TELEVISION WITHOUT HEART 'REALITY ROMANCES' KICK LOVE IN THE TEETH.

Byline: Joseph Honig Local View

HAVING successfully showcased deprivation, pain and personal shame, America's so-called reality television producers have a new sure-fire ratings bonanza.

They are in the love business.

Tonight, for example, the Fox network offers a diversion billed as ``Bachelorettes in Alaska,'' in which attractive young women search for anti-urban manpower in the Great White North.

And they do so with good reason.

For ever since ABC's ``The Bachelor'' series posted remarkable numbers, and Fox's ``Temptation Island'' roused advertisers from post-Sept. 11 reveries, viewers have embraced public displays of desire and affection.

No matter how staged or silly. No matter how shallow.

Audiences seem to be in love with watching these ridiculous mating games.

They are love stories without stories.

They are spin-the-bottle with cooked-up rivalries.

They are high school under glass.

This is not to say, though, that such low-cost programs - no stars, no writers, just rats-in-a-cage situations - are not boons to broadcasters.

Why spend over $2 million an episode for dramas such as ``ER'' when a measly $400,000 buys you an hour of on-camera sexual tension?

Who will be rejected?

Who will be master or mistress of romantic treachery?

Who will risk an ongoing relationship for newfound sensuality?

And, finally, who will debase themselves in front of millions of viewers to win the heart of a relative stranger?

One supposes there is no limit to American exhibitionism.

After all, a California nurse actually wed some failed comic on Fox's doomed ``Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?'' It got her some cash, a Playboy magazine feature and a hasty annulment.

Then there was the Harvard man on ABC's ``Bachelor'' epic. The network created a sorority house of hopefuls for this JFK Jr. look-alike and waited for lightning to strike. He and his contestant lover were then trotted out for ``Good Morning America''-like Westminster Kennel Club champions.

So if you think the win-at-all costs treacheries of ``Survivor'' are video's lowest portraits of humanity, think again.

The men and women in our towers of television have succeeded in twisting the rules of attraction beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Save maybe Larry Flynt.

They have done so by making sex a competition between attractive, attention-hungry nobodies who also dream of walking away with cash and prizes.

And, on some presentations, losing a current lover in the process.

But wait a minute, it's all good fun, isn't it?

It's all in the spirit of showing deodorant consumers that love is simply an emotion to be played out for personal gain. Who really suffers? After all, it's just a show.

Just what's the harm in setting loose young women in the Alaskan wild to find lovers and husbands while recording their amorous adventures?

No harm, really. Nothing big or momentous or culturally shocking.

Not if you don't count millions of young viewers whose romantic judgments were once tuned by smart dramas, insightful comedies and, yes, even books.

Once again, television has gone for the cheap thrill.

Falling in love is now a publicly performed broadcast featuring toned bodies, eager contestants and a pot of gold after that last commercial.

Long before there was television, men like Michelangelo and Rubens managed to transform passion into art.

With all their wisdom and technology, contemporary entertainment czars have turned it into money.

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``Bachelorettes in Alaska''