"Why do the Eagles eat their cereal from the box?"

Answer:  "Because they choke when they get close to the bowl."

It does seem that way, doesn't it?  Analysts argue endlessly about whether clutch performance actually exists in baseball, but it's kind of hard to deny its existence in professional football. In baseball, postseason success is pretty much a random thing, but in football the words postseason and success are practically redundant. If you don't win the big games, you're not successful.

For instance, if I asked you which coach had the higher career regular season won-lost percentage, Andy Reid or Bill Belichick, you'd say Belichick, right?  Well, you would be right, but could you guess by how much?  Surely the man who has been to four Super Bowls and won three of them leaves the man with just one losing Super Bowl effort in the dust, right?  In fact, Belichick's career regular season is 138-86 for a W-L of .616%.  Reid is 97-62-1 for .610%.  It's the postseason which makes Belichick a future HOFer: he's 15-4 (.789%) to Reid's 10-7 (.588%).

Last Sunday's loss by the Philadelphia Eagles to the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC championship game doesn't provide conclusive evidence that Reid is a choker, a label he's been living with since the 2005 Super Bowl when his Eagles dawdled away precious time in the closing minutes of a 24-21 loss to Belichick's New England Patriots.  The truth is that the Eagles were solid underdogs in that game, that the Patriots were a much better team, and that Philadelphia actually beat the spread. But all most fans remember is that the Eagles had a chance to win and squandered it.

Whether the choke charge based on that game is fair or not, it does point out something important about Reid's teams: they don't ever seem to be prepared for the big games.

The blame for Sunday's loss will fall, as it always does, on the shoulders of quarterback Donovan McNabb, but as usual that blame is unfair. McNabb was about the only thing on the Eagles that went right Sunday: he passed for 375 yards and three touchdowns, rushed for 31 more yards, and brought his team back from a 24-6 halftime deficit to a one-point lead late in the game. That should have been enough to win. At that point, it was time for someone else to make the big sack, the big kick, the big run - something - to pull the game out for the Eagles.

As usual, the big play never happened, at least a big play from anyone but McNabb, who threw three second half TD passes.  Against a team they had beaten 48-20 just a few weeks earlier and whom they were favored to beat again even on the Cardinals' home field, the Eagles could do almost nothing right in the first half. Arizona scored in their first four possessions while an Eagles defense that had ranked number one in the league in the previous seven games couldn't make the right coverages or tackles.

On offense, the Eagles were stifled by blitzes they couldn't identify until halftime, when someone must have informed Reid and his staff that "Hey, they're running the same kind of blitzes" - two men to one side, right or left, usually an extra safety or linebacker in the package with one or maybe two guys faking from the other side - "that we've been running on everyone else."   After that, in the second half, it was all Eagles; they won the third and fourth quarters by a score of 19-8 with McNabb leading the comeback charge.  But when the defense was once again faced with the task of making the big plays on Arizona's crucial fourth quarter drive, Albert DeSalvo couldn't have produced a more perfect choke. 

After the game, sifting through the stats, it was amazing how many little things Philadelphia had done to hurt itself. They outgained Arizona 450 yards to 369 but gave 60 of those yards back on kick returns and had 50 more yards assessed on penalties than the Cardinals. David Akers can take more than the usual kicker's share of responsibility for the loss. He missed a 49-yard field goal try -- not a hanging offense, but he sent one kickoff out of bounds, giving the Cardinals splendid field position at their own 40-yard line, and missed an extra point, forcing the Eagles to go for two after a later TD (which they failed to convert). 

By contrast, the Cardinals did just about everything right, allowing only two sacks on Kurt Warner, committing just three harmless five-yard penalties, and even running the ball fairly well (102 yards overall to the Eagles' 97 - though Philadelphia was playing most of the game in a comeback mode and thus had far fewer rushing opportunities).

Kurt Warner is, I believe, the best quarterback in football, and his great receiver, Larry Fitzgerald, who caught nine passes against the Eagles for 152 yards and three touchdowns, is the best wideout. But the Cardinals aren't going to score three touchdowns against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the first half of the Super Bowl, no matter how sharp Warner is. The Steelers' defense is really no better than the Eagles' -- Pittsburgh gave up an average of 14.4 over their last seven games, 3.5 more than Philadelphia -- but they don't blow coverages, miss kicks, or otherwise underperform in big games. Well, at least they haven't so far.

