But in the end we decided to do a wish list. Television is nothing if not an instant-gratification business-so if we're not instantly gratified by what's currently out there, in a 500-channel, digital cable, HBO-on-Demand, Bill Maher–gets-one-show-after-another universe, then something's amiss. So here's 10 wishes:

1. We wish for peace in the Middle East-and on cable news. We've enjoyed the mean-spirited missile attacks between Fox News and CNN and MSNBC as much as anyone-probably more-but it's time to stop. Guys: You all have your positives and your negatives, and as great as you think you are, twice as many people watch an average episode of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter than anything on your respective channels.

2. We wish television news in general would stop being so crazed about being live. Live coverage is easily the most overrated journalistic innovation going. It's one thing if it's Ted Koppel by the Euphrates, but the vast majority of live coverage is merely "live from the scene where such-and-such happened a long time ago, and the only reason we're doing this is because we can." It'd be great if news organizations cut their live coverage in half and devoted the saved resources to enterprise, investigative journalism.

3. We wish television writers wouldn't confuse verbosity with intelligence. One of the more irritating developments of the past decade in TV is the growth of the 78 R.P.M. drama: shows in which characters speak faster than kindergartners who have to go to the potty, and always do it so grammatically and exquisitely-Blake references! Teddy Roosevelt quotes!-and launch smart comebacks every time. We'd really enjoy it if, every once in while, a super-smart character on a super-smart show said, "Huh?"

4. We wish David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Craig Kilborn and Jimmy Kimmel would do one week a year where not a single one of their guests had something to plug. And Bobby Short was the musical guest every night. We guarantee it would be the most interesting week of the year-and, probably, the worst-rated.

5. We wish someone would give Monica Lewinsky a reality show. Wait: done !

6. We wish the Friends could live forever. We really do. And by the end, the world will have run out of money to give them, so instead of giving them cash, we'll have to award them vast tracts of land-literally, nations-so people living in, say, China, will instead live in "Lisa Kudrow" and have to answer to Lisa Kudrow if she wants to do anything, like redecorate the Great Wall for InStyle magazine or something.

8. We've moaned about this before, but we wish Six Feet Under would knock it off with the dream sequences. It's gotten to the point where when anything interesting happens, you automatically assume it's a dream-just like you do with the CBS Early Show .

8. We wish there'd be a reality television dating series which followed the love lives of the people who create reality television dating series. Why do we get the feeling it wouldn't exactly be Shampoo ?

9. We wish there was a sign on the right-field fence in Yankee Stadium that read, "Hit This Sign-and Michael Kay Shuts Up For Three Innings."

10. We wish Larry David ran everything.

Tonight on Fox, the finale of American Idol . [WNYW, 5, 8 p.m.]

Thursday, May 22

Found: media defender of Jayson Blair! In the person of Ted Faraone, a loquacious, no-nonsense local television consultant and public-relations rep. Mr. Faraone, of course, has a Big Fat Reason for sticking up for Mr. Blair-he's angling to help his client, former Current Affair executive Ian Rae, land the reporter's life rights for TV/film/book-but it's worth noting he was also an occasional source for the disgraced ex- Times scribe, and said he was never burned by inaccuracies or cooked-up info.

"He did well and he got everything right," Mr. Faraone said. "He impressed the sources I introduced him to."

Mr. Faraone said it was a "big surprise" to find out Mr. Blair had been fabricating/ripping off stories. He called him a "very intelligent, very good reporter, very creative, good turns of phrase, good writer-all of the above."

"If he had applied to all of his work the standards he applied to the stories he did on which I helped him as a source, this whole scandal wouldn't have happened," Mr. Faraone said. "And it really infuriates me, all the people who go around saying, 'See what happens when you start giving preference to black people!' That really pisses me off."

We smell an "executive producer" credit for Mr. Faraone somewhere down the line! Tonight on WPIX-one of Mr. Faraone's other clients-it's Sabrina, the Teenage Witch . Isn't Sabs post-pubescent at this point? [WPIX, 11, 8 p.m.]

Friday, May 23

NYTV Left Coast correspondent Alexandra Jacobs took time off from her packed schedule of writing, editing, hosting media salons and couching with Jenny Aniston to weigh in on last week's epic Dawson's Creek finale:

Fans of the young-adult television drama Dawson's Creek -indeed, citizens of the world-can be divided into two camps: the "DJ"ers and the "PJ"ers. "DJ"ers are the cerebral, sexless idealists who thought that Joey Potter should wind up with that insipid broad-browed beta-male Dawson Leery. "PJ"ers are quick-pulsed emotional types who kept hoping, against all reason, that Joey would find a way to be with that handsome devil, Pacey …. What was his last name, anyway?

Well, no matter. The series finale last Wednesday marked a resounding victory for the "PJ"ers, still basking in the afterglow on the show's teeming on-line message boards. After an excruciating two hours- during which that soporific blond chick took waaay too long to die (with obligatory plastic tube up her nose) and there were more same-sex clinches than in The Hours-Joey, now a sophisticated book editor, is spotted in her improbably luxurious Manhattan high-rise watching TV with … Pacey!

Phew! One might venture that Dawson's Creek is this generation's Philadelphia Story , with the tomboyish, holier-than-thou Katie Holmes in the Kate Hepburn role, James Van Der Beek as a bumbling Jimmy Stewart (albeit with a big forehead and zero charisma) and Joshua Jackson settling Cary Grant's ermine mantle over his shoulders. Thanks for six special years, guys, and this Janey-come-lately fan will see you over on TBS.

Thanks, Jake! Tonight, Jake takes Precious and the cats to an early buffet at Asia de Cuba as TBS force-feeds us a Mets loss to the Braves. [TBS, 8, 7:30 p.m.]

Saturday, May 24

Kurt Andersen's a great talk-show guest-we caught him the other day on Charlie Rose talking about the Matrix phenomenon, even though he hadn't seen The Matrix Reloaded , and he managed just fine, much better than we ever did when we blew off the Faulkner before American Lit and tried to skirt by using the words "sweeping" and "Gothic."

The point is Mr. Andersen's a pro at this stuff, and he now has his own talk show, which ought to be good, and it is. It's called Face Time , and it's on the Trio network-growing in reputation as the Thinking D-Girl's Digital Channel-and for its upcoming season Mr. Andersen's gone out and interviewed a bunch of comedians, among them Dennis Miller-another professional talk-show guest-Bernie Mac and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the latter of whom has a paw up his hindquarters belonging to SNL /Conan O'Brien genius Robert Smigel.

Trio president Lauren Zalaznick raved about Mr. Andersen and Face Time . "Talk shows fall into two categories," she said. "Fairly uninteresting people talking to all different kinds of people, and in Kurt's case, an interesting person talking to all sorts of interesting people."

Ms. Zalaznick, who used to work for VH1 before it became the " Us Weekly Channel"-seriously, one of these days that Cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs network is going to run out of "sexy" pop stars to build cheap compilations shows out of, and it'll be just as grisly as the day they ran out of drugged-out Behind the Music bands-said that Mr. Andersen's show benefited by not having to do the usual talk-show pumping of "Friday movies" and so on. "That takes the lid of publicist pressure off and you end up with a more genuine conversation," she said.

In other words, it may be a conversation with a rubber-dog hand puppet, but at least the rubber-dog hand puppet isn't whoring an American Pie sequel! Face Time premieres June 1. Tonight on Trio, Perfect Pitch , a documentary about the art of convincing executives like Ms. Zalaznick to burn money. [TRIO, 102, 8:30 p.m.]

Sunday, May 25

Jeff Zucker-we mean, Ari Fleischer-has decided to step down as the White House's spokesman, and you can hear the crocodile tears in Washington, D.C., all the way up here. Mr. Fleischer, of course, was hardly Mr. Revelatory-the guy was scripted as tightly as a Mamet moll-but we'll miss his nice glasses, his occasionally spooky answers (hypothesizing the Iraq war could be avoided with a single bullet) and, of course, his important siege upon international freedom scourge Bill Maher.

Face the Nation moderator Bob Schieffer-who's been around one or two White House spokesmen in his time-agreed that Mr. Fleischer wasn't forthcoming with the press, but wondered if the young charge was simply following orders from on high. "He never gave you much information beyond the talking points," Mr. Schieffer said. "But I always had the idea he was operating under such tight restrictions that maybe he just couldn't go beyond that."

Mr. Fleischer said he's quitting the White House to move on to work in the private sector. Cable news networks, start your contract departments!

This morning on Face the Nation , Mr. Schieffer kindly begs some of his audience to go watch This Week with George Stephanopolous , "just to buck the kid up a notch." [WCBS, 2, 10:30 a.m.]

