Dial File: The fall of the fall TV season

'TIS the season to be surly, Tele-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.

Forgive the dour ditty, but for TV critics, the new network TV season was always akin to Christmas in September -- our eager little ferret faces aglow with wonder, our beady little eyes aflame with anticipation, our stubby little typing fingers ablaze with nasty zingers.

Life was good.

Now, network TV's annual coming-out party feels more like Groundhog Day -- with the little critter always spooked by his shadow and scurrying back into the dark, dank hole he shares with TV critics, ensuring endless, dreary, post-Yuletide winter.

In short: Ho-Ho-Hum.

Pardon my pessimism as the networks prepare to pour forth their new fall shows. ("Premiere Week," when the bulk of them barge into our lives, starts Sept. 21, and we'll lay out the entire lineup of fall freshmen for your inspection in Friday's Accent.)

Sure, there are newcomers that, based on creative potential or industry buzz, have captured my curiosity: offbeat Dennis Farina in the oddball "Buddy Faro"; much-heralded rookie Keri Russell in the Ally-McBeal-goes-to-college concoction "Felicity"; Chi McBride stirring the politically incorrect insouciance of "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer"; the ex-"Dream On" headliner headlining "The Brian Benben Show"; and the dark, demented "Fantasy Island" redux with the fabulously foreboding Malcolm McDowell.

There's even a couple that stir some genuine gee-whiz! optimism in my cynical soul: Laugh-a-minute loon Nathan Lane as a snooty opera star in "Encore! Encore!" and ex-"thirtysomething" kvetch Peter Horton as Hell's bounty hunter in the supernatural cop caper "Brimstone." (C'mon, isn't that where you secretly wanted the whole cast of "thirtysomething" whiners to wind up?)

So what's missing? Passion. Pizazz. A sense of renewal. A sense of "event." The feeling that it matters at all.

For TV fans -- at least for this TV fan -- that's an incalculable loss.

Fall TV was once one of our seasonal touchstones -- like the start of school or Christmas recess or summer vacation -- a way of categorizing our lives and carving out order from a disorderly world. Just as spring marked nature's renewal, September heralded American pop culture renewing itself through television.

Today, it seems like a distant, dying echo. Why? Because:

(1): Less was more -- and more is now less. With channel choices in triple digits and a robust first-run syndication market all screaming for attention all year-round -- as opposed to the days of three broadcast networks and a handful of independent stations bringing up the curtain in unison -- any sense of September "specialness" has withered away.

(2): More is less, Part II. Seemingly in the early stages of fending off extinction -- the wounded networks' collective viewership has plummeted to around the 60 percent level, and upstarts, smelling blood in the water, are emboldened to stake their claims -- three broadcast networks became four (with Fox), then five and six (UPN and the WB), then seven (the just-debuted PaxNet), with a possible eighth in the works. Amid the madness, exasperated viewers might cling to returning favorites rather than risk the frenetic fall free-for-all. (Sort of like plowing through a 12-page menu at a restaurant and finally settling for a burger, just to get it over with.)

(3): That ominous "60 percent" figure. With nearly half of all viewers -- lured away by cable, the Internet and other diversions -- essentially ignoring what was once a communal experience on a national scale, the networks' new season roar is reduced to a raspy yelp.

(4): Quick cancellations. Why bother cultivating a crush on a new show -- or even giving it a tumble in the first place -- if the romance hits the rocks two weeks later? More than a decade of this dementia by the networks has severely ruptured their relationship with viewers.

(5): Schedule hopscotch. So your favorite new series isn't history yet, huh? Well, it might as well be -- pulled, tugged, tossed and yanked so far and wide over the schedule that even Columbus couldn't re-discover it.

(6): Staggered starts. With networks unspooling new "fall" series from early August through late November -- and even the "mid-season" concept crumbling in the face of year-round rollouts -- fall isn't just September anymore. It's December, February, June ...

(7): News out-entertaining entertainment. As discussed last week, what do you need with a new fall season when you can pair the day's headlines with a beehive of buzzing pundits and dub it "NBC Nightly Follies" or "The CBS Evening Antics"?

(8): Lousy shows and diluted talent. With not enough seasoned pros -- actors, directors, producers and, most notably, writers -- to cover the now King Kong-sized world of networks and cable, young, untested talent has been elevated to first-string status. The result is compromised quality.

Even Hollywood hotshots are publicly fretting that the ever-expanding beast has grown too large to feed with an ever-shrinking supply of ripe bananas.

Which is why I'm tempted to skip the new fall season in favor of reruns that remind me that TV wasn't always King Kong run amok.

Maybe "Me and the Chimp."

CROON A TUNE: Never have so many been so partially right while being so partially wrong (Semantics 101). And never has it been as applicable as it was to last week's Croon-a-Tune. For starters, to congratulate our technical winner, we'd have to pay a visit to The Tomb of The Unknown Croon-a-Tuner -- a moment of silence, please ... -- since the first correct caller failed to ID himself. By default, that put the tele-trivia crown on the cranium of Ron Farber, the first caller to pair his name with the right answer.

And the answer was ... "The Syncopated Clock," which served as the theme to the syndicated movie series "The Late Late Show." Others guesses ranged from "Jeopardy" to "The $64,000 Question" to "Beat the Clock." More interesting was the wide range of partially correct answers -- those that pegged it as something to do with a clock or the movies -- among them: "Syncopated Clock" from "The $64,000 Question"; the theme from "The Million Dollar Movie" (which actually used the sweeping "Gone with the Wind" theme); "The Syncopated Clock" from "The Early Show"; and "Grandfather's Clock."

Well, because so many came so close, here's a nod to both the experts -- Henny Trichter and Joan Basil nailed it -- and the almost-experts: Rich Collins, Val Kolar, Joe Lacy, John Paine and Renee Savicki.

My pledge to you: This week's theme will be more clear-cut. To hear it, dial up the Dial File phone line at 702-259-4012 (it will pick up after four rings). You can identify the theme anytime between noon today (Sept. 10) and noon on Wednesday (Sept. 16). Feel free to call as often as you like to listen to the theme before answering. When you do answer, leave your guess, the spelling of your name and a daytime phone number.

Lend an ear and name it here for Croon-a-Tune cheer.

EVERYTHING NEW IS OLD AGAIN: Ever gracious -- and shrewdly calculating -- is cable's TVLand, home, along with Nick-at-Nite, of "classic TV," i.e. old reruns. The channel, you'll recall, actually went dark during the finale of "Seinfeld." Next on its stunt calendar: TVLand will stagger the start times on its prime-time schedule the week of Sept. 21, when the Big 4 broadcast networks unveil their new fall series en masse.

The cable guys will start all of their prime-time oldies 10 minutes and 40 minutes past the hour, so viewers can catch a glimpse of the new network offerings that may someday comprise the TVLand schedule of tomorrow.

You can view that strategy as smart business, with TVLand planning for its future. You can also construe it as supreme arrogance: No new show is worth more than 10 minutes of your attention -- especially when there's a "Hogan's Heroes" rerun just a click of the clicker away!

Which -- for those of you searching for a Colonel of truth about the upcoming season -- means that it'll be one giant ... Klinker.

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