WE WANT A RECOUNT.

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

Judging by the entertainment that has come slouching into our movie theaters and music stores and through our television the past 11 months, Hollywood apparently spent most of 1999 making its millennial New Year's Eve plans rather than focusing on the entertainment it would be dispensing to us in the brave new century.

Critics by nature are a cranky lot who seem to relish informing the rest of the world just how much the respective art forms are deteriorating and should often be taken with a grain of salt when their complaints get too ominously dire. That said, however, there seems to be an unusually strong consensus that things were bad this year - and not just in movies or TV, but in every aspect of popular culture. That long-threatened Y2K bug came, all right - it was just subtly but perniciously wet-wired into the circuitry of every chunk of entertainment product the new year/decade/century/millennium has offered us.

``How bad the year has been depends on your definition of 'suck,' '' opines a positively Clintonian-sounding Matt Seitz, TV critic for the Newark Star Ledger, film critic for the New York Observer and contributor to Sound and Vision. ``Last year was, by any standard, a good year. There was some weird harmonic convergence of quality then, which has bypassed us this year, and now we're looking at the dregs.'' To wit:

Television

The new fall season, likewise, has failed to enthuse any TV industry observer, anywhere. ``When 'Ed' (NBC's dramedy about a small-town attorney who also runs a bowling alley) is the show that gets people the most pumped up - that's not a great season,'' concedes Robert Thompson, the founding director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television.

``Survivor,'' CBS' summer-replacement series that began - and, so far, has ended - the reality-TV craze, has emerged as the year's only pop-culture phenomenon. ``Nothing has come close to creating such excitement, and nothing has had any cultural weight to it,'' observes David Wild, TV critic and film writer for Rolling Stone and author of the book ``The Showrunners,'' a look at a year in the life of the TV industry. ``It's interesting that the reality craze is interested in shaking up, but not with anything good - they're just finding new ways to pander.

``This fall, the new shows' debuts were so spread out that there was this illusion that every thing was a hit,'' Wild continues. ``But those shows got a good rating the first time and most have been falling ever since.''

Jack Lechner, former HBO and Miramax executive and author of the new book ``Can't Take My Eyes Off of You'' - which documents his subjecting himself to a weeklong bombardment of television (he plopped himself before a panorama of a dozen TV sets broadcasting a plethora of programming for a solid week) - says of the new season, ``It doesn't look terribly interesting; nothing makes me want to watch.'' And this, from a guy who freely watched everything from ``Teletubbies'' to ``Donny and Marie'' to infomercials and public-access programs.

``The whole history of TV is that a couple of original shows break through, everybody copies them, the copies bomb and everyone flounders around until someone comes up with something original again,'' Lechner observes. ``But there hasn't been anything worth copying since 'Malcolm in the Middle,' and frank imitations never work. Of course, that never stops TV executives.'' Lechner, who calls himself an unapologetic TV fan, nonetheless in his book quotes Charles Sopkin, who performed a similar experiment 33 years earlier: ``The only way to solve television's problems was, literally (to) send in squads of machine-gunners and summarily execute every executive at every network and start over from scratch.''

Film

No one has bothered pretending that movies of the past year have offered much in the way of edification, as dud after resounding dud has landed lifelessly in theaters this year. This year, the hits - ``Gladiator,'' ``Charlie's Angels,'' ``Mission: Impossible 2,'' ``Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas'' (all either based upon or slavishly stealing from older properties) - are just vaguely less stupid than the bombs: ``Battlefield Earth,'' ``Lucky Numbers,'' ``What Planet Are You From?'' ``Little Nicky,'' ``The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.''

The only true must-sees of 2000 offer audiences things they've virtually never seen before - in the upcoming Asian epic ``Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,'' a jaw-dropping battle sequence takes place atop the branches of swooping bamboo trees; the current no-budget indie ``You Can Count on Me'' offers a rare, almost unprecedented look at American characters who are both intelligently articulate yet yearningly clueless.

``It's very funny - my wife says we never get to go to the movies - we look in the paper and we're always shocked that there's nothing to see,'' says Wild. ``And we only try to make it out once every two months, and there's still nothing to see.''

Lechner notes, ``Universal has had five movies in a row debut at No. 1 and largely with dreadful reviews. As the old joke goes, nobody wanted to see them but the public.''

