The best early news out of ABC is this: One, the network has picked up NBC's Scrubs, a wonderful sitcom that still has lots of life in it. Two, ABC renewed Boston Legal, the David E. Kelley series that is one of the most outrageous, and certainly is the most topical, shows on network prime time today. And among ABC's new lineup is Kelley's adaptation of the British series Life on Mars. Good news all around.

Now for the NBC promo news.

The nationally televised promo was for Christian Slater's My Own Worst Enemy, a new series scheduled to premiere on NBC in the fall. It may be the first new show promoted on air by any broadcast network, so give NBC credit, at least, for trying to build buzz early. The networks all would be wise to follow suit: Audience levels have fallen so much this season because of the strike, the networks should start promoting the concept of a big fall launch before viewers vanish for the summer.

The other promo worth noting was local, an on-air ad for the upcoming 11 p.m. ET newscast -- but since WNBC-Ch 4 is the East Coast satellite NBC affiliate for DirecTV, millions of other viewers, outside the New York area, also got a chance to see it. And to hear it, which, in this case, was a lot more significant.

Channel 4 co-anchor Sue Simmons was promoting a consumer story about food prices, and saving money on grocery bills, when the on-air image shifted from grocery items to a ferry boat. Simmons clearly -- VERY clearly -- could be heard saying, "What the F... are you doing?" Except her expletive wasn't deleted.

Simmons apologized, during the 11 p.m. newscast, for the "unfortunate incident." Call it a "dialogue malfunction" -- and wait for the FCC to be all over this one. If even one complaint is filed -- and, in this case, it should be -- Simmons' angry outburst could cost WNBC a lot of money in FCC fines, and could cost Simmons a lot, too, by tarnishing her station's "happy news team" reputation.

My Own Worst Enemy, indeed...

It's the latest phase of my post-career transition, as I set out to redefine what it is I do and how it is I do it. Before, I was at the New York Daily News, competing with the other big-city dailies to deliver and analyze the respective network schedules for the next day.

But now that I'm on a website, am I competing with wire services instead, trying to get out all the news as fast as possible? Do I still need to break down each network's full proposed schedule? Or should I do something different now, and hone in on finding and championing what look to be the most enticing new shows?

The truth of the matter is, I'm not sure, and I won't know until I get there. I may post several times a day with breaking news, or I may present daily wrap-ups. I don't even know which shows might grab my attention. Sight unseen, the most exciting prospect, to me, is the return of Joss Whedon -- of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly fame -- to series television, with Fox's Dollhouse, starring Eliza Dushku, who played Faith on Buffy and Angel. But that's sight unseen.

This week, clips of that show, and most others, will be sights seen -- though the strike had some series sold on the basis of only a script or pitch. Whatever the sights are, and the most interesting offerings, I'll report them here. I'm just not sure how, or exactly when.

Please stay tuned -- and beginning tomorrow, keep checking back. There's a new RSS link to the site, if that'll help. And if you know what that is.

(If you do, perhaps you could explain it to me some time.)

Last night, Scrubs and 30 Rock presented their NBC season finales. Survivor calls it quits for the season Sunday with its traditional live climax, Brothers & Sisters also bows out, and next week offers a long now-you-see-them, now-you-don't parade of series making their last bows until fall.

Samantha Who? and Medium vanish after Monday. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is gone after Tuesday. Thursday serves up the final 2007-08 installments of My Name Is Earl, Smallville, Supernatural, ER and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. A week from tonight is the final Moonlight, while Saturday Night Live stops going live after a week from Saturday.

And next Sunday, nine days from today, marks the season's final fresh episodes of Desperate Housewives, The Simpsons, Aliens in America and Everybody Hates Chris.

Aloha as in goodbye, Desperate Housewives. The next day, Aloha as in hello, American Gladiators.

Oh, poi...

That's the image, and the sound, I can't shake after watching HBO's Hear and Now, the evocative, emotional, breathtakingly personal documentary by Irene Taylor Brodsky.

The documentary, premiering tonight at 8, is Brodsky's up-close-and-super-personal study of her own parents, Paul and Sally Taylor, both of whom have been deaf since birth. At age 65, they decided to risk the same operation and get fitted with cochlear implants, giving them the chance to hear, for the first time, the world and people around them.

