NEW-GENERATION TV FORMAT SO CLEAR NETWORK SHUDDERS.

Byline: Joel Brinkley The New York Times

Fake bookcases. Graffiti on the anchorman's desk. Stubble on the sportscaster's chin. This is the future face of television, warts and all.

Here at WHD-TV, where broadcasters are running an experimental, high-definition television station, the engineers and on-air personalities are finding to their surprise that the new, high-resolution, digital images that will start beaming into millions of American homes next year can actually make some things look decidedly worse.

For more than a decade, the action in high-definition television has involved behind-the-scenes debates over technical formats and engineering logistics. But now that the Federal Communications Commission has adopted a single industry standard for the next generation of television, and new high-definition TV sets are scheduled to reach the stores next year, television producers and directors are turning their attention to what will take place in front of the cameras. And so far they don't always like what they see.

The problem starts with studio sets and backdrops. With conventional television, it doesn't really matter what they are made of - mahogany or cardboard, chrome or duct tape - or whether they are filthy, dinged and battered. The resolution of today's televisions is so poor that viewers cannot tell the difference.

``With the old TV, you can get away with murder,'' said Jim Fenhagen, a set designer who works for the major networks.

When WHD-TV began broadcasting last summer, operating out of the basement of WRC, the NBC-owned station here, cameramen began setting up their new high-definition camera in some of WRC's active studios. And right away, they discovered that ``the sets just didn't hold up too well,'' said James C. McKinney, the experimental station's project director.

Fenhagen was less understated. ``In high definition, it was appalling,'' he said.

Take the graffiti, for example. For years, members of WRC's evening news team have been doodling on their desktop while they wait to go on the air. So the top of the three-seat desk is covered with drawings, caricatures and short, written quips - all of it invisible to today's television viewers.

But when the WHD-TV crew turned a high-definition camera on the set for test broadcasts last fall, ``you could read everything they had ever drawn - right there on the TV,'' McKinney recalled.

The problem doesn't stop with the sets. Some people don't particularly like the way they themselves look in high definition.

For 50 years, television stars, both men and women, have applied heavy powder and thick, pancake makeup to cover wrinkles, 5 o'clock shadows and other facial imperfections. Though the makeup is far from subtle, on TV it looks just fine. Even for problems that makeup cannot easily hide, television's low resolution usually smooths the rough edges. Not so with high-definition TV.

``Where'd that mole come from?'' one of NBC's longtime television personalities asked rhetorically the first time he saw his face on a WHD high-definition monitor last fall.

With the transition to high-definition television just around the corner, every TV station in the country will have to install new, digital equipment within the next few years. So last year, 260 TV stations nationwide contributed money to set up a model high-definition station so they could experiment with the new medium and figure out its problems and potential.