TRUTH IS OUT THERE, BUT NOT IN PASADENA.

Byline: David Kronke

TV Critic As the diminutive Heather O'Rourke, gazing at the ominous snow on her TV screen in ``Poltergeist,'' might have said, they're ba-ack.

Twice a year, the networks - the four major ones, the two minor ones and a whole bunch of the cable ones (oh, and PBS figures in there somewhere) - congregate at Pasadena's Ritz Carlton Hotel to promise the stalwart, stoic TV critics of America that this will be their best year ever.

Usually, they're all lying through their teeth, but it's the job of our country's newspaper television writers to convince readers that there's a persuasive reason not to sell off your home media consoles and start reading books, joining basketball leagues at the YMCA or preparing new bonding activities for your families.

Those three weeks of self-delusion begin in earnest today. The 2002-03 fall season is laid before a land in need of diversions. Showrunners who have survived the spring's pilot season will convince us why their programs will seize America's attentions by the throat in September. Come January, those who created midseason replacement shows replacing the fall's failures will explain why it's good their series are airing now, when a supposedly less-demanding audience will be hungering for their wares.

A purely anecdotal sample of critics by the Daily News has proven less than mesmerized by the fall season, despite record advertising sales for NBC and CBS, who have promised their clients less-than-usual-diminished audiences for their programs. We'll see come fall who was right, but in the meantime, during the next three weeks we'll present our impressions, garnered from a series of media events impossibly micromanaged by the networks.

To wit:

--Cable networks have been, inch by inch, viewer by viewer, stealing audience from the networks over the past years with their more-adventurous programs. Will they be able to continue the trend, when their shows are basically aping past successes, such as E!'s series with legendary gold digger Anna Nicole Smith, a ripoff of MTV's phenomenon ``The Osbournes'' so bald Smith may actually be considering shaving her - or at least her next mark's - head? And can ``The Sopranos'' reconnect with its audience after an 18-month layoff?

--Even though the other networks are following the WB's formula for success - family shows featuring lustworthy stars appealing primarily to teen viewers - can that network find happiness with its new series, particularly ``Everwood'' and a remake of the '60s sitcom ``Family Affair?''

--Can UPN continue its modest success and step further into respectability with yet another remake of ``The Twilight Zone?''

--Will CBS burn out its ``CSI'' franchise with its spate of unapologetic remakes of that procedural crime drama (``CSI Miami,'' ``Without a Trace,'' ``Robbery Homicide Division'')?

--Is there anything ABC can do to get people to watch it again?

--What was Fox thinking? After losing a double-digit percentage of viewers last season attempting quality shows, the network is responding with a pile of lowest-common-denominator shows (e.g.: ``Fastlane,'' ``The Grubbs'') - is this really what it takes to grab audiences?

--Are series like ``Hidden Hills,'' a sitcom highlighted by a guy taking a softball to his manhood, and ``American Dreams,'' a nostalgic drama highlighted by old ``American Bandstand'' clips, what NBC really means by its slogan ``The Quality Shows?''

--Is recycling Ken Burns' documentaries (``The Civil War,'' etc.) and transforming them into a weekly series the best way PBS can compete with its brethren?

Since actual, factual information comes at a premium during TV Press Tour, we'll be reporting on any news emanating from Pasadena only as it sees fit to emerge. Rather, since the whole event is a sideshow event akin to midway carnies trying to lure dupes into tossing softballs at weighted milk bottles, we'll rate selected press conferences - and, by extrapolation, their representative shows - on their entertainment value.

Which, we believe, will give you a more-honest assessment of what you might want to be devoting your viewing attentions to come the fall season. Wish us, and America's TV viewers, luck.

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The pulcritudinous Anna Nicole Smith gets her own reality series, a la Ozzy, on E!