FUNERAL DIRECTORS GIVE SHOWS GRIEF.

Byline: - Staff and Wire Services

Cable viewers may fancy HBO's ``Six Feet Under'' and A&E's reality series ``Family Plots,'' but they are not held in high regard by members of the profession they portray.

A new survey by consulting firm Citrin Cooperman shows that nearly all funeral directors questioned were aware of the two series, but most feel they give an inaccurate depiction of their business.

Here are some responses they gave when asked for the most glaring error or misconception in either of the two programs:

``The funeral profession is a true ministry in my life, but watching these shows, I sure can't see a 'ministry' atmosphere depicted in either one,'' wrote one.

``If the home depicted in 'Six Feet Under' was my funeral home, I would quit the business,'' wrote another. ``They are all so screwed up; there is no way you could work there.''

One male funeral director noted that ``Family Plots'' includes a woman embalmer. ``Where did they find this? We have very few practicing women embalmers in the profession.''

It is worth noting that the survey polled more than 200 funeral directors in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, while ``Six Feet Under,'' returning with fresh episodes next summer, and ``Family Plots,'' resuming this winter, are so SoCal.

DEMOCRACY AT HOME: Remember the good old days, when family rifts were mostly about money, heirlooms, black sheep and in-laws? Lately it seems that politics is drawing lines down the center of many a dinner table.

Talk-show host Larry Elder vividly recalls the debates between his Republican father and Democratic mother during the height of the Watergate scandal. He's making today's Bush-bashing, Kerry-stomping, ``please pass the mashed potatoes instead of flinging them'' family situations the focus of his Wednesday episode. If you can relate to that - or just want to feel grateful that you don't - tune into ``The Larry Elder Show'' at 9 a.m. on KCBS (Channel 2).

PUSHING THE LIMITS: There's nothing like a couple of hit shows to turn a struggling network into an arrogant one.

ABC, taking a page out of NBC's playbook, has been running ``Desperate Housewives'' and ``Lost'' past the hour, causing people who record those shows to lose the final minute (though the plan, of course, is to keep us from seeing the first minute of shows on other networks).

Not only is this screwing with the fans who've helped pull ABC out of the ratings cellar, but judging from the numbers for ``Boston Legal'' and ``The Bachelor,'' the shows that follow the aforementioned hits, it's not even working. In a move that is only likely to increase ABC's hubris, ``Desperate Housewives'' has been added to TelevisionWithoutPity.com, which means it gets its own forum and weekly synopses to help fans keep up. Not that you'd ever miss an episode, of course.