Monday, May 26

We couldn't get out of here without giving local loon/ Pop-Up Video guy/NYTV mascot Tad Low a final chance to sound off, and we were lucky to catch him at the airport, en route to Italy to attend the wedding of Rick " Cad " Marin and Ilene " Swell " Rosenzweig (hope Mr. Low brought his bear suit for the reception!).

We wanted the Tadster to talk about the future of television-we were hoping he'd sketch some kind of hilarious dystopia in which we'd all be downloading reruns of Silver Spoons into our optic nerves-but he was actually pretty thoughtful about it (the guy went to Yale!). Mr. Low predicted a not-so-future future in which the principal television delivery devices would be hand-held phones and P.D.A.'s (hey!-didn't we read about that in the "Circuits" section?) and there'd be no such thing as nailed-to-your-couch destination viewing (as in, "Everyone gather around at 9 p.m. on NBC and watch the season finale of Frasier !").

Mr. Low thought TV would soon be a free-for-all.

"The only thing people will watch en masse anymore will be sports and helicopter car chases!" Mr. Low said. He suggested the sitcom would soon be dead, and advised all sitcom writers-boy, Mr. Low just loves sticking it to those guys-to go out, buy cars and try to induce police chases if they wanted to see their work on the telly.

Television as we knew it would soon be dead, Mr. Low said.

"Les Moonves is a guy with a nice suit riding a dinosaur!" he said.

We have no idea what Mr. Low is talking about. Tonight on CBS, Yes, Dear . [WCBS, 2, 8:30 p.m.]

Tuesday, May 27

Tonight on YES, it's the Boston Red Sox Versus the New York Yankees in a game of professional baseball played in the Bronx, N.Y. [YES, 80, 7:05 p.m.]

Thanks everyone for the e-mails, anger and encouragement. Now shut that thing off, go outside and take a walk. Courage!

Tonight, May 7, well-known television innovator ( Pop-Up Video ) and nut case Tad Low will host something he's calling a Private Panty Portrait Party, which sounds like one of those voyeuristic hootenannies you used to read a lot about three or four years ago, when everyone under 35 was still drunk on dot-com money, reading Brill's Content and devoting much horny after-work energy to postmodern, public sexual fulfillment.

Guests at Mr. Low's PPPP bash will be plied with booze (beer, tequila) and asked to strip down to their skivvies in order to be photographed. Why photographed? Because-of course!-Mr. Low and his Tad-poles at Spin the Bottle productions are making a TV series for which they need a lot of pictures of people running around in their underwear (can't they just use B-roll from a bunch of Benny Hill s?).

The photos will be used in a segment of 4-Play , a music video program Mr. Low is making for the digital cable channel Fuse (formerly Much Music). 4-Play 's gimmick is that the screen is divided into four blocks, with one block playing an actual music video, and the other blocks showing related, silly material. For example, for a recent video by Queens of the Stone Age-in which the real video depicts the band getting into a car crash with a deer- 4-Play 's other blocks will include someone making venison Wellington, as well as faces of celebrities who look like deer. (Mr. Low said this list includes Mary Tyler Moore, Chris Kattan, Michael Richards, Johnny Depp and Martha Plimpton. Johnny Depp ?)

Mr. Low's underwear photos, then, will be used to accompany a recent Jimmy Eat World video in which the actual band plays at a high-school underwear party. The idea is to contrast the hired hardbodies in the real video against the squishy vérité ones you get when you send out a mass e-mail invite. Capiche ?

"Face inclusion is optional," Mr. Low said.

Tonight on Much Music, Fuse or whatever it is, Behind the Music That Sucks . We're fine with the idea behind this show, but the gratuitous "sucks" is just lame-ass, 13-year-old–ish shock-mongering. Whoever suggested it-10 push-ups in a thong, at Mr. Low's soirée! [MM, 132, 9 p.m.]

Thursday, May 8

When we saw him a few months back, documentary filmmaker R.J. Cutler could barely contain his excitement about his upcoming reality show, American Candidate , in which viewers would select a person they felt was well-positioned to mount an actual campaign for President of the United States. (Not you , John Kerry!)

Now American Candidate is on ice, after its network, FX, decided the video democracy program was going to be too expensive to produce. But Mr. Cutler's still excited, and optimistic his show is going to get picked up by another network.

"We have reason to be extremely confident that continuing production on the show is a wise idea," Mr. Cutler said.

So preproduction on American Candidate wages on. Though the show has moved the launch of its Web-based candidate search from this spring to September, Mr. Cutler said the program was "completely on schedule."

Why not get Mr. Cutler's other documentary subject, Roseanne, to fund the show herself? Mr. Cutler said his experience with the sometimes-combustible comedienne has been going "really, really well." He's been following her around for an ABC reality series that is scheduled to launch sometime in August, he said.

On FX's big daddy Fox tonight, the Miss Dog Beauty Pageant . News Corp doesn't have the moola for American Candidate , but they do have the moola for this. It's co-hosted by that J. Peterman guy from Seinfeld . Roof ! [WNYW, 5, 8 p.m.]

Friday, May 9

Stephen Glass-the scandalized ex– New Republic ex- Wunderkind who hasn't piped up publicly since he was given the heave-ho for making stuff up-will break his silence Sunday May 11 in an interview on 60 Minutes.

Mr. Glass recently sat for an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft. Other individuals interviewed for the piece include Charles Lane, Mr. Glass's former editor at TNR -now at The Washington Post -and Leon Wieseltier, TNR' s literary editor.

Mr. Glass, who'd written for other magazines besides TNR , was at the center of a mighty media hoo-hah in 1998 after he was busted for fabricating parts of many of his pieces. Canned from TNR by Mr. Lane, the then-25-year-old pretty much went underground, though along the way he did get a diploma from Georgetown Law.

Now there appears to be at Stephen Glass revival at hand. Mr. Glass's story is the subject of a forthcoming film entitled Shattered Glass , in which the reporter is played by Hayden Christensen, the Star Wars: Attack of the Clones kid. Mr. Lane is played by Peter Sarsgaard; late TNR editor Michael Kelly is played by Hank Azaria. The film is scheduled for release in October.

And Mr. Glass has written a novel. It's a fictionalized account-your joke here-of his own story.

Efforts to locate Mr. Glass yesterday were unsuccessful. A spokesperson for 60 Minutes said the show had no comment on this Sunday's episode. Mr. Lane declined comment, and Mr. Wieseltier did not return calls.

One person who will be watching Sunday's 60 Minutes with interest is Adam Penenberg, a journalist whose Forbes.com investigation of one of Mr. Glass's stories ultimately led to the reporter's ouster. Mr. Penenberg and his Forbes.com editor, Kambiz Foroohar, are also characters in Shattered Glass (Mr. Penenberg, now an accomplished book author himself, is played by Steve Zahn)

"I'd love to hear what he has to say," Mr. Penenberg said. "I guess the question I have is, 'Why should we believe anything he has to say?'"

On CBS tonight, Star Search . [WCBS, 2, 9 p.m.]

Saturday, May 10

We all know that Martin Scorsese's a pretty good actor. He was swell in Quiz Show , and surely Mr. Scorsese deserved an Academy Award for acting like it was a breeze to collaborate with Harvey Weinstein on Gangs of New York.

He's also really good in that new American Express commercial that's running in recognition of the current Tribeca Film Festival. In the spot, Mr. Scorsese, a famous perfectionist, tears through a stack of snapshots at a drugstore, trying to find the ideal one from his nephew's 5th birthday party. Unsatisfied, he phones his nephew and asks him how he'd like to "turn five again."

It's a snazzy commercial, but can you imagine directing Mr. Scorsese around? That assignment fell to 40-year-old, Jim Jenkins, an experienced commercial director.

"He asked me for my resume, which is kind of frightening" Mr. Jenkins said.

But Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Scorsese got along quite well, and Mr. Jenkins got the job. "He is very easy going," Mr. Jenkins said.

Mr. Jenkins said the making of the commercial was equally blissful. The spot was made in one day; Mr. Scorsese was on set for about five hours, the director said. Some familiar faces from Mr. Scorsese's past films were to be part of his crew, just to make sure the star was comfortable, but Mr. Jenkins said everything went smoothly.

Mr. Jenkins also said Mr. Scorsese, who's known for being his own toughest critic, had fun playing with his perfectionist image. "He's so humble," Mr. Jenkins said. "He never speaks highly of himself or his work, he only credits other people. I think that sort of self-deprecating thing is not only what made him game for the spot, but what made the spot work overall."