Meanwhile, we have to wonder whether the Cardinals are suddenly that good or whether they were just lucky enough to be playing the Philadelphia Eagles in a big game.

Arizona is, the Carolina Panthers have been hinting all week, the weakest team in the playoffs this year, and without Warner they wouldn’t have gotten close to the 9-7 regular season record they posted. Put it his way: Peyton Manning, Brees, Philip Rivers, and all the other top QBs in the league had far better blocking and rushing support (to say nothing of better coaching). Imagining Warner’s numbers if he had quarterbacked a whole season with a team like the Colts or Chargers is a little scary.

As we go to press, the Cardinals are 9 ½-point underdogs to the Panthers in this Saturday’s NFC Divisional Playoff game, and it will probably be the end of Warner’s season. Since Warner will be 38 next year, it’s not too early to do a retrospective on one of the strangest and most remarkable careers in NFL history.

Though he didn’t get to start in the NFL until age 28, Warner, at his peak, was as good as any NFL quarterback in the last 50 years. In 1999 with the St. Louis Rams, he threw 41 touchdown passes, averaged 8.7 yards a throw, and earned a Super Bowl ring by beating the Tennessee Titans. In 2000, he posted an astonishing 9.9 YPA, the highest of any NFL quarterback since Norm Van Brocklin in 1954. To put that in perspective, think of it as a hitter in baseball with a .420 BA over a season or a pitcher posting an ERA of under 1.50. Last year, jaws dropped when New England’s Tom Brady had a YPA of 8.3 yards; that’s a mark Kurt Warner topped for three straight seasons from 1999-2001.

Injuries and the stupidity of coaches have kept Warner from becoming the same brand of household name as, say, Brett Favre – and while we’re on the subject, Warner, like Favre, has been to the Super Bowl twice and has led the league in passer rating twice to Favre’s zero.

It’s highly unlikely that a team with a defense as bad as Arizona’s is going to proceed to the NFC championship game. The Cardinals’ cheesecloth defense has allowed 35 or more points in five games this year; in three games they allowed 47 or more. This might well be Warner’s last shot at the postseason, so if you haven’t followed his career over the years, you might want to take some time this Saturday to watch what could be the last stand of an NFL great.

*********

The Indianapolis Colts’ 23-17 overtime loss to the San Diego Chargers last Sunday – the second consecutive season in which the Colts have been eliminated by the underdog Chargers -- has triggered yet another round of “Peyton Manning can’t win the big game” accusations. Let’s review:

Manning outpassed his San Diego counterpart, Philip Rivers, 310 yards (on 42 throws) to 217 yards (on 36 tosses). The Colts frittered away this domination by getting outrushed 167 yards to 64, being out-returned on punts 72 yards to 42, and allowing the Chargers a net punt return average of 51.7 yards, a whopping 20-yard difference between what the Colts averaged on their returns. And did I mention that Indianapolis committed six penalties on defense to San Diego’s none – three, including two rare defensive holding calls, during the Chargers’ game-ending overtime possession.

Now what exactly is it that Peyton Manning is supposed to do to overcome this kind of sloppy play? Is he supposed to double up by playing on defense and special teams?

This time last year, Manning threw for 402 yards in the Colts’ 28-24 playoff loss to the Chargers. In that game, Colts receivers tipped two passes into the air into the hands of San Diego defenders; Marvin Harrison, after a first down catch, fumbled the ball away at the San Deigo 22 to kill yet another scoring opportunity; and defensive back Marlon Jackson got caught with a senseless face mask penalty on San Diego’s go-ahead drive. Someone on the Indianapolis Colts can’t win the big game, but it isn’t their quarterback, and coach Tony Dungy, perhaps the most respected head man in the league, has to take the responsibility for this repeated sloppiness in big games.

*********

If you’re a Giants fan, and I am, you see a great many ominous signs for this Sunday’s game with the Eagles. The most obvious, of course, is that the Giants have lost three of their last four while the Eagles, including last Sunday’s 26-14 playoff win over Minnesota, have now taken five of their last six.

