Yeah, right.

     First, an admission: I haven’t seen any of the new shows yet. Of course I’m not sure I saw more than one or two of last year’s crop either. It’s not as if the networks send me advance copies to screen, which is really a shame since I could use the free videocassettes to tape something I’d really like to see, like the Spice Network’s gay S&M miniseries, "Star Whores: The Fan Dom Men’s Ass."

     This year’s crop of new shows is so groundbreaking that three of them are spin-offs of existing series, two are rip-offs of long-running English TV programs, and one is based on a comic book. Now that’s original thinking. Four of the new shows brag that they "break the fourth wall", which is when the characters speak directly into the camera. Pretty revolutionary stuff here. At least it was when George Burns did it in 1950.

     Probably the closest thing they have to boundary-stretching involves sex, as in "How nasty can we get and still keep our advertisers?" As you may have figured out, advertisers are more important to the networks than viewers since they’re the ones who pay the bills. Viewers are but a major inconvenience; the only reason they consider us at all is because the more of us they get the more they can charge the advertisers. If they could figure out a way to get the advertisers to pay up without having any viewers, trust me, they would.

     The question begs: Do we really need two new shows about a guy who’s surrounded by a household full of women? Is anyone really interested in watching a second show about vampires? And is it absolutely necessary that they re-edit old "Ally McBeal" episodes down to 30 minutes so Fox can claim a tax credit for recycling? (Tell you what. If they put the recycled symbol in the lower right-hand corner of the screen instead of the Fox logo I’ll take all this back and actually watch it. After all, with luck half the length means half the obnoxious, whiney, nattering neuroses.)

     Okay, so maybe I’m not real excited by the new TV season, I’m sure there are plenty of people who are. For one, the network executives whose jobs are on the line care a lot. So do the companies that spend gobs of money advertising in the hopes that someone’s bored enough to tune in. But most of all, there are those who really stand to profit from the new TV season: cable channels like TVLand which feature good old reruns, spouses who may see their mate turn off the TV and pay more attention to them, and of course, book stores.