Since the commercial began airing, Mr. Jenkins said he'd heard that Mr. Scorsese was a fan of it. And Mr. Jenkins, who'd already directed plenty of celebrities, has received a lot of additional notice, including a big May 4 story in Advertising Age . Not a bad day's work for someone who can still recall seeing his first Scorsese film, Taxi Driver.

"I have never shot anybody like him," Mr. Jenkins said.

Tonight, Mr. Scorsese curls up at home and weeps uncontrollably to The Green Mile. [WABC, 7, 8 p.m.]

Sunday, May 11

Buffy the Vampire Slayer goes bye-bye on May 20. No fans are more cuckoo about their show than Buffy fans, of course, so to mark the occasion, we did a little email interview with Janine Mischor, who runs a Buffy fan web site called Slayer's Empire (http://www.web-glitter.com/~tempting) and is currently residing in Germany:

When did you launch your site?

"Slayer's Empire" went online on March 3rd 2000 after the site idea had been brewing in my mind for around one month.

Why'd you do it?

In the year 2000 my whole life consisted of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I practically lived for this show, so I thought, how many other like-minded Buffy obsessed freaks are out there in the world?

Why were Buffy fans so nuts about the show?

I think the show is down to earth and captures every day problems-not just teen problems. The show really gets to you and is so moving, because you can identify yourself with or relate to any of the characters. It also has a bright and open-minded female superhero, a lot of humor and tons of action and, of course, scary demons. There's a bit of everything in it for anyone who watches it.

Do you think Buffy is Sarah Michelle Gellar's finest work?

Yes, definitely, she showed us for seven years that she is an amazing and talented young inspiring actress. As for movies, her acting in Cruel Intentions was unbelievably good and wicked, but her other role choices just didn't bring out her real potential.

What did you think of Scooby-Doo ?

I saw it in the cinema, of course, but, well, it definitely doesn't count as one of my favorite movies. It's fun to watch once or twice but then you kind of have seen enough. But if Sarah wants to take her career in that way, I mean, starring in comedies, then I really appreciate that and support her, of course.

Are you going to go out of business when Buffy goes off the air?

No way, the show helped me grow up and inspired me so much, I could never close this site, I want to show how much Buffy means to me. My first website ever was about Buffy- that's how I got a weblife-so once you are addicted there's no way you can get out of the Buffy verse.

Do true Buffy fans watch stuff like Friends ?

In fact I looove Friends . I love tons of TV shows but I only got interested in them because I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so here's another good thing the show did for me.

What are you going to do the night of the final episode?

I won't be able to view the episode since I'm still stuck in Germany, but I will probably light a few candles in my room, put my favorite Buffy episodes in my VCR and watch them and think of all those times when the show has been my inspiration and helped me overcome my teenage problems and my constant pain.

Thanks Janine! Tonight on the UPN, the lowbrow network goes suddenly highbrow with Coppola-mentary Apocalypse Now Redux . [WWOR, 9, 7 p.m.]

Monday, May 12

On NBC tonight, Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of "Three's Company ." We'll hold out for the authorized one. [WNBC, 4, 9 p.m.]

Tuesday, May 13

Watching Ellie . There she is-and there she goes! [WNBC, 4, 9:30 p.m.]

But is Iraq ready for Seinfeld ?

The American media campaign in Iraq is well underway, of course, even without Jerry. It began with psychological-warfare radio messages urging Iraqi soldiers to lay down their weapons and surrender. After Baghdad fell, a specially outfitted military aircraft continued to fly over the region, broadcasting public-service announcements and reassuring, look-into-your-eyeballs addresses from President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair sitting against grim orange backgrounds. Now there are plans to show evening news programs from NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox. (Hearts, minds and … Brit Hume!)

But what about entertainment television? After all, there's no more potent, pervasive-if invidious-agit-prop than Western TV and film, and it seems only a matter of time before the likes of American Idol , Are You Hot? and Old School arrive in Iraq alongside the military's battalions. Even if no less a culture critic than Jimmy Kimmel thinks of Idol 's Ryan Seacrest and Hot 's Lorenzo Lamas and worries it's a "really bad idea".

To date, U.N. sanctions have prohibited Western media companies from distributing their content in Iraq. A Department of Defense spokesperson said on April 15 that it's "way premature to think about" TV entertainment being made available in the country.

But given Iraq's eager and ripe market-25 million people, though only 13 percent with TV's, according to the Pentagon-there will be plenty of TV suitors.

"We feel very robust about the fact that Iraq will be a potentially very good market for us and other businesses," said Peter Einstein, the president and chief executive of Showtime/Gulf DTH, a digital-television venture partially owned by Viacom that will be among the distributors seeking to service Iraq. "There is already demand."

Western television programming is already widely available in the region surrounding Iraq. Showtime/Gulf DTH, one of three major providers-the others are Arab Radio & Television (ART) and a company called Orbit-is available in more than a dozen Middle Eastern nations, including Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, where its most popular offerings include current TV hits like CSI and Survivor , as well as good old Seinfeld . You can watch World Wrestling Entertainment pro wrestling in Arab nations, and they get their MTV, too, offered as a composite of programming from MTV India and MTV Europe. Certain state television outlets even offer some American programming, usually old stuff. Almost anything you can get here, you can get there, too.

Of course, not everyone is happy about it. Westernization has, in some instances, served the radicals better than the democratizers. The content and imagery of American pop culture has been a rallying point for fundamentalist leaders, who view its reach and coarseness as a threat to their countries.

"American media and culture infiltrate the airwaves of the entire Middle East," said CBS Evening News executive producer Jim Murphy. "It's one of the reasons conservatives there are so upset."

But Mr. Einstein said that Showtime/Gulf DTH's customers in the Middle East have been eager for Western programming of all kinds. When the pay-TV service-known as Showtime Arabia-launched six years ago, programmers took great pains to censor and edit shows it felt might be objectionable, he said. But Mr. Einstein said that many Arab viewers complained and urged Showtime Arabia to air the programs in their entirety, unedited.

It's clear that there's an appetite for American entertainment in Iraq. The closed country has long been home to a bustling black market for Western media. Mr. Murphy, who last visited Iraq in February, when Dan Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein, said that "pirated DVD's and CD's of Western movies and music was probably one of the few thriving businesses" in the region.

"Young people are incredibly receptive to the music and the TV shows," said Mr. Murphy, who also recalled seeing numerous children wearing Simpsons T-shirts.

Such exportation is nothing new, of course, even in regions where few people own televisions. Al Jean, an executive producer of The Simpsons , appreciates his show's world audience, and sounded pleased at the prospect of it eventually reaching Iraq as well. The indefatigable Fox cartoon series is seen in dozens of countries; Mr. Jean recalled watching an episode on a visit to Egypt several years ago.

"I'm always glad when we have viewership worldwide," Mr. Jean said. "I think the flow of information-not just entertainment-is the friend of democracy. The more information a country has, the better."

Indeed, few dispute Western pop culture's power. For better and for worse, television and film can be equally effective as military and political operations in spreading American ideals and values.

"The United States takes its cultural-export mission very seriously, and believes that its films and television programming will shape a cultural landscape in a foreign country," said Lauren Zalaznick, the president of Trio, a digital-cable channel specializing in pop culture and owned by Vivendi Universal. "It's the quickest way to shape a cultural sensibility, as opposed to humanitarian aid and financial aid, which we are less in control of."

Still, Ms. Zalaznick acknowledged a certain wariness at the idea of conquering the culture, too, and pushing too much American entertainment upon Iraq. Not only could it undermine local culture, but distributing Western media in a country was no guarantee that American ideals would be embraced, she said.

"One would guess that a new level of media penetration is going to yield unwarranted and unexpected results," Ms. Zalaznick said. "Possibly positive, possibly negative. Once you put words and images out there, you have no way of controlling how they are received."

Entertainment companies say that in the event they're allowed into Iraq, they are likely to take steps to make American programs more palatable to an Iraqi audience. A London-based spokesperson for MTV International said that if MTV were to launch a channel in Iraq, it would make an effort to use local talent and appeal to local tastes, as it has done in other countries. Showtime's Peter Einstein said that his service has taken advantage of the burgeoning Arab movie-making business, showing many productions made by Middle Eastern film companies on a new outlet called Al Shasha.

Still, there will always be the worry that, as the influence of Western entertainment grows, it will serve to diminish Iraq's local culture-Hollywood dumb bombs falling after American smart bombs.

"We are being introduced to the world by Los Angeles!" said Tad Low, the television producer behind such shows as VH1's Pop-Up Video . "That is like going to a party and having a guy in ironed jeans and a Botoxed forehead introduce you to people."