If you’re looking for yet another reason to feel uneasy, consider this: the Giants haven’t sacked Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb a single time in their two meetings this year. In fact, the Philadelphia defense has actually recorded more QB sacks, 48 to 42, than New York. The Eagles’ rushing defense has also been better than the Giants, allowing 3.5 yards per rush to New York’s 4.0. But the Giants have run the ball well on two other rushing defenses, those of the Baltimore Ravens and Minnesota Vikings, that were better than the Eagles.

Those teams, though, didn’t have a shutdown cornerback like Asante Samuel, who could very well contain the Giants’ most reliable wideout, Armani Toomer. If he does, it’s unlikely the Giants will have anyone to pick up the slack, at least no one flanked out wide. New York will probably counter the Eagles’ pass rush by throwing more to their underrated (and underused) tight end Kevin Boss – at least when they’re backed up near their own goal line or close to Philadelphia’s.

Giants running backs Brandon Jacobs and Derrick Ward should get the ball about 40 times between them; the Eagles will counter not by keeping running back Brian Westbrook on the ground but by sending him out of the backfield to test New York linebackers. (Westbrook beat Antonio Pierce for a 40-yard touchdown pass on December 7, when the Eagles won 20-14.) The two teams’ quarterbacks had almost identical seasons; Donovan McNabb had 23 TDs and 11 interceptions while Eli Manning was 21-10. Both had undistinguished NFL passer ratings of 86.4.

The Giants were definitely the better team over the first two-thirds of the season, but that isn’t going to help them now, and if they lose to the Eagles this Sunday, all the glow of last year’s upset Super Bowl win and the glorious 11-1 start of 2008 will be gone.

