Freedom of Bad Taste.

JUST when it seemed time to write off the media world for its tastelessness ("Temptation Island"), pandering (XFL football) and outright greed (Fox rubbing out corporate logos on race cars unless airtime is bought), along comes a moment of civility: last week's announcement of the Academy Award nominations.

Some will argue that the annual Oscar competition has become too politicized -- that distributors like Miramax virtually assure a place in the best film category, regardless of the quality of the film, with a relentless marketing campaign.

Yet members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences still manage to assemble a lineup of worthy, well-crafted releases. And unlike the spurious Golden Globes contest, which has become a made-for-television event orchestrated by the journalistically challenged Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Oscars maintain some semblance of dignity. Even with rambling speeches and silly analyses of what people are wearing, it remains the class act of Hollywood.

Actually, there were several hopeful signs last week that entertainment hasn't reached the stone-age level.

Most promising was a huge drop-off in ratings for the new and totally pointless XFL football league. How NBC got suckered into bankrolling this shameful exercise in gratuitous violence remains a mystery, but it ranks as a low point in U.S. sports and television. Nothing speaks louder than low ratings and empty stadiums, however, and while the network claims to be satisfied with its numbers, it's clear that millions of Americans have decided not to stoop that low. With any luck, the new league will be relegated to those legions of adolescents addicted to pro wrestling and demolition derbies.

Likewise, reality TV has started to show some viewer erosion, notwithstanding the inexplicable success of CBS's "Survivor." The networks are drawn to these reality shows mostly because they're inexpensive to produce and hold the potential of drawing big numbers in the 18-to-49 age bracket. Should Hollywood actors and writers decide to strike this summer, reality TV will become a network staple.

The problem with these shows is that they're not very real -- witness the model/actor-types who show up on "Temptation Island" and "Survivor." But more than that, they're just another kind of gimmick TV that viewers eventually will get bored with. The only survivor of last year's game show craze, "Who Wants to be Millionaire," has seen its ratings drop as it becomes the province of -- gasp! -- older viewers.

Perhaps the best news comes from last year's lengthy list of dumbed-down movies that turned out to be box-office disappointments. They include the Adam Sandler star vehicle, "Little Nicky," the slicked-down sequel to the "Blair Witch Project," and the Madonna stinker, "The Next Best Thing." That's not to suggest there isn't money to be made by pandering to teenage boys. But there's also money to be lost. Remember that weeks before its merger with AOL, Time Warner cited a single film, "Little Nicky," for its disappointing fourth-quarter results.

There really are limits to the public's appetite for bad taste -- a profound counterpoint to those who would like to see entertainment regulated according to some pre-determined notion of what's decent or indecent. Having the freedom to turn off an XFL game or "Temptation Island" episode may seem trivial, but in the end, it's very basic.