Mr. Low recalled a recent trip to a rural area of Vietnam, where the natural noise of the surroundings was interrupted by the canned laughter of American sitcoms playing on local TV.

"It's horrifying," said Mr. Low. "If the Arab world was pissed at us before, wait until they get a load of Bob Saget and Matt LeBlanc."

A new television show premiered in New York City last week that we're going to bet becomes a cult hit. It's called Strictly Personal , and it is alternately the most fascinating and scary program we think we've ever seen.

Yes: It's more alternately fascinating and scary than The Anna Nicole Show .

Strictly Personal is the television complement to the hyper-successful Spring Street Personals, the new-jack personal-advertisement company that publishes photos and blurbs from young, on-the-prowl singles on the Internet and in a number of publications, including this one. You know Spring Street Personals ads: They're the "hip" ones with the alluring/alarming shots of men and women mostly in their 20's and 30's and the unnerving come-ons ("I am constantly mistaken for a Victoria's Secret model" or, more subtly, "I know how to work this tongue") that make you wonder whatever happened to the gamy S.W.F.'s and S.W.M.'s who just wanted Godard matinees and chess in the park.

Now, as a television show Monday nights at 7:30 and 11:30 p.m. on MetroTV, Strictly Personal brings these next-generation singles to multidimensional life. And oh boy-it's some life.

On the other night's show, we met "Peaches 77," an affable young woman who told us, "I like to give spankings, but I can take them like a champ, too." There was "Norotiousbiggyk"-clearly some misspelled Biggie Smalls joke there, not sure what it is-who said he "got into oral sex by experimenting in high school." There was "Girl9Ny," who said she's "definitely in touch with" her sexuality, and who once broke into someone's summer house with her boyfriend and shagged in the Jacuzzi.

"A lot of these people are younger, hipper, edgier people," said Strictly Personal senior producer Dave Goldberg. "And they are happy to talk to you about sexual things."

This candor, obviously, is what makes Strictly Personal at once so mesmerizing and so frightening. The people behind the show, who work for a joint called Camera Planet, spend a lot of time combing through the print and Internet ads to find people who'd make for a compelling television interview. While not everyone on Strictly Personal is overtly sexual, they do tend to be extroverts.

"We have a woman coming up on next week's episode who bought Jennifer Lopez's outfit from The Cell on eBay, and she takes off her clothes and puts it on," Mr. Goldberg said.

Though the people on the show all appear to be genuinely eager and enthusiastic, there is a mild melancholy to Strictly Personal -the endless longing for senses of humor and good butts; the dreary New York apartments with loft beds and Ikea furniture. It's enough to make itchy marrieds grateful for their spouses, and prompt cads to commit.

But Mr. Goldberg-whose crews spend up to two hours filming each subject for a segment lasting three or four minutes-said he never feels "sorry for these people." "Sometimes you laugh, because they're so goofy," he said. But "we want people to look good."

Brad Alexander, a 31-year-old piano player, songwriter and Paul Rudd doppelgänger who goes under the handle "Blue_notes," was Strictly Personal' s first-ever subject. He said he was "pretty psyched" about being asked to appear on the show, and truthfully, he comes off rather well as he offers a self-deprecating tour of his cramped studio and a jaunt to his local piano bar. Even if he did say on the air: "I am a breast man, and I am not afraid to admit it."

"The reaction was good," said Mr. Alexander, who's gotten "four or five" contacts since his segment aired. "I thought it was funny, and they did a great job with the editing."

What is genuinely nice about Strictly Personal is that it provides a real-life antidote to television's too-long run of greasy dating shows, which have become undone by the long trains of L.A.-type muscle freaks ("Joey Bagadonuts from wherever," Mr. Goldberg called them) and bubbleheads who do little more than scarf burritos and wine … and whine. Blind Date and its ilk got old fast, mostly because you didn't really identify with the stars unless you'd been spending a lot of time inside California Pizza Kitchen or Gold's Gym. Strictly Personal , however, features people everyone's met before-the Kooky Dancer Girl, the Bookish Lean Guy, the Lonely Rocker Dude, the Cat Chick-and there's a certain, charming why-not-what-the-fuck New Yorkness to it.

"When you're telling people you're doing the online thing, you have to commit to it," said Mr. Alexander. "You can't be ashamed of it-or if you are, you have to fake it."

There are plenty of people who are not ashamed of it. One of Strictly Personal 's rituals is asking subjects to show the audience their bedside "goodie drawers." Mr. Alexander had a raft of condoms inside his, and on another episode, "Prettycitygirl" let the camera tag along as she sifted through her thong collection-"Another thing I can't live without is thong underwear," she said-and later blithely whipped out a vibrator.

"We see a lot of vibrators," said Mr. Goldberg.

The frank new era of sex-positivity has been documented to death, but you don't have to be a Victorian to look at Strictly Personal and wonder: Who are these unrestrained people? And: What are their friends and co-workers going to think? What about the pals of "NYCguy 2002," a man who made endless cloying references to his schlong and crowed, "I'm definitely not a player, but I have had a lot of sex." What's his next day at the office going to be like? Or what's Peaches 77's family going to think when they see her bedside handcuffs and blindfold, or hear her exclaim, "If you can't give head with a tongue ring, you can't give head without a tongue ring."

Of course, that wonderment is part of Strictly Personal 's appeal: Things may be bad, but at least you're not there … yet.

MetroTV, which is surely New York City's most identity-challenged network-Style! Fashion! Sports!-intends to run a new episode on Mondays and then repeat the hell out of them, but it would probably catch on better if each night's episode was different (how about a 24-hour personals channel!). Strictly Personal could become a Seinfeld for New York lonelyhearts-or a Scared Straight for commitment-phobes.

In other Metro news, the channel is bringing back another season of the very scary U.K.-produced series To Live and Date in New York. So beware of Bendels-shopping Glamazons hoofing around with Brit cameramen, fellas. Tonight on MetroTV, catch this week's repeat of Strictly Personal ; hold on for "Techgoddess," who tempts the fellas by telling them the one thing you'll see in her apartment is "a lot of cat toys." Me- ow ! [MET, 70, 11:30 p.m.]

Thursday, Oct. 17

Now that CBS News has pulled back the curtain and-Holy moly! Anchors aweigh!-unveiled its four-headed Early Show couch (Julie Chen, Hannah Storm, Rene Syler and Harry Smith 2.0), executive producer Michael Bass has himself a two-headed problem. First, he's got to make sure the all-important chem-chem-chemistry's there, so he can assemble a decent, original show. Second, he's got to try and figure out how to get more eyeballs to CBS at 7 a.m. sharp.

On the second front, Mr. Bass said he intends to proceed gradually. He's upbeat at the prospect of Early Show promotion in CBS's thriving prime-time lineup ( CSI , CSI: Miami , CSI: Poughkeepsie ), but he doesn't want to overdo the hype, à la what MSNBC did during what Mr. Bass called its " Donahue adventure." (The Donahue hype paid off in a whopper opening night for ol' Cottontop, but then his ratings promptly fell off a cliff.)

Mr. Bass said he'd prefer to take it a little slower, and try not to put too much focus on the new Early Show 's debut, set for Oct. 28.

"We have a great plan in place to promote the show," he said. As for Mr. Smith, the CBS expat said he's game for setting his alarm clock for the wee, wee hours again. "All I needed was six years," Mr. Smith said, referring to the time he last hauled himself out of bed in the middle of the night.

Mr. Smith, of course, was something of a surprise pick, but Mr. Bass said it was the former's impressive, ratings-boosting fill-in during the summer that made executives take a longer look at their former employee. Harry Nation, of course, hasn't been dormant-Mr. Smith's been on Biography now for years-and viewers sent e-mails boosting his candidacy. Mr. Smith was modest about the surge: "Five more people watched or something."

But he had fun, and now he's back, though in a far spiffier set than the cave at 57th and 11th that he and Paula Zahn used to inhabit back in their CBS Morning days. Mr. Bass said the reports that the show will skew toward harder news than its competitors are somewhat overcooked-it's not going to be MacNiel/Lehrer , but it's not going to be The View , either.

"We're first and foremost a news program," Mr. Bass said, but he added that the show could do more to enliven its broadcast, including to better utilize its heavily traversed plaza outside the G.M. building at 59th and Fifth.

Mr. Bass, a former Today show producer, didn't want to get into the tumult that's been occurring lately at his old shop, where executive producer Jonathan Wald was just jettisoned for ABC producer Tim Touchet. He said only, "I think it's a time of great opportunity in the morning."