MediaMob: Before we begin with this week's session, we need to revisit our last edition. I have been rebuked for calling Renee Zellweger a "sow."
TheTransom: Well, your rebuker does have a point... She's not really a sow.
TheTransom: Who rebuked you thusly?
MediaMob: I was rebuked, OK? Let's leave it at that.
TheTransom: Heh. Wife got pissy, eh?
MediaMob: No.
TheTransom: Phew. Do you wish to apologize/
MediaMob: I wish to set the record straight.
MediaMob: When I referred to Renee Zellweger as a "sow," I was talking about the cases where she moonlights as a fashion model.
TheTransom: Ah. You're talking about a context, in which she compares sowly.
MediaMob: It was in the same spirit in which I used to refer to Philadelphia Eagles defensive lineman Mike Mamula, listed at 252 pounds, as a puny little shrimp.
TheTransom: Right, except in the inverse, in this case. Err, obverse?
MediaMob: Right.
TheTransom: Concave, convex. I am high. Stalagmite. Stalactite.
MediaMob: A fashion model is basically an ambulatory clothes hanger--an unnatural human body type--and Ms. Zellweger, being of more natural proportions, is unsuited for the role.
TheTransom: Right.
MediaMob: Women and girls should not desire nor try to be thinner than Renee Zellweger; it is unhealthy.
TheTransom: Wow, some chick really beat you with a copy of "Our Bodies, Our Selves."
MediaMob: There is nothing about Renee Zellweger's figure that disqualifies her from her regular chosen job of being the lead actress in romantic comedy movies, the object of healthy male desire.
MediaMob: No, in that context, the problem is all about her piggy little eyes.
TheTransom: Ugh, I KNOW. She looks like a character from Charlotte's Web.
MediaMob: Not cute.
MediaMob: Anyway, now that we have steered our impressionable female readers away from gender-based body-image disorders--what is Thursday Styles trying to do to men?
MediaMob: Laser beard-line treatment?
TheTransom: My three favorite sentences in the whole section are in Peter Jaret's laser surgery beard story.
MediaMob: "The truth is, most men who sport sexy, two-day growths end up spending more, not less, time in front of the mirror."
MediaMob: Admittedly, the word "sexy" makes the whole subject group sort of hard to define.
TheTransom: Right. Speaking as someone who hasn't shaved in three weeks? Yes.
MediaMob: All too often, I can be seen sporting a two-day growth, which in my case is achieved by not shaving for four to 10 days.
TheTransom: I noticed that in the editorial meeting today. I thought perhaps someone had rubbed a lint trap over your chin. Then I realized you'd hit blonde puberty finally.
TheTransom: But let me say this about this article: "But my beard hair was growing into my chest hair, and I'm really not into that," says one of their posterboy subjects.
TheTransom: The question: how can he manage to articulate all that with a cock in his mouth?
TheTransom: Because this is the *single faggiest thing* I have ever read. And I'm reading a book called "Tearoom Trade" right now.
MediaMob: Ditto, and I've read RuPaul's autobiography.
TheTransom: My other fave sentence: "And believe me, the last thing you want to do is get blood all over a $250 Ermenegildo Zegna shirt."
TheTransom: God, how many times a day do you and I say THAT?
MediaMob: Burn off your beard with a laser . . . or SHAVE BEFORE PUTTING ON YOUR SHIRT?
TheTransom: Hmmm... the modern problems are so tricky!!
MediaMob: I actually would very much like to get blood all over a $250 Ermeneglido Zegna shirt.
TheTransom: Preferably in the store.
MediaMob: It's doesn't specify whose blood or whose shirt.
TheTransom: Quite so.
MediaMob: I also liked the part about how "because the laser is imprecise, the result can be patchy."
MediaMob: The laser is imprecise?
MediaMob: Or does ol' Doc Beard-Burner have the shakes again?
MediaMob: I mean, can I try that in traffic court?
TheTransom: Right, and a patchy result would seem to obviate the whole theory of getting laser surgery to undo patchiness, no?
MediaMob: According to the New York Times, the laser is imprecise, your honor!
MediaMob: And the two guys in the pictures . . .
TheTransom: It's too mean. I can't even talk about them.
TheTransom: I actually sort of admire their bravery.
MediaMob: Let's just say that they give the impression that ALL their manly attributes have been delicately trimmed down with advanced laser technology.
MediaMob: And speaking of people uncomfortable with their natural developmental status . . . spelling bees for Billyburg?
TheTransom: I won't read that story and you can NOT, CAN NOT, MAKE ME.
MediaMob: What's next, FINGER-PAINTING?
TheTransom: Well, the end of adolescence in New York City for the average man is, as we well know, 34.
MediaMob: Or 50, in Brooklyn.
TheTransom: I was in a spelling bee a few years ago. With Jonathan Ames, in fact.
TheTransom: I was illegally disqualified, because my variant spelling was in the OED, and the judge wouldn't admit it.
TheTransom: I'm still mad.
TheTransom: I don't really have a point to this story, except that I'm really out of it today and also I'm not 34 yet.
MediaMob: This is why I live in Queens.
TheTransom: I thought you lived in Queens because you are poor.
MediaMob: Funny how those things all go together.
TheTransom: Choices: Some of them are.
MediaMob: Like the choice for a man to wear $750 pointy-toed shoes.
TheTransom: Is that a choice? I suppose it depends on what kind of gigolo you are.
MediaMob: "Sensible? No. Supercool? Yes."
MediaMob: The New York Times: All the News That's Supercool.
TheTransom: You know, the pointy shoe is "not a shoe that people find by happenstance," which is an excellent point.
TheTransom: It's a shoe you find because you're an absolute retard.
MediaMob: "[T]heir appeal is both tasteless and timeless--and now timely."
TheTransom: Except for all the people that they called who wouldn't sign on to the pro-pointy shoe agenda.
MediaMob: Again, feeble and gutless.
MediaMob: Thank goodness for Alex Kuczynski.
MediaMob: She knows what she is.
MediaMob: And what she is this week is ANGRY AT THE HELP.
TheTransom: Oh, I thoroughly enjoyed Alex K. this week. I'm mad at the help too at Century 21! They're BITCHES down there.
TheTransom: You'd think they worked, I dunno, across the street from a giant temple of death.
MediaMob: Well, now they're gonna be FLOGGED for it.
TheTransom: I'm so on her side this week.
MediaMob: "I have spent the both the best and worst shopping days of the last year at Century 21, the celebrated discount department store at the lip of the basin where the World Trade Center once stood."
TheTransom: Such a tricky, tricky sentence...
MediaMob: You know what was a REALLY bad shopping day at Century 21? FOUR YEARS AGO.
MediaMob: It's a milder terror down there these days, now that Alex has bitched out the operations director at Century 21.
MediaMob: "The store, he said, has instituted a training program to ensure that employees react to customers in a friendly manner. He said that if they can't treat customers with care and courtesy, he would resign from his job..."
MediaMob: It's like Call for Action.
TheTransom: I can't believe she's getting people to offer to QUIT THEIR JOBS. 9/11 didn't do it -- but Alex K. can?
MediaMob: I like the word "basin."
MediaMob: So tasteful and decorative.
TheTransom: It's a sweet word. Reminiscent of birdbaths, and jacuzzi tubs.
MediaMob: And those designer sinks with no place to put the toothbrush.
TheTransom: How I adore those. I wish Thursday Styles would write about that.
MediaMob: Rick Marin might steal it for House & Home.
TheTransom: I started to read that section and realized that I couldn't stretch myself today. Thursdays take emotional self-care.
MediaMob: Reading the beard-burning article pretty much was like reading Rick Marin.
TheTransom: Limp? Limpid?
MediaMob: "Your wife begins to question your sexuality--again."
MediaMob: Whoops. Looks like we've wandered clear out of Thursday Styles.
TheTransom: It has a porous and surprising boundary.
TheTransom: Like many areas in Iraq.
MediaMob: Are we done?
TheTransom: What else can I say? I liked Guy Trebay, actually, though I preferred Rebecca Traister's take in Salon on Kate Moss. And I'd also like to say this:
MediaMob: (It needs a good laser treatment around the edges.) Yes?
TheTransom: If Marc Jacobs wants to go touting his membership in a 12-step program, well, that's really going to be fun for us twats in the press the next time he's found with a needle on his arm and a monkey on his back. Fool.
MediaMob: Also, isn't it Narcotics ANONYMOUS?
TheTransom: Well... yes. But it's hard when, you know, you're drug-addled to keep track of concepts. Easy to round up a marching band for your fashion show though!
MediaMob: "'Do I smell Chanel?' is backstage code for 'Got coke?'"
TheTransom: I have to admit, I've never head of that. But? Everyone knows I'm a huge wet blanket backstage.
MediaMob: I thought it was code for "Who farted?"
TheTransom: Do model farts smell like No. 9?
MediaMob: I think they smell like Popsicles and Ex-Lax.
TheTransom: By the way, we got hate mail last time we did this!
TheTransom: Something like, "You're right, I don't know WHY you put this shit on the internet either!"
TheTransom: As if the internet were 1. Finite, and 2. Not already clogged with shit.

