YOU SUPPLY THE AUDIENCE, AND THEY'LL SUPPLY THE WAR.

Byline: - David Kronke

The reality-TV trend has always been about pitting regular folks against one another in some kind of combat. Tonight, two new reality shows take that thinking as close to its ``Heart of Darkness'' conclusion as close as we're likely to get anytime soon, short of the killing sprees suggested by the recent movie ``Series 7.''

TBS' ``War Games'' and Fox's ``Boot Camp'' (which the network did not make available for review) set their action in a military setting. After these shows, all we can expect in the future is for a network to underwrite battles - you know Ted Turner would've bankrolled an air squadron's sortees during Desert Storm for exclusive coverage rights. And what's to stop Fox's Rupert Murdoch and Mike Darnell from hiring some small country's military to start a little war in the Balkans, sending in troops and cameras and editing it together music-video-style for our entertainment?

``War Games,'' hosted by Howie Long, is at its core pretty interesting: It shows us how the U.S. military maintains its preparedness by setting up elaborate maneuvers. We see soldiers freeing ``hostages'' in a mock town, the Navy battling faux enemy submarines, a high-flying simulated Air Force battle and a Marine incursion in the California desert employing live weaponry.

The details created for these combat scenarios are fascinating. Producers J.J. Jamieson, John Barchilon and David Hudson, on the other hand, in their zeal to maintain the attention of an ADD-addled audience, make everything look like a video game writ large, with disorienting editing, trendily jittery camera work and blaring techno-hip hop screaming during the battles. A 30-hour deployment with complex strategy is edited down to a 20-minute sequence with lots of explosions. (Actually, this show looks like a recruiting film for young, easily distracted teens looking for some post-high-school thrills.)

Editing elsewhere is as dishonest as it was in ABC's reality show ``The Mole,'' in order to heighten the sense of peril: The Army looks nearly whipped until - oh, look, a bunch of tanks suddenly shows up out of nowhere. And stock footage of enemy subs and battleships are cut into the naval exercise when far less ominous props were actually used.

Narration focuses on the danger and ever-present specter of death facing these soldiers, which seems to trivialize the lives of the genuinely courageous and dedicated men and women involved. The producers constantly remind the viewer that these are real lives at stake, but by reducing their simulated peril to mere entertainment, the producers seem to have forgotten that themselves.

This is further exacerbated with breathless reports from ``field reporters,'' who interview the participants like they're giving sideline reports during a football game, recalling Woody Allen using Howard Cosell to cover Third-World assassinations as a sporting event in ``Bananas.'' A program like ``War Games'' isn't a bad idea, but turning the amps to 11 regarding the competitive gamesmanship of these military exercises to the exception of all else seems a bit exploitative of the very heroes the show wishes to lionize.

``WAR GAMES''

What: Reality special examining military preparedness maneuvers.

The stars: Hosted by Howie Long.

Where: TBS.

When: 8 tonight.

Our rating: Two and one half stars

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TBS' ``War Games'' shows how the U.S. military maintains its preparedness by setting up elaborate maneuvers, including a Marine incursion in the California desert.