That goes for you, too, Diane and Charlie! Today on the Early Show, Ira Joe Fisher struts by the window dressed as the F.A.O. Schwarz bear. [WCBS, 2, 7 a.m.]

Friday, Oct. 18

As if on a mission to prove there is no such thing as institutional memory, some folks at Yale University recently invited former VH1 Pop-Up Video co-creator/lunatic Tad Low to return to his alma mater to speak at a Master's Tea. Mr. Low, you might remember, has had a fractious relationship with his old school-in particular New York's Yale Club, which briefly booted him a few years back for lobbing crudités at a school choral group, the Wiffenpoofs, when they sang at the club.

Yale student and recent Observer intern Lucas Hanft attended Mr. Low's triumphant return at the Master's Tea, and reported that the TV maestro wanted to convince the young 'uns they all didn't have to go work for J.P. Morgan and McKinsey. "If I make enough cash, I'd establish a foundation to buy up ads in college newspapers around graduation time to counteract the ads made by investment banks," Mr. Low said. "The ads would say "Don't do it. You don't have to go that route.'"

Mr. Low, who clearly hasn't gone "that route," seemed thrilled about his tea-time invite. "I thought of this event as a victory lap," he said. "It's a vindication. I took down some of the posters for the event that were up on campus and put them on the wall of my office."

Tonight on VH1, a repeat of The Sam & Dave Show: Life After Van Halen . We watched this the other day and realized what we'd pretty much known all along: They both suck. [VH1, 19, 10:30 p.m.]

Saturday, Oct. 19

Tonight, Senator John McCain hosts Saturday Night Live . Hey, you SNL- ers, let that lame-ass Chevy Chase roast a couple of weeks ago be a warning to you: be nice to your co-workers! You, too, Senator McCain. [WNBC, 4, 11:35 p.m.]

Sunday, Oct. 20

Tonight on Fox, it's Game Two of the World Series featuring the San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees. Oh, wait-no, no, those are the Anaheim Angels! [WNYW, 5, 7:30 p.m.]

Monday, Oct. 21

New York Post television writer Adam Buckman-who's sunk his fangs into many a dumbass TV show in his day-felt the pain of cancellation himself the other day when radio station WOR euthanized his and Bert Gould's eclectic Friday-night TV yapfest, The TV Guys .

Mr. Buckman was sanguine about the show's end-"We're not angry about it," he wrote in an e-mail-but he was proud of his and Mr. Gould's 12-week run on the airwaves, which included a rare chat with hard-to-land genius Larry David.

"I have no idea how many people listened," Mr. Buckman wrote. "We don't have that kind of data. But the five call lights on the studio phone would light up about 10 minutes into the show and stay that way for two hours-which was very gratifying."

Somewhere, a bitter TV executive skewered by Mr. Buckman is laughing. But don't get too cocky-this guy still has his typewriter.

Tonight on Bravo, Bill Zehme chats up Tracey Ullman on Second City Presents . What's with all these cross-platforming showbiz writers? We watched Mr. Zehme interview Jim Belushi the other night, and he looked like he wanted to hit himself in the face with a hubcap. [BRAVO, 38, 9 p.m.]

Tuesday, Oct. 22

Tonight on Fox, Game Three of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees-we mean Anaheim Angels. Nope, this joke never gets old. Viva Bobby Valentine! [WNYW, 5, 8 p.m.]

One pill makes you larger. One pill makes you small. And another little dose of something, allegedly, makes you write earnest, Emmy-winning NBC dramas.

Feed your head writer! West Wing creator and Scarsdale native Aaron Sorkin was busted by cops at a Burbank, Calif., airport on Sunday, April 15, after hallucinogenic mushrooms were found in his luggage. Arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance, Mr. Sorkin faces arraignment on April 30–and the possibility of mandatory repeated screenings of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory .

Here's hoping Mr. Sorkin, who has talked about his personal battles with drug use in the past, gets everything straightened out. The media reaction to his bust was a bit shrill and Reefer Madness -like; an arrest for psilocybin sounds pretty tame by Hollywood's train-wreck standards. But it is curiously Age of Aquarius-y. A big-time Hollywood guy nabbed for … 'shrooms?

On top of that, Mr. Sorkin's writing résumé is fairly straightlaced in its subject matter, with The West Wing , the series Sports Night and the screenplay for The American President among the productions to his credit. Had someone from Diagnosis Murder , Nash Bridges or Touched by an Angel gotten popped for hallucinogens, we'd understand. But The West Wing ? For all its buzz and acclaim, Mr. Sorkin's masterwork is pretty … nerdy.

Goes to show, you never know, do you? For some insight into the usefulness of psilocybin in the television creative process, we turned to New Yorker and VH1 Pop Up Video co-creator Tad Low, who's no stranger to nature's little psychedelic friends.

"I'm a big fan of the mushrooms, personally," Mr. Low said. "To make good TV, you've got to think outside of the box, and there is nothing that helps melt the walls of the box more than some mushrooms."

Mr. Low, now running his own production company called Spin the Bottle Inc., was asked if he'd ever written anything for television while 'shrooming.

"No," he said. "But I certainly have come up with plenty of ideas. I don't know if I can say that the psilocybin are directly responsible for any shows. But the whole idea of coming up with a new idea is not to be thinking like everybody else. And there is no better way to break out of the formulaic thinking than to go for a little … ride in the afternoon."

Mr. Low laughed. He was asked if he thought hallucinogenic mushrooms were big in Hollywood.

"I can't imagine [that] a lot of people in Hollywood are using it, because it's sort of a truth-telling experience," he said. "I think that if too many people in Hollywood ingested psilocybin mushrooms, they'd realize they were in Hollywood, and they'd go screaming into the Pacific Ocean. It seems to me [that] coke and heroin would be your L.A. drugs."

Mushrooms, Mr. Low opined, represent "more of a 21st-century, one-world, coming-together, tea-party, Terrence McKenna feel."

In the wake of Mr. Sorkin's arrest, Mr. Low said he's eager to watch The West Wing to see if he can spot any psychedelic references. "If anything, it encourages me to record the next episode and play it back in conjunction with the first side of Sgt. Pepper's !" Mr. Low said.

Tonight on The West Wing , President Bartlet convenes a meeting to discuss the Schedule II F.D.A. approval process with chief of staff Leo McGarry, as well as the Caterpillar, the March Hare and the Cheshire Cat. [WNBC, 4, 8 p.m.]

Thursday, April 19

Everyone knows that Bravo–that cable network for people who enjoy smart movies, rave a little too much about Twin Peaks and enjoy fierce discussions about James Lipton's beard–is bonkers for Broadway. Now the Bravomeisters are cooking up a kind-hearted theater-arts initiative for schools (kids, just think: maybe you'll be able to ditch algebra to perform in The Donkey Show !) and a big-hurrah live-TV special entitled Broadway's Best.

The idea behind Broadway's Best , explained Bravo's marketing senior vice president Caroline Bock, is to have famous outsiders perform show-stoppers for a mass audience. "We want to get artists who are unexpected performing Broadway tunes," Ms. Bock said. "People from film and television and the pop world sort of reinventing the standards."

"What we wanted to do was create a Broadway show that made Broadway accessible to that wide audience," said Frances Berwick, Bravo's senior vice prez of programming and production.

Hmmm . Accessible Broadway? Let's see. Maybe you could have Rosie O'Donnell performing numbers from Seussical ; or David Hasselhoff doing Jekyll & Hyde ; or Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes belting out tunes from Grease . Wait a sec ….

"This is not a schmaltzy Broadway tribute at all," said Ms. Bock.

Ms. Berwick said that no stars have been finalized as of yet. An announcement should come in early summer, she said.

So get out that Sondheim sheet music, you celebrities! Tonight, Bravo gives the Week in Review crowd some Spice Channel action with Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love . [BRV, 64, 8 p.m.]

Friday, April 20

Speaking of Broadway stars, what's going on with Kristin Chenoweth, the Southern sprite who knocked everyone's socks off a couple years back as Sally in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown ? Last time we checked in, Ms. Chenoweth had left New York and gone Hollywood, courtesy of a sitcom deal with NBC.

Well, Ms. Chenoweth did her show, entitled Kristin . She taped a pilot and 13 episodes, in fact. But you've never seen it. Kristin is currently lurking in a broom closet somewhere in Burbank, right next to a hermetically sealed titanium container holding the unaired episodes of Daddio and The Michael Richards Show .