An uproar ensued, of course. The National Football League announced that the skit was "inappropriate and unsuitable for our Monday Night Football audience."

The N.F.L. got it exactly wrong. The skit was entirely appropriate for M.N.F., if you assume-as the show's producers and advertisers clearly do-that the show's audience consists in the main of moronic frat boys who guzzle beer, play violent video games, drive fast cars and require a little help in the bedroom.

To watch M.N.F., or any professional football game today, is to be overwhelmed with salacious beer ads featuring women bursting out of small bathing suits, crude commercials for violent video games featuring thug-like athletes, and a potency-improving drug that warns users to call a doctor (but not a desperate housewife?) in the event of a four-hour erection.

Pre-game shows feature former athletes who clearly could have benefited from more effective head protection during their playing days. One of the N.F.L.'s broadcast partners, Fox, regularly celebrates not skill and grace, but self-centered grandstanding and violent tackles. CBS uses its N.F.L. coverage to promote shows like C.S.I.: Whatever, making sure to show lots of mangled corpses and gratuitous gunfire to excite the football-viewing masses.

Despite all this, I still follow the Giants on TV every week, and I'll check out the two Thanksgiving Day games this Thursday. But when I'm watching the N.F.L., the remote is never far from my hand, lest any innocents enter the room.

You'd think I was watching porno. But it's just the N.F.L.

-Terry Golway

Five Reasons Sideways Flops

1. It steals a whole plot line from Swingers (guy tries to get his heartbroken buddy laid during road trip; heartbroken buddy ditches hot prospect, makes pathetic phone calls to ex)-and Swingers had less irritating interstitial music.

2. The idea that someone who looks like Virginia Madsen would go for someone who looks like Paul Giamatti-ludicrous. No wonder paunchy fortysomething heterosexual film critics like this movie.

3. Ooh, look at me! I'm a fancy "indie" director. I can split the screen into four parts!

4. Half an hour too long.

5. Who leaves wedding bands in his wallet?

-Alexandra Jacobs

Hand-Licking

The latest fashion in sex is hand-licking.

