STUPID NETWORK PROGRAMMING TRICKS.

Byline: TV Critic

This time last year, TV critics were wringing their hands over the sorry state of ethnic diversity among the casts of network television shows. Well, we all have short attention spans. Even though the season's new shows do boast a few decent minority roles - Andre Braugher in ABC's ``Gideon's Crossing,'' David Alan Grier in NBC's ``DAG,'' Mykelti Williamson in CBS' ``The Fugitive,'' the cast of UPN's ``Girlfriends'' - things haven't changed enough to honestly reflect our melting-pot culture.

On the other hand, the fact that a few series - the aforementioned, plus CBS' ``C.S.I.'' and ``The District'' and NBC's ``Deadline'' - have created full-bodied minority characters who are both heroic and hot-blooded, who are ingenious and irritating and proud and prickly, all at once, is a most encouraging sign. In the past, minorities were either blandly idealized or stereotyped as villains. That a few of the new series will give their minority characters both faults and virtues is good news both for viewers and the actors playing these more nuanced roles.

Nonetheless, those intrepid TV critics have abandoned their racial trading cards and are now wringing their hands over the sorry fact that reality TV is poised to devour prime-time whole. Anyone whose brain wasn't reduced to pabulum by ``Big Brother'' this summer can tell you that, short-run financial considerations aside, the long-run ramifications for the networks are potentially disastrous (there's a good reason these things are cheap to produce).

Honestly, isn't ``Chains of Love,'' NBC's impending reality series handcuffing a woman to four potential suitors for days at a stretch, something the network would have used as a lead-in for ``The Gong Show'' on weekday afternoons back in the '70s? It was almost touching when, back in July, NBC's Scott Sassa and Garth Ancier all but apologized to the nation's TV-beat reporters for not jumping on reality's cheesy bandwagon sooner - the journalists, who couldn't believe their ears, tried to convince the executives that they had been right in the first place. But of course Sassa and Ancier wouldn't hear of it and burbled proudly about the idiocy that ``Chains of Love'' (from the hacks who brought you ``Big Brother''!) will soon bring to pass.

Thanks to ``Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,'' the poster series for reality TV, last season was something of an anomaly: The networks didn't hemorrhage viewers as direly as they have in recent years. (Tell it to Fox and the WB.) Don't expect the same good fortunes this season.

It's been generally accepted that this will be an underwhelming season, and the sooner the new shows slated to be set before you are officially deemed failures, the sooner those reality series will be humiliating regular folks culled from your neighborhood. So, in a way, it behooves us to really, really like the networks' new offerings. Look at it this way - which would you rather watch on Fox, John Goodman playing a wacky gay dad or unknowns tossed together on a ``Love Cruise''? OK, bad example. How about Internet conspirators on ``Freakylinks'' or nobodies going through ``Boot Camp''? OK, still a bad example.

The new season boasts a lot of the same old, same old: film actors trying their hand at TV (``The Geena Davis Show,'' ``The Bette Show,'' ``Madigan Men''); TV stars starting anew (``The Michael Richards Show,'' ``Welcome to New York,'' ``Cursed,'' ``The Fugitive''); old ideas cast anew (``Tucker,'' ``Yes, Dear,'' ``Titans,'' ``Boston Public,'' ``The Fugitive'' again); attractive characters finding themselves after a brutal breakup (``That's Life,'' ``Ed'' and again, ``Madigan Men''). You get the idea.

So who will succeed? NBC long ago usurped the title of ``Tiffany network'' from CBS (look at its Emmy success last month), but its new season is iffy. CBS' is strong, but not strong enough to encourage the highly sought youthful demographic to tune in. ABC blathered along until ``Millionaire'' turned up; otherwise, it's still pretty much blathering along. Fox's edgy ascendance decidedly disappeared last year, as did the WB's; UPN became a force to be reckoned with thanks only to an intentionally stupid show viewed by exactly zero opinion-makers or pundits, which does zip for its further penetration into the nation's consciousness. WHAT SHOW? WWF SMACKDOWN?

These days, it's easier to pick losers than winners. Herewith, a glance at some stupid network programmers' tricks, things that you or I, who aren't professionals pulling down six figures, wouldn't have done:

SUNDAY: NBC has placed ``Ed,'' a likable-enough quirky dramedy, in a slot where the network has experienced nothing but heartbreak lately: 8 p.m. Sundays. Which means possibly the show could survive, but only because NBC has nothing else to try there. Meanwhile, the WB has once again attempted to build a Sunday programming bloc against fierce competition on the backs of series that are either untried or have failed elsewhere.

MONDAY: NBC thinks its ``Daddio''/``Tucker'' hour at 8 p.m. represents ``family'' programming, when any right-thinking parent will direct her kids to anything but ``Tucker's'' erection gags. They certainly provide a disastrous lead-in for the relatively smart ``Deadline,'' a lighter incarnation of Dick Wolf's ``Law & Order'' productions. CBS has begun treating its Monday-at-8:30 p.m. slot like NBC's lesser Thursday time slots, sticking another lame sitcom, ``Yes, Dear,'' between two successful shows, ``King of Queens'' and ``Everybody Loves Raymond.''

TUESDAY: NBC, again, is dubiously entrusting ``Frasier'' to buoy three iffy sitcoms: ``The Michael Richards Show,'' ``3rd Rock From the Sun'' and ``DAG.'' ``Frasier'' has been one of the network's crown jewels; to treat it so shabbily is a flagrant sign of shameful disrespect.

WEDNESDAY: I think NBC by and large presents the smartest programming of all the networks, and yet here I am, picking on the Peacock again. ``Titans'' is a gleefully stupid prime-time soap from Aaron Spelling; ``The West Wing'' is Aaron Sorkin's award-winning, wildly entertaining and, above all, intelligent show about presidential politics. The only thing they have in common are creators named Aaron. How can NBC think that these two shows will share even one viewer? And yet, here they are, back-to-back on the schedule. There's no more bewildering juxtaposition on the schedule.

THURSDAY: Two dumb moves - The WB puts its best new show, ``Gilmore Girls,'' against the most enduringly successful sitcom on prime time, ``Friends,'' while CBS mercy-kills its medical series ``City of Angels'' and ``Diagnosis Murder'' by throwing them up against insurmountable competition. WHAT insurmountable competition?

FRIDAY: CBS tosses its most promising and most costly series - ``The Fugitive'' and ``C.S.I.,'' shows that could draw younger demographics that the network desperately needs, not to mention shows that would easily succeed on stronger, more competitive nights - on Friday. ABC offers up a series of struggling or unproven sitcoms - ``Two Guys and a Girl,'' ``Norm,'' ``Madigan Men,'' ``The Trouble With Normal'' - a move that practically defies America to watch.

SATURDAY: ABC and NBC throw old movies on a projector and take the night off. CBS musters the second oddest programming juxtaposition of the season: the female-skewing ``That's Life'' with the redneck-skewing ``Walker, Texas Ranger.''

CAPTION(S):

7 photos

Photo:

(1) `DAG' (NBC)

(2) `TITANS' (NBC)(3) `MADIGAN MEN (ABC)

(4) `GIDEON'S CROSSING (ABC)

(5) `ED' (NBC)

(6) `THE FUGITIVE' (CBS)

(7) `GIRLFRIENDS' (UPN)