Kristin sounded pretty, well, O.K. The semi-autobiographical sitcom featured Ms. Chenoweth as a wannabe Broadway performer who moves to New York, only to wind up working for a wealthy builder and ladies' man played by Jon Tenney. Kind of like A Chorus Line meets Ally McBeal meets The Nanny , you know?

Kristin wrapped its episode order last December and was scheduled for some kind of midseason release. But it didn't happen. So far, NBC has opted to bless the world with Three Sisters, The Fighting Fitzgeralds, First Years and The Weakest Link , but no Ms. Chenoweth.

An NBC spokesperson said that Kristin isn't dead. "We have it and we haven't announced an air date," the spokesperson said. "I'm waiting to hear." The spokesperson said that Kristin could see some daylight if there is a writers' strike, which could happen as soon as May 1.

But without a long strike, Kristin looks like toast. Meanwhile, a determined Ms. Chenoweth is currently working on a CBS pilot called The Seven Roses .

Ms. Chenoweth's East Coast rep confirmed that the actress was indeed doing a new pilot, but referred calls to Ms. Chenoweth's West Coast rep. The West Coast rep did not return NYTV's call. No call was made to the Central/Mountain rep.

Tonight on NBC, Providence , with that sexy doc Melinda Ka n RR R rtt#23gftes or whatever her name is. [WNBC, 4, 8 p.m.]

Saturday, April 21

Word recently leaked that Cabaret superstar Joel Grey will be dropping in as a guest star on this year's season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer . Natural fit, of course. Urk .

To gauge the anticipatory hummmmmm for the pale, pointy-eared actor's guest spot, NYTV spent a little more time than was necessary or healthy on a particularly active (and Brit-centric) Buffy fan Web site.

Reaching the chat room, we filed a posting asking what people thought about Mr. Grey's guest appearance. This is a small, edited sampling of what followed:

Tiger: Who r u're favorite characters?

Cushy: What do people think of the show Charmed ?

B.U.M: Saint Buffy, u wanna join my "David Boreanz is a hottie" club, hun?

Jen: I just saw Valentine and I thought it sucked.

ER: this site is ****ing and **** everyone here is a wanker.

Vanna: Jeopardy coming up soon.

VIP: Buffy is gay.

Corvus: Go Manchester United!!!

Lufc: I H8 MANCHESTER UNITED THEY ARE TOTALLY AND UTTERLY BANG OUT OF ORDER THE LITTLE CHEATS.

So not much on the reaction to Joel Grey. One chat-roomer asked if Mr. Grey was dead. Another wrote that Mr. Grey was "ever so creepy yet charmingly debonair." A few were VERY, VERY UNHAPPY that NYTV divulged the name of a guest star; apparently this constituted a "spoiler," which is mucho verboten . Scolded, NYTV fled the scene and now has a mailbox full of weird e-mail.

Tonight, the WB has the always uplifting The Deer Hunter. But those loons on Fox have Cops: The Top 15 Moments of All Time. Included: the time they busted that fat drunk guy, the time they busted that fat drunk guy, the time they busted that fat drunk guy and the time they busted that fat drunk guy. [WNYW, 5, 8 p.m.]

Sunday, April 22

Leo-Bloom-on-the-rise Matthew Broderick no doubt learned a little bit of the Max Bialystock school of entertainment when he starred in Roland Emmerich's wonderfully horrid (Springtime for) Godzilla. [WNBC, 4, 8 p.m.]

Monday, April 23

Now that Spaceman Lou Dobbs has come to his senses and reentered the earth's atmosphere as CNN's soon-to-be Moneyline anchor, there's another unanswered question kicking around 5 Penn Plaza. When is CNNfn, CNN's financial-news outlet, going to change its name to CNN Money? NYTV got a big kick out of the Swingers -esque name change when AOL Time Warner announced it earlier this winter; to date, however, the channel is still going by good old CNNfn, which has always sounded suspiciously like the name of an easy-listening radio station.

A CNNfn spokesperson said not to worry; CNNfn was going to become CNN Money at some point. "They haven't given us a date yet," the spokesperson said. "We've been told later this year."

The spokesperson was asked how CNN Money was supposed to be styled. Like, was it CNN Money or CNN, Money or CNN, Money!

"I think it's going to be like how we've been doing it: 'CNN,' space, and then capital-M 'Money,'" the spokesperson said. No exclamation point? "No," the CNNfn rep said.

As for Mr. Dobbs, his official title is anchor and managing editor. He'll also have a hand in shaking things up over at CNNfn, which has already been shaken up quite a bit as a result of the merger. "He'll have a role in the development of CNN Money," the spokesperson said.

What about calling the new outlet CNN Lou?

"I don't think so," said the spokesperson. "I think they're sticking with the plan."

Today on CNNfn, more hits from James Taylor and Christopher Cross … actually, no, it's Moneyline . [CNNfn, 27, 6:30 p.m.]

Tuesday, April 24

Tonight, Nickelodeon has the 14th Annual Kids' Choice Awards. Kids' choices like Destiny's Child, the Backstreet Boys and Lil' Bow Wow perform. Apparently against the kids' choice, however, Rosie O'Donnell hosts. [NICK, 6, 7 p.m.]

At first, Mark Katz seems like just another comedy writer who's trying to make the jump into the shark-tank world of television sitcoms. Hired as a staff writer for the new ABC sitcom Madigan Men , Mr. Katz is confident of his skills, but he admits he's still got a lot to learn. He doesn't know a lot of the sitcom-writer lingo. He hasn't written a full script yet. And the other day, he got razzed on the set for offering some suggestions to the star of Madigan Men , Gabriel Byrne.

But then there's the whole experience thing. Mr. Katz, who is 36 years old, small-framed and possesses blue eyes and thick, bushy brown hair, has never really written scripts for actors before. Instead, for the past eight years, Mr. Katz's big job has been writing jokes for the President of the United States, Bill Clinton.

Mr. Katz, who lives on the Upper West Side, has been Mr. Clinton's principal comedy writer for both terms of his Presidency. His chief responsibilities have been writing the President's speeches for the White House Correspondents Association and the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinners, as well as Gridiron and Alfalfa Club banquets and other assorted shindigs. More important, he's the man Mr. Clinton entrusted to infuse his Southern-fried sensibility with a sharp, Seinfeld- esque sense of comic timing.

Now, however, Mr. Katz rambles around the sprawling Kaufman-Astoria Studios in Queens, where Madigan Men is being taped. The new gig represents something of a showbiz departure for the Rockland County native, who has kept one toe in politics since his debut as a wisecracking volunteer in Michael Dukakis' ill-fated 1988 Presidential campaign. But in other respects, the new job is not all that different from his old one.

"Both are kind of writing for alternate reality," Mr. Katz said on a recent afternoon in Queens, as Mr. Byrne and the Madigan Men cast rehearsed an episode on an adjacent set. "In sitcoms, people are smarter and funnier and better-looking than they are in real life. And the White House Correspondents Association Dinner is an alternate reality where journalists dress better and are well-mannered and people are civil and the President says all these funny things that he could otherwise never say in a million years."

Among the funnier things Mr. Katz placed in the President's mouth during his tenure was Mr. Clinton's killer opening line at the 1999 Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner, where, in a reference to the impeachment vote, he announced, "If the Senate vote had gone the other way, I wouldn't be here." And then, after a delicious pregnant pause, Mr. Clinton deadpanned: "I demand a recount."

Mr. Katz also had a hand in the video that brought down the house at this year's correspondents' dinner. Directed by Everybody Loves Raymond producer Phil Rosenthal, a high-school pal of Mr. Katz's, the video depicted a lame-duck Mr. Clinton whiling away his final days in the White House, reduced to meaningless tasks like scrubbing the First Limo. Mr. Katz said he was "blown away" by the sensation the self-deprecating video caused. "I'd seen us do good speeches before, and inside the Beltway there'd be buzz, but we'd never escaped the Beltway in that way," he said. "It kind of transcended the culture."

But it wasn't always that easy for Mr. Clinton and his writer to get such yuks, Mr. Katz said. Mr. Katz, who attended Cornell and once clerked for The New York Times under then-Washington bureau chief Howell Raines, acknowledged that he struggled with the Presidential job at first, as he tried to find the proper comic voice for Mr. Clinton–a born speaker, though not a rim-shot jokester.

"He's a great storyteller," Mr. Katz said. "We found over time that if you could create stuff in the form of a narrative as opposed to a one-liner, he was better. It's Southern humor–there's a difference. It was an education for me to kind of modulate my voice and my writing style to him.

