (ABC), ``Boomtown'' (NBC), ``CSI: Miami'' (CBS)

(6 -- 8) From left: John Ritter, center, stars in ``8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.'' Mark Addy and Jami Gertz star in ``Still Standing.'' ``Hack,'' starring David Morse.

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