It's certain that many of these pieces of spaghetti won't be sticking to the refrigerator after a few weeks. How many...depends on the patience of the networks and their program directors.

Fox is hated by many people for their backhanded "tough love" of their shows. They forgot how NBC let Hill Street Blues develop despite low ratings, to become one of the network's most loved hits. They sabotaged shows like Futurama and Firefly with pre-emptions for reality-show crap like "America's Most Dangerous Bikini Police Crashes."

Although I dislike Family Guy, I like how it came back; Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programmed it regularly, on a schedule where you knew where and when you could watch it. That built an audience, sold lots of DVD sets, and practically forced Fox to put the show back into production. The same miracle is about to happen to Futurama, another victim of the Fox chainsaw.

Choosing which shows to be patient about and which to kill quickly is the art of network programming, and requires sophistication and intelligence. It's not an art anyone appreciates. But to kill everything that doesn't immediately crush the competition, as Fox likes to do, is executive idiocy in action.

So what if everything I liked last season got cancelled? At least there was something to gnash my teeth over.

This season? Not so much.

It's bad enough to have to wait another year to get rid of Bush. But to get a chance at something new to watch on TV, too?

I can't read the contents of the top right of the table. Despite watching the stupid ads. There is no place to click to get rid of the ads.

I can put up with watching the naked butts in the "welcome page" for a whole minute everyday. But please let me read the content after I get past that, or else I don't see a reason to visit your website anymore.

Television has been working hard at getting me to whip out my plastic and take the high-def plunge, and I've been weakening. But thanks to this report of things that would be coming to that HDTV, my strength to resist has been renewed. Crap is crap, no matter how high the resolution. Silk purse, sow's ear, and all that.

Tell Me You Love Me may not be for everybody, but at least it's a serious, thoughtful, aesthetic, realistic show aimed at adults, not a zany, wish-fulfillment soap opera about rich people or a supernatural comic book aimed at 15-year-olds.

There's not a single new Fall drama that looks anywhere near as intriguing as this summer's Mad Men or Damages, or Lost, Friday Night Lights, Dexter, or Brotherhood, for that matter.

What is it about commercial television that leads to 95% of it being so dumb?

Thanks for the run down of new shows. Wow, I had no idea there were so many coming up. Not many look interesting to me, but I will watch the Viva something once just to see Hugh Jackman. And I've always enjoyed that Arkin kid, so I'll try his show. And Swoosie Kurtz is usually worth watching. As for Bionic Woman, maybe one episode for laughs. It was horrible the first time around in the 70s.

For the chance at the big prize, which of the following individuals is not a famous young star of the small screen:

A. Blake Lively

B. Leighton Meester

C. Penn Badgley

D. Chace Crawford

E. Taylor Momsen

F. Baleigh Forsyth

E. D.W. Moffett

I'm sure that there's a whole legion of twentysomethings who can answer this question without giggling. But come on--what name generator/agent with a terrible sense of humor came up with these horrible monikers??? Blake Lively???? D.W. Moffett???? They sound like characters from either a bad, trashy romance novel or an episode of the Muppets.

Thanks for the laugh, Heather! Another year of great network television!

Baleigh Forsyth, by the way, is my (not a Hollywood) creation.

I can't read the table, despite reloading and coming back to the page a few times. Very aggravating!!

Pronounce 'Chace' anyway? Like 'chase' as in 'oh another car chase'? Or maybe Cha-chay is the way? I'm thinking 'Chachee' as in 'Joanie loves Chachi' is not the way. Or, it could be like Cha-kee with the hard 'k'.

Oh, my mind reels with the possibilities.

Moonlight ... stop me if you've heard this one before, he's a vampire private investigator. No, wait, he solves murders. But really, there's a twist, he doesn't live in LA or Canada. Really, it's new.

And in New Amsterdam there can, apparently, be more than one. Oh, wait, that's not new.

Well, I guess I won't be watching too much TV this fall. Thanks for the warning on various and sundry potentially crapulous shows. Do TV execs ever get out into the real world?

So nice to have three(!) Heather postings to read this week. How about developing the Heather Havrilesky Show? I'd even pay to watch it.

Thank you to all who informed us about the problems with the advertisements. That problem should now be fixed.

-Salon

...because NEW AMSTERDAM sounds very much like his novel FOREVER, which also featured an immortal New Yorker.