He adds, ``There was a lot of studio jealousy at Oscar time when Miramax got a lot of nominations year after year for these smaller, more artistic films - they'd say, 'Hey, that was a movie we put into turnaround.' Then they got back into the business, and the result was films like 'Being John Malkovich,' 'Boys Don't Cry,' 'The Straight Story' or 'Three Kings,' and suddenly they remembered why they got out of making those films. You may win prizes, you may get a lot of kudos, but you don't make a lot of money.''

Music

Outside of successes from artists who pander to teen and preteen girls and/or boys, demographic groups of the population not noted for their keen powers of discernment, no musical act has made a notable impact this year.

``The year has lacked Grammy-friendly artists,'' notes Phil Gallo, an associate editor at Variety, where he reviews music and television. ``You might not've agreed artistically with the winners, but it was clear that the Backstreet Boys and Santana were the stories of the year. There's nothing like that this year.

``Their only option is to reward someone who sold a lot or some old person or people they do not want to reward or have historically not rewarded like rap artists or Limp Bizkit. What do you do? Nominate 'N Sync in all kinds of categories? I don't think so.''

Rolling Stone's Wild says, ``The music business is in a major state of corporate upheaval - there's huge uncertainty about what industry will even be in a year or two. So people are content to wait it out. This is a safer time not to put something out.''

Seitz adds that part of the problem stems from the fact that ``there are only a handful of major stations in the country where the DJs call their own playlist. Stations across the country are owned by the same companies playing the same music and this has had a huge effect. In the days before the automated playlists were computer picked from demographic studies, artists came up regionally. They came to the local stations, and said to the DJs or station manager, 'Here's our song; could you play it?' and they'd become a home-grown hero. It just doesn't happen that way anymore - those doors are inextricably locked.''

Gallo notes that the music industry itself has been operating on a marketing model that hasn't worked in decades. ``The music industry created a model in the rock 'n' roll album age in the late '60s, where you develop an act, and sell a few more albums each time. When corporations bought the labels, they could still work that model for the kinds of acts that were assembled corporately the way they did the artistically driven rock acts. That model worked for a long time, but it broke down in the '80s. No one noticed because CDs were introduced and everyone bought the same albums they had on CD, and the labels said, 'Oh, we're healthy - look how many CDs we're selling.' But when everybody stopped buying that back catalog, it was apparent the model was broken.

``The No. 1 thing that sold for much of the '90s was rap, but it has no shelf life - a year later, those albums don't sell, those songs don't end up on movie soundtracks,'' he continues. ``It became a different climate.''

Election reality

And perhaps the apotheosis of ennui was achieved in this year's election night - the ultimate reality show - and its protracted aftermath likely provided the highest drama of the entire year, but that's due to a certain extent to the monumental ineptitude of the networks in their rush-to-judgment coverage.

``Election night was arguably the greatest TV show ever made,'' says Thompson with a laugh. ``Sure, Dan Rather went crazy, and everyone called a few things wrong. But this is the way things happen. The electoral process, the journalistic establishment, the Constitution and the political parties all ground along in a respectable albeit ugly way.''

``Who would've thought that a drama involving Dick Cheney would be better than anything David E. Kelley wrote?'' enthuses Wild. ``It was the greatest - Dan Rather was just fabulous. He was so creepy and so brilliant, he looked like outtakes from Oliver Stone's 'Nixon.' ''

Emulating the networks' news divisions, we've decided to scurry ahead of the competition and, with little in the way of perspective, name this new decade that is but a mere 11 months old: The Zeroes. Hell, while we're at it, let's just call the 2000s ``the Mediocre Millennium.''

``This is not a cultural malaise - it signifies a lack of direction, a massive confusion; we need a much bigger recount than the one in Florida,'' says Wild. ``No one seems to know which way to go.''

Cross-dressing up

But Seitz sees a potentially much more troubling trend emerging.

``The biggest films this fall - 'Charlie's Angels' and 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' - are utterly presold properties,'' he notes. ``That's a big problem. On TV, there's 'The Fugitive,' which isn't bad; the question is why it's necessary. The preponderance of presold properties is a serious problem.

``I recently spoke to someone at Disney who admitted that the company won't greenlight or produce any project until all division heads get together and ask if the project can be cross-promoted,'' Seitz continues.

In other words, a film sells a video game, a CD soundtrack and a possible TV spinoff. For example, the season premiere of ``Madigan Men,'' a new sitcom on Disney-owned ABC, made the Disney Broadway production of ``The Lion King'' a major plot point; an episode of ABC's ``Two Guys and a Girl'' featured a scene in a subway in which posters of the new ABC series ``The Geena Davis Show'' were obvious.