"Strangely, it started on the Upper East Side," notes sex researcher Kyle Davaratt. "It slowly migrated downtown and has now reached Brooklyn."

Most popular among 29-to-34-year-olds, hand-licking usually occurs during foreplay but may also accompany genital sex.

"It can be erotic, but sometimes I find it nauseating," observed Adele S., 30, of Chelsea. "If I drink margaritas I like it, but after two beers it grosses me out."

"When I was a kid, I had a border collie who constantly licked my hand," recalled Matt Vistad, 33, of Carroll Gardens, "so I find it comforting."

-Sparrow

It's starting to look a little ugly. Earnings are down, stocks are sinking and layoffs are on the rise. People are using the dreaded R-word with alarming frequency.

As the American economy slows, what does it portend for the world of television financial news? No development better signified the late-90's stock-market boom more than the exponential growth of business chatter on the tube. Once the domain of stuffy financiers and cobweb-covered analysts, financial news went decidedly downtown in recent years as flashy business networks stuffed the airwaves with loudmouthed, experts happy to harangue the country's growing legion of individual investors. From CNBC to CNNfn to Bloomberg and beyond, watching financial news became the country's latest pop culture fix, a phenomenon akin to Monday Morning Football .

But with a recession looming, what's going to happen to the nation's biz-news lovefest? Will people still want to fix their eyeballs on the Big Kahuna et al. as their portfolios plunge like the Lusitania ? Or is bad news just as compelling as it was to watch your tech stocks shoot through the roof in '99?

The early indications are that people are still hooked–for now. Even though it began on a massive roll, 2000 was a lousy year overall as the bottom pretty much fell out of the tech market and the nation's dot-com euphoria joined Bambi's mother. Still, the viewers were there–in record numbers, in fact. "Nasdaq had a terrible year, the Dow Jones industrial average was down, the S.&P. was down, so this was a down year–and CNBC had its best year ever," said the cable channel's spokesman, Paul Capelli.

Similar improvements were reported elsewhere. For at least this year, it seemed, viewers kept coming back to television's financial news outlets, perhaps to see how bad things were getting. "Business and financial news are quite important during booming times as well as more anxious times," said Shelby Coffey III, the president of CNNfn and CNN business news.

But 2000 was a transitional, turbulent year. What's unclear is how a major, long-term economic downturn would affect the performance of these networks. After all, most of these operations weren't around the last time the country was in a major recession. It remains to be seen whether audiences will be interested in financial news during an extended climate in which good news is in short supply and optimism is scarce.

A recession could also change the tenor of such news. The talking heads on financial news programs are, almost as a rule, enthusiastic. The wildly popular CNBC made its mark with its energetic analysts and the excitable pace of its programming, neither of which appeared out of place during a time when Amazon was trading over 100 and twentysomething executives were shooting Nerf guns from the windows of their Ferraris. But can that enthusiasm be sustained in a bear market, or will it just seem inappropriate, like a funeral director with an attack of the giggles?

Network executives naturally think these shows will continue to be relevant if things keep going south. Part of the responsibility during a downturn, they say, is to keep viewers from panicking. "We feel [viewers] will be coming to us continuously now, because they want more direction and information about how to manage their money going forward through what could be some tough times," said Katherine Oliver, Bloomberg Radio and Television's general manager.

Indeed, with audiences anxious, some executives believe that a tough market brings with it an added responsibility for financial journalists. "No one complains about misinformation when stocks are going up," said Bob Leverone, the vice president of television for CBS Marketwatch.com. "They only complain when it goes down. So the answer is that we should always be responsible, but the fact of the matter is that people don't sue brokerage firms or question the validity of news networks when everything is going up."

Mr. Leverone expects financial news outlets to change their approaches somewhat during a recession, since viewers won't be so eager just to stare at numbers on the screen. "Now, looking at numbers is a little depressing," he said. "So as a result, I think they will be interested in other kinds of stories."

But for pure audience entertainment, it will be tough to match the appeal of those gold-rush stories from '98, '99 and the early part of 2000. Today's financial news, by and large, isn't so good. Can it sustain a large enough audience–especially if viewers are losing money and, in some cases, their jobs?