"I remember I wrote a joke one time that was foreign to him–it was firmly rooted in Yiddish construction. The joke was, 'Great Moments in the History of Political Journalism–in 1960, people who watched the Nixon-Kennedy debates on television thought that Kennedy won. People who listened to it on the radio thought, "It's 1960 –when the hell am I going to get a television set already ?"' Which is a funny joke, but you can't be from Hope, Ark., and deliver it."

Mr. Katz had tried for a while after college to be an advertising copywriter, but politics proved too alluring. Mr. Katz began writing jokes for President Clinton after old Dukakis buddy George Stephanopolous hooked him up with the Arkansas governor in Little Rock in 1991.

After Mr. Clinton won, Mr. Katz was asked to leave on the advertising business and formed his own "creative think tank" called the Sound Bite Institute. He began writing jokes and punching up speeches for various corporate clients. He wrote a book, "I Am Not a Corpse!" And Other Quotes Never Actually Said.

But his glam task continued to be writing jokes for the Chief Executive. Mr. Katz favored a "war room" approach to writing Mr. Clinton's humor speeches, consulting with friends and fellow comics to whip up ideas. War room members included Mr. Katz's law-lecturer brother, Robert, and Cindy Chupack, a sitcom writer and longtime friend of Mr. Katz's who asked him to join the staff of Madigan Men , which she created. "I would call up and say, 'I'm working on the President's speech–here are the ideas that we have, here are the themes, come with me, spitball stuff, send in stuff,'" Mr. Katz recalled.

Of course, not every idea was fair game for Mr. Clinton's speeches, especially during l'affaire Lewinsky. Unlike David Letterman or Jay Leno, Mr. Katz and his war-roommates had certain, well, topics they couldn't make hay with. "During that period of time, the rule was, 'You can talk about the smoke, but not the fire,'" Mr. Katz recalled. "You can talk about the hoopla of the impeachment, but not what was at the root [of the scandal]. And there was plenty there, plenty to chew on."

Despite their best efforts, however, not every one of Mr. Katz's speeches jumped off the page when the President sat down to read them. In fact, Mr. Katz said that Mr. Clinton's rehearsal for the 2000 correspondents' dinner was an unmitigated disaster. "Oh my God," he said. "He didn't like the material … he just wasn't enthusiastic about it, I don't know why. And we thought the stuff was [good]. And we knew we had a killer thing in the can with the video. But when he [went] out there, I'd never seen him like that–all eight cylinders. He was great."

Mr. Katz said he was unsure what Mr. Clinton would do next. What about a post-White House sitcom for Bill? How about one with a washed-up former President motoring around Chappaqua on his John Deere lawnmower, bugging the neighbors? Mr. Katz smiled, though somewhat uncomfortably. "Sounds like something for Fox," he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Katz will have a go with ABC and the sitcom-writing business. In Madigan Men , the brooding Mr. Byrne plays Ben Madigan, a successful architect who has recently separated from his wife and must plunge into the dating world for the first time in two decades. Despite his comedy-writing experience, Mr. Katz humbly submits that he is a sitcom neophyte, and his learning curve has been steep.

"I'm in this room with a bunch of really smart veteran writers who really know what they are doing, and are patient with me when I ask simple questions like, 'What's a teaser?' or 'What's a blow?'" Mr. Katz said. "There's a whole parlance to a sitcom, and I don't know it. [Veteran writer] Tom Leopold was joking on me the other day–he goes, 'Can we just sign him up for a goddamn New School course? I don't got time for this.'"

Still, Mr. Katz doesn't figure to be intimidated by his latest career change. "I've walked into meetings with other people and I'll say to myself, 'I've walked into the Oval Office and pitched stuff, and it's worked,' I can do this. And I'll remind myself of that at a high-pressure moment."

Tonight on ABC, a repeat of Spin City , production of which has moved from New York to Los Angeles. Thanks a lot, Charlie Sheen. [WABC, 7, 9:30 p.m.]

Thursday, Sept. 14

SELECTED HAIKU FROM THE 2000 MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS, RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL

Big music party

Red carpet flush with hot fame

But, Carson Daly?

Madonna no-show

Kurt Loder looks really sad

Not to mention old

Karmazin, Moonves

Never saw so much fine tail

All hail Viacom

Inane press questions

Moby, you like dressing up?

Macy, you happy?

Show finally wraps

Lonely Howard Stern heads home

Spears have a curfew?

Tonight on MTV, the Tom Green Show . Mr. Green and his brand new fiancée, Drew Barrymore, were conspicuously absent from this year's awards show. [MTV, 20, 7 p.m.]

Friday, Sept. 15

Speaking of the MTV awards, NYTV called up spastic TV guy Tad Low (one of the mad geniuses behind VH1's Pop-Up Video and the current Metro Channel show Subway Q&A ) to ask his opinion of Rage Against the Machine's Tim Commerford's unexpected scaffold climb at Radio City, a pure rock 'n' roll moment which earned the tattooed bassist a trip to Central Booking.

Mr. Low, you may or may not remember, disrupted the 2000 TV Guide Awards this spring by hopping onstage and trying to swipe Carson Daly's Favorite Musical Show trophy for Total Request Live . So, in theory at least, he would appreciate what Mr. Commerford was trying to do when he climbed up a pointy metal sculpture behind the podium as rival rockers Limp Bizkit were accepting an award, and hung there like a bat until the cops coerced him down.

Reached at his office on Monday, Sept. 11, however, Mr. Low didn't sound that impressed. "It was kind of cowardly of him [Commerford] that he had to be pulled down like a kitty in a tree," Mr. Low opined. "If you're going to go for an aggressive stage assault, you have to follow it through."

Mr. Low said he would have preferred Mr. Commerford to have taken a stage dive into the MTV mosh pit. Still, he grudgingly placed the Rage guy's act in the canon alongside such awards-show disrupters as himself and Michael Portnoy, a.k.a. Soy Bomb, the New York performance artist who infamously danced onstage–shirtless with SOY BOMB painted on his chest–during Bob Dylan's performance at the 1998 Grammys.

But Soy Bomb wasn't sure what to make of Mr. Commerford, either. "Although I favor any kind of disruption, I favor those kinds of disruptions whose substance is art," Mr. Portnoy said in an interview. "This one [Commerford's] didn't appear to have any art to it."

And what was Soy Bomb's artful message, after all? "I wanted to give soy products a facelift because they had a terrible image at the time," Mr. Portnoy said.

Alrighty then. Tonight on the Metro channel, continued coverage of Fall Fashion Week . Maybe Tad Low, Tim Commerford and Soy Bomb will show up at the Michael Kors show and start trouble. [METRO, 70, all day starting at 6 a.m.]

Saturday, Sept. 16

Hey, it's the Summer Olympics ! Just like NYTV politely pretends every Thanksgiving to like his aunt's squash-and-marshmallow casserole, millions of Americans sit up every four years and pretend to like discus, diving and 3,000 other athletic obscurities they wouldn't cross the street to watch for the following three years, eleven months and two weeks. [WNBC, 4, 7 p.m.]

Sunday, Sept. 17

Tonight on the Fox Family Channel, The Elián Gonzalez Story . No mas . [FAM, 14, 8 p.m.]

Monday, Sept. 18

Did you ever have a roommate who used to yap incessantly during football games, thinking his inane cynical chirps passed for comedy? Hence, the trouble with Monday Night Football . Dallas at Washington. [WABC, 7, 9 p.m.]

Tuesday, Sept. 19

Tonight on the soon-to-be PN, a show called Teen Files: Surviving High School chronicles the lives of 11 students at a California high school, begging the question of whether there are any zit-addled pubescents whose lives have not been the subject of a TV documentary this year. [UPN, 9, 8 p.m.]

Late Night With Conan O'Brien 's head writer, Jonathan Groff, is thinking over his options. He said he and his wife, Martha Chowning, are expecting a baby in June. He can't help wondering if he'll be able to keep up the pace of doing comedy on a deadline, four times a week. "We do a lot of character stuff, a lot of sketchy stuff that is difficult to generate," Mr. Groff said. "It's labor-intensive." So his plans are vague.

NYTV asked him what was up after a little bird tweeted to us that he might leave the show before September, which would mark his fifth year as head writer.

"I actually don't know exactly what my deal is," he said.

Mr. Groff ended up writing for Conan O'Brien after doing brief stints writing for The Jon Stewart Show (its MTV incarnation), followed by a gig writing for Comedy Central's Short Attention Span Theater . Before moving to New York in 1993, Mr. Groff did standup in Boston.

Mr. Groff was brought onto Late Night after submitting a packet of material that included a bit about a black a cappella quartet singing insulting things about Conan O'Brien in lush four-part harmony, which aired almost immediately after he was hired. Nine months later, he was promoted to head writer.