``In this age of synergy and cross-promotion, all programming funnels into advertising,'' Seitz continues. ``It's all one big ad. It used to be that entertainment companies sold entertainment products - now, it's the other way around. The entertainment products sell the entertainment companies. It's all about the brand. These companies plant their brand everywhere, the way imperialist companies used to plant their flag. Everybody wishes they did it as well as Disney.

``The question is,'' Seitz warns, ``how much of this can the consumer take.''

2000: year of double zeros and double trouble

Want more evidence that 2000 sucked? Try these:

--Theater, too, has not risen above the year's general lack of inspiration. This year's Tony winner for Best Musical - ``Contact'' - a show in which characters simply danced to pre-recorded tracks.

--Internet companies were revealed for the financial houses of cards that they were in the past year, as stocks plummeted, jobs were slashed brutally throughout the industry and many high-profile Web sites folded, including Pop.com - before it even opened for business.

--When a kid's book - J.K. Rowling's fourth ``Harry Potter'' installment - is the literary event of the year, you can guess it's a humdrum year in publishing. Unrepentant self-promotion was the order of the day, judging from the success of Dave Eggers' autobiography (at age 30!) ``A Breathtaking Work of Staggering Genius,'' which owed much to the postmodernism of David Foster Wallace and others. The literary debut of the year, Zadie Smith's ``White Teeth,'' lost the Booker Prize to Margaret Atwood's ``The Blind Assassin,'' which was slagged by The New York Times Book Review.

And who'd have guessed that the publishing industry would be thanking its lucky stars for comic books? But that's the case: Michael Chabon's ``The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,'' about comic artists of the Golden Age, is one of the most enthusiastically reviewed books of the year, second only to Chris Ware's gorgeously pessimistic graphic novel, ``Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid in the World.''

--Mediocrity spilled over into sports - witness the listless response to this year's summer Olympics or the first Subway Series in decades, which lost the Fox network a whopping $70 million.

ENTERTAINMENT REPORT CARD

The networks

NBC - The network just won November sweeps, but hardly on the strength of its new programming - only ``Ed'' shows any chance of surviving the season. At least the network had spent previous years developing smart, strong series. Question: Which of the new shows did NBC cancel ``Freaks & Geeks'' for? Grade: C-

ABC - Its only good new show - ``Gideon's Crossing'' - is languishing on Wednesday nights, where ``Law & Order'' is systematically dismantling it. The ``Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'' death knells may be premature, but it's certainly no longer the phenomenon it once was. The network only introduced four new series this fall, but it's going to have plenty of holes to fill soon: Some observers think the network could drop to as low as third place this season. Grade: C-

CBS - Les Moonves - the most powerful man in show business, as Entertainment Weekly and David Letterman will tell you (one ill-informedly, the other sarcastically) - has indeed had as good a year as anyone in the business. He's introduced three new successes (``C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation,'' ``The District'' and ``Yes, Dear'') and still has the ``Survivor'' sequel coming up. ``Bette'' has proven a splashy disappointment, however, ``The Fugitive'' is an expensive under-performer and ``That's Life'' is flat-lining opposite old movies and the dozenth season - no kidding - of ``Cops.'' Grade: B

FOX - Well, it's an improvement on last year, when nothing worked. ``Dark Angel,'' along with ``That '70s Show'' and ``Titus,'' have given the network another strong night on Tuesdays to accompany its Sunday powerhouse and its OK Monday, where ``Boston Public'' is keeping up with ``Ally McBeal,'' which is faltering less these days. Its other new series are tanking, however. Grade: B-

THE WB - Again, after last season, there's nowhere to go but up, and the network has enjoyed improved fortunes, thanks to ``Gilmore Girls,'' which has been gaining audiences steadily despite its deadly Thursday night time slot opposite ``Friends'' and its acquisition of ``Sabrina the Teenage Witch.'' Its Sunday night comedy bloc is a mixed bag, however, with no one believing ``Hype'' and the sophisticated humor of ``Grosse Pointe'' bewildering the yahoos who tuned in to watch the pandering comedy of ``Nikki.'' Grade: B-.