"It's always exciting to tell all of the stories about how people are making money," said Ms. Oliver. "We have had all of these dot-com millionaires over the last few years and it's very, very sexy to tell the stories about the big, huge bonuses on Wall Street. But the reality is, over the last of couple of weeks, what have we been reporting on? Bradlees going out of business, Montgomery Ward going out of business. These stories are really affecting people's lives, and it's a very emotional thing."

Maybe it's the medium, but TV's financial news execs sound a tad bullish about reporting on the bears. "I don't think that it's going to diminish our viewers and people are going to say, 'The party's over' and switch off," said Ms. Oliver. "I think they really are going to be looking for more information and insight from the professionals on what to do now. Because they are going to be worried and scared."

Join the party (the wake?) this morning on the strangely addictive Squawk Box . [CNBC, 15, 7 a.m.]

Thursday, Jan. 4

For years, Dr. Laura Schlessinger–avowed champion of single-income families and teen virginity, enemy of abortion and homosexuality–has scorched AM radio listeners with her unique blend of fire and brimstone. She rates a close second to Rush. But when Paramount announced that they were giving Dr. Laura her own TV show, practically every gay- and women's-rights group went bonkers.

Despite loud protests, Dr. Laura finally made it on the air this fall. But after an afternoon slot proved unsuccessful, the show was moved to 2:05 a.m. The irony is sweet: At that witching hour, Dr. Laura must dispense her wholesome-lifestyle philosophy to an audience with a disproportionate number of boozers, drug-sniffers and Robin Byrd-watchers.

But Dr. Laura's radio show, which is on in the afternoon, would have been perfect for late-night TV. It's dirty. Just listen in on the following repartee:

Caller: "I have Herpes A and B, and I was just wondering if I should tell my boyfriend of two weeks. We've been having sex and using condoms and all, but I'm afraid I might give it to him."

Dr. Laura: "You're despicable. I can't believe you've been screwing around with some guy you've only known for a week."

In her TV purgatory, however, Dr. Laura looks medicated and sounds declawed. She chats with sleepy guests on such inane topics as whether to keep a promise, or whom to blame when a child misbehaves. She puts the latter question to a few people on the street before revealing the right answer (blame both the parent and the child, it turns out). She putters around the stage, kibitzing before a hushed studio audience. No one's a "slut." No one's even "despicable." She tries so hard not to offend that it's offensive.

By the show's end, everyone's friends. And the viewers are placidly asleep. [WCBS, 2, 2:05 a.m.]

–Ian Blecher

Friday, Jan. 5

CBS has a surprise hit on its hands with CSI: Crime Scene Investigation , which is a new drama about the people who show up after grisly murders and analyze blood stains and semen traces and creepy things like that. The unspoken little secret behind this show's success, of course, is that it's on at 9 p.m. on Friday nights, when there are a lot of–how shall we say this?– single gentlemen sitting at home who are interested in blood stains and semen traces and creepy things like that. [WCBS, 2, 9 p.m.]

Saturday, Jan. 6

Tonight's episode of Miracle Pets features two–count 'em, two!–segments featuring companion animals that helped alert their owners to fires in their homes. In another segment, a manatee nurses another manatee back to health after a boating accident. This show rocks. Stay home and hug your dog. [WPXN, 31, 8 p.m.]

Sunday, Jan. 7

This afternoon at 4:15 at the Meadowlands, the New York Football Giants try to pluck the Philadelphia Eagles in the N.F.L. playoffs. (Give the damn ball to Tiki, our man from WCBS, that's all we have to say!) That's on Fox. Later, all of America gathers to celebrate its creative community on The People's Choice Awards . [WCBS, 2, 9 p.m.]

Monday, Jan. 8

CNN superstar Greta Van Susteren, you were just so fab during that election mess that we've decided to give you your very own prime-time show–at least until we figure out what's wrong with this wacky news network and change everything again. It's called The Point with Greta Van Susteren , and it's not to be confused with The Edge with Paula Zahn , The Grind with Eric Nies or The Party Machine with Nia Peeples . [CNN, 10, 8:30 p.m.]

Tuesday, Jan. 9

Who is "The Mole"? Tonight, ABC premieres The Mole , its new entry into the reality-TV series sweepstakes. In this hammy show, a group of contestants try to complete a task and win money, but they're hassled by a saboteur ("The Mole") from the network. On other shows, "The Mole" is simply called the "executive producer." [WABC, 7, 8 p.m.]