Mr. Groff said that in the event he does leave Late Night he won't be straying far; he has a deal with NBC (separate from Mr. O'Brien's own production deal with NBC) that includes developing sitcoms.

Tonight on Late Night : the guy who makes NYTV embarrassed to be liberal, Tim Robbins. [WNBC, 4, 12:35 A.M.]

Thursday, Mar. 9

Has a synergy deal ever looked sweeter? MTV Productions' Making the Band , a Real World -meets-Backstreet Boys reality show debuting March 24 on ABC, seems like a recipe for making money. First, you gather 25 racially diverse 19-year-old guys, all of them hot, all of them with an affinity for hair gel, and you put them through the rigors of a tryout for Lou Pearlman, the guy who concocted boy bands N'Sync and Backstreet Boys. Select the eight most talented fellas, toss them into a lake house in Orlando, Fla., and film them every moment. Next, simply shitcan the three kids who aren't fitting in and sign the remaining five boys to a big fat contract. Call them O-Town (after Orlando, duh ). Give ABC parent company Disney the option of releasing their records on their house label, Hollywood Records. Watch their reactions as they read in the papers about Mr. Pearlman's vicious legal battle with his old boy band, N'Sync.

Then, air 22 half-hour episodes detailing, as their press materials puts it, "their transformation from ordinary young men to rising pop stars," on ABC in prime time. Then just sit back and wait for the moment when every 11-year-old girl in America decides that O-Town so rocks . If it works, everybody wins. Network advertising revenue pays MTV to produce a show that advertises a Disney product. Heck, the guys could even check out Disney World in a very special episode. The capper would be that MTV would air O-Town's videos, a necessary part of breaking a band.

Not so fast!

"The synergy is not as high as you'd think," said Ken Mok, president of MTV Productions and the executive producer of Making the Band . He came up with the concept last August while in New York for meetings at MTV's Times Square headquarters. On that trip he found himself unable to maneuver past the screaming girls waiting to get a glimpse of N'Sync, who were appearing on MTV's Total Request Live .

After selling a full season of the show to ABC, Mr. Mok rang up the guys behind Total Request Live and asked about booking O-Town on the show for a little publicity head start. But guess what?

"I've gotten surprising resistance," said Mr. Mok.

According to Mr. Mok, MTV programmers told him that O-Town songs would receive no special consideration, and that when and if O-Town ever made it onto Total Request Live , it would be after hitting it big elsewhere.

Today, on Total Request Live , Smashing Pumpkins, desperately seeking audience. [MTV, 20, 3:30 P.M.]

Friday, Mar. 10

Tonight, there's 16th Annual Soap Opera Awards . Winners are chosen by rabid fans who vote for their favorite shows. Michael Logan, who has covered the daytime scene for TV Guide the last 10 years, gave us his predictions:

"The shows that do well are the shows that get their fans out of their couches. Historically, the Procter & Gamble shows do very poorly because the audiences for CBS shows are older and more conservative, and they don't tend to get out and vote."

According to Mr. Logan, the two front-runners are General Hospital on ABC and Days of Our Lives on NBC.

" General Hospital has had a bad year," Mr. Logan said. "It's been very, very piss-poor dramatically, and they've lost a lot of talent. It's in pathetic shape, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything to the hard-core fan. On the other hand, there have been examples where you can see that the audience has turned on the show. That happened about three years ago when Days of Our Lives was overtaken by General Hospital . Will that happen this year with General Hospital ? It's hard to say, but it could."

Thanks, Mr. Logan. You're not looking for another gig by any chance, are you? There's a certain column here that's up for grabs. [WNBC, 4, 9 P.M.]

Saturday, Mar. 11

The antidote to sportscaster idiocy, ladies and gentlemen, is Deb Kaufman, the anchor of MSG's nuts-and-bolts sports news program, Sports Desk . Ms. Kaufman's unaffected, shtickless, girl-next-door approach to reporting the sports news is a refreshing break from the frat-house humor of ESPN.

"It took me a couple of years to figure out how to be the same way on the air as I am sitting in the newsroom," Ms. Kaufman said. "We'll sit in the newsroom and have great discussions about what we think about sports, but it took me a couple of years to figure out how to do it on the air."

Who's her sportscasting hero? Marv Albert, of course.

"Marv is the best. Especially on the radio. From a critical point of view, he has the perfect voice and tone. He brings the right level of angst and excitement. If you listen to one of his calls, he always has the perfect explanation of time on the clock, what the situation is, and he creates the right level of tension for the listener. His calls stand the test of time. To listen to one of his calls, it's amazing."

Know this. If you watch Ms. Kaufman in action, you'll never go back to Sports Center . [MSG, 27, 10:30 P.M.]

Sunday, Mar. 12

Pop-Up Video co-creator Tad Low crashed the stage of the TV Guide Awards on March 5. But that was apparently just the capper to an extraordinarily debauched week in Los Angeles.

For those billions and billions of people who did not catch Fox's TV Guide Awards , Mr. Low stormed the stage when MTV's Total Request Live –and not Pop-Up Videos –was announced as favorite musical show.

"Hi, everybody," he said into the microphone during this live broadcast. "I'm Tad–I'm the producer of Pop-Up Video , and this is a travesty! L.A. does lead the nation in robberies, and you can add one more to tonight's festivities! What is this Total Request Live ? It just asks softball questions to celebrities, talks to them when they're in the shower. Come on! Seriously! Let me have the award."

Behind him on the stage was Total Request Live host Carson Daly, a handsome fellow who looked hip, albeit in a corny way. He was surrounded by a posse of other MTV guys who also looked hip in the corniest way possible. They were wearing black suits and neckties that shone, like Regis Philbin after his Who Wants to Be a Millionaire makeover. They all looked around 28 years old and had gunk in their hair.

Mr. Low looked comical, with crazy short hair, open collar and manic stage presence. Turning to the MTV host, he said, "Carson? Where are you? Come on! Don't you think I should take the award? Come on, people!"

They took Mr. Low away. Had he made TV history? Well, at least it was a decent attempt.

Mr. Low called NYTV the afternoon after his stunt to report that his arms were feeling "fucking sore" from being whisked away by security men and that he was "still a little bit drunk" from a trip to a strip club called Crazy Girls.

On March 4, Mr. Low said, he and a friend who is "a bit of a pothead but also a licensed pilot" did parabolic dives over southern California to approximate NASA's famous zero-G "vomit comet." He said it was scary. But in the week before the TV Guide awards, Mr. Low was taking meetings, doing biz .

See, last September, Mr. Low decided to take a few days off and go on a little trip to the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada desert. He ended up taking leave from his production company, Spin the Bottle, for three months.

"I took some killer acid called 2CB," he said. "It was good."

Before he knew it, he was in Georgia–no, not that one, but the one in the former Soviet Union. Then he turned up in Laos. He didn't get back to New York until New Year's Day. And what ever happened to that two-year development deal he'd signed with ABC? While he was traveling, the two years ran out! Without ABC producing any of his shows!

So now Mr. Low's got all these ideas without homes. Recently he pitched them to Fox and UPN. Here's a sampling:

Scars : Real people go on show, tell story of worst scar. Cut to America's Most Wanted -like dramatic re-creation of scar-causing event (breaking glass, biting dog). Then studio audience chants, "Show … us … your … scar!" Guest shows scar.

The Wad : This show would be The Sopranos meets Who Wants to Be a Millionaire . "Pimpish asshole with way too much money" drives into various small American towns in white Cadillac with huge wad of hundreds in pocket. Makes locals do "stupid shit because he can."

First Impression : Physiognomy game show. Guests come out and remain silent while contestants try to guess personality just from looking at their faces and bodies.

Take a lesson from the real wad-bearers on The Sopranos tonight. [HBO, 32, 9 P.M.]

Monday, Mar. 13

Tonight, on Ally McBeal , it's a rerun, with Haley Joel Osment guest-starring as an 8-year-old dying of leukemia. There will surely be lots of tears, but not as many as Mr. Osment shed at this year's Golden Globe Awards when he learned he hadn't won. [WNYW, 5, 9 P.M.]

Tuesday, Mar. 14

From Larry King's March 6 USA Today column, which partly chronicles his trip to South Africa: "I saw the South African version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire . In South Africa, the million is in terms of the rand (about six to a dollar). Jeremy Maggs is Johannesburg's answer to Regis Philbin. He's an excellent host. The set is the same, the rules are the same, and the show is just as popular there as here. Maggs wears lighter clothing, however. Maybe that dark metallic look doesn't work in South Africa." [WABC, 7, 8 P.M.]