UPN - Its Monday block of African-American comedies is drawing a growing audience, and ``Star Trek: Voyager'' and its cheesy wrestling show remain popular. Still, you wouldn't want to be an executive here. Grade: C-

The studios

PARAMOUNT - Studio hit ``Mission: Impossible 2'' in fact achieved the impossible - it got critics to slag a John Woo movie. They blew their one good movie, ``Wonder Boys,'' though the studio's specialty division was aided by the general malaise of the year, and a modest sleeper, called ``You Can Count on Me,'' is shockingly beginning to look like an Oscar front-runner. Typical failures: ``Lucky Numbers,'' ``Bless the Child,'' ``Ladies Man'' and ``Rules of Engagement.'' Grade: C-

20TH CENTURY FOX - Someone needs to tell these guys it's the 21st century and to adjust accordingly - their only nominal success was ``Me, Myself & Irene,'' which, given the talent (Jim Carrey and the Farrelly brothers), has to be considered a major disappointment. It even shut down its animation division after ``Titan A.E.'s'' failure. Typical losers: ``The Beach,'' ``Where the Heart Is,'' ``Tigerland'' and ``Bedazzled.'' Grade: D-

SONY - ``The Patriot'' was a typical Pyrrhic victory, an overpriced chunk of middle-brow entertainment that barely recouped its hefty price tag. Its one success, ``Charlie's Angels,'' was unrepentant junk. A mitigating factor: the upcoming ``Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,'' from the studio's specialty division, crouches poised to emerge a box-office and artistic triumph. Typical losers: ``Loser,'' ``Hollow Man,'' ``Hanging Up,'' ``I Dream of Africa,'' ``28 Days'' and ``What Planet Are You From?'' Grade: C-

WARNER BROS. - An atypically disappointing year. Beyond the hit ``The Perfect Storm,'' whose repetitive final hour of synthetic killer waves suggested the film should be titled ``The Monotony of Peril,'' and the venerable Clint Eastwood's ``Space Cowboys,'' there hasn't been much to cheer about. Typical atrocities: ``Battlefield Earth,'' ``Pay It Forward,'' ``Red Planet,'' ``The Replacements'' and ``Bait.'' Grade: D

DISNEY - In the past decade, the Mouse House has made a point of never shooting itself in the foot, but this year it came close. ``Remember the Titans,'' ``Dinosaur,'' ``Gone in 60 Seconds,'' ``Shanghai Noon,'' ``102 Dalmatians'' and ``Unbreakable'' all did acceptably well, though no one will argue that there's a memorable movie among them. And 2000 may be the first year ever in which a Disney animated film doesn't emerge as the favorite - that honor goes to DreamWorks' ``Chicken Run'' - which wouldn't be so bad except that Disney will have released three animated movies this year. Typical embarrassments: ``Coyote Ugly,'' ``The Crew,'' ``Duets'' and ``Mission to Mars.'' Grade: C

DREAMWORKS SKG - Well, the winning streak had to end sometime, but no doubt the studio's executives never saw it coming just as their Oscar bait was hitting theaters, leaving a derivative action flick, ``Gladiator,'' as its box-office champ and best shot at the year-end awards. Typical disappointments: ``The Legend of Bagger Vance,'' ``Almost Famous,'' ``The Contender'' and ``The Road to El Dorado.'' Grade: C

UNIVERSAL - You can't argue with a studio that releases five No. 1-debuting films in a row, and the once-slumping studio enjoyed three of the year's biggest hits: ``Erin Brockovich,'' ``Meet the Parents'' and ``Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas.'' Still, typical bombs: ``The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle,'' ``The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas,'' ``Screwed,'' ``Isn't She Great'' and ``The Watcher.'' Grade: B-

MIRAMAX - With dopey mainstream hits like ``Scream 3'' and ``Scary Movie,'' and a nearly across-the-board shrug rate for its more rarefied fare, this hardly feels or looks like an art-house distributor anymore. Typical dump jobs: ``Reindeer Games,'' ``Highlander: Endgame'' and ``Hamlet.'' Grade: C-

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, 2 boxes

Photo:

(1 -- 4) While the Palm Beach county canvassing board tried to read the intentions of voters, Hollywood tried to read the minds of those poeple who go to movies and concerts, buy CDs and watch, TV. The results were about the same, considering that ``Charlie's Angels'' is a hit, ``Rocky and Bullwinkle'' was a bomb and 'N Sync continues to be popular for no apparent reason.

Box: (1) 2000: year of double zeros, double trouble (see text)

(2) Entertainment Report Card (see text)