Hear and Now spends more than a year with them. Home movies let us know how they met and married as young adults and spent their lives together, raising a hearing daughter and outfitting their lives with inventions generated by Paul, a professor. Brodsky films her parents taking a solitary winter walk, shortly before undergoing the operation.

Overhead, geese fly by and make that unmistakable honking sound. Well, unmistakable to us -- inaudible to them. Brodsky achieves exactly what she set out to do there: to make us notice the sounds we take for granted, and to imagine what life would be like without them.

And then, on the flip side to imagine what it would be like to hear those sounds, and others, for the first time. The daughter and her camera are in the room when her parents have their implants turned on for the first time, and hones in on their faces as they absorb their firs auditory experiences. He hears an electric tone, and his eyes widen with amazement. She says "Hello," to herself, and can't believe what she's hearing. Or that she's hearing.

"What does it sound like?" the doctor asks Paul, the professor.

"That's a tough question," Paul replies deliberately (subtitles help us understand what they're saying when their speech patterns aren't clear). "It's like, how do you describe what green looks like?"

Because this is real life, and because Brodsky is an unflinching filmmaker, Hear and Now has its sad moments as well as its happy ones -- plenty of them, in fact. But late in the film, when the two of them go out on another winter walk and discuss whether the geese are communicating by honking, well, it's a moment I'll never forget.

And I'm guessing it's a moment they, and their daughter, will never forget, either.

For a while Tuesday night, and into Wednesday morning, there were fewer than 15,000 votes between CBS and a potentially huge embarrassment.

Almost six hours after Katie Couric presented a prime-time newsbreak awarding North Carolina to Barack Obama and Indiana to Hillary Clinton, no other network had yet called a winner in the Indiana race.

Couric called the races at 8:09 p.m., projecting the results, at it turned out, correctly. But in Indiana, the margin was so small, and the amount of missing votes from one key county so crucial, that as time went on, the race tightened, and tightened, and tightened. So, I suspect, did some of the sphincters at CBS News. (Sorry. Couldn't resist. And I'm talking biologically, not insultingly.)

At CNN, Larry King complained to John King about the missing votes, which stretched the suspense to the other side of midnight, wondering why they just couldn't call and get them. At Fox News, Karl Rove started doing his complex math as the first tallies from Lake County finally came in, and announced with surprise that, if Obama held to those percentages, he might actually win the state. And at MSNBC, the "A" team of Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann went off the air at 1 a.m. ET, with the race, for a few more minutes, still undecided.

Finally, more than six hours after the Indiana polls closed, the cable networks began to call it for Clinton. Politically, Clinton's win in Indiana, by the thinnest of margins, avoids an avalanche of really bad press. Obama's decisive victory in North Carolina erased Clinton's gains in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in delegate and popular counts, but her narrow victory allows her to save face and keep going.

The same is true for CBS and Couric. Had Gary, Indiana gone a little stronger for Obama, and had he claimed a late-night, 11th-inning upset, CBS would have been scolded fiercely today, and for a long time to come, for letting competitive eagerness get in the way of journalistic accuracy. It wasn't exactly "Dewey Defeats Truman!," or even "It's Ford!," but CBS risked a big chunk of its credibility by reporting so firmly so quickly.

This time, it's no harm, no foul. But next time there's a race that close, will CBS be out there alone again? And if so, does that mean its analysts and pollsters are more accurate than the competition -- or just more reckless?

So far, it's a fun stunt. But it's not the first time Two and a Half Men has tweaked this particular CBS drama franchise.

More on that in a minute. First, some observations about last night's Men...

It's too bad that Robert Wagner, as the brothers' brand-new father-in-law, was enlisted as the corpse. He was lots of fun on this show. But the casting of Jamie Rose, as the detective investigating his mysterious death, was perfect -- a dead-on (so to speak) tribute to Marg Helgenberger's sexy, red-headed detective on CSI.

Also perfect was the end-of-show Chuck Lorre vanity card, a weekly feature which, this week, was turned over to the writers from CSI, who described their transfer into the strange new world of the situation comedy -- "a world where the only rule is whether or not it makes you laugh, where actors say exactly what's on the page so it better be funny right down to the syllable, and where puns are the lowest form of humor." The CSI writers thanked everyone at Two and a Half Men "for making us all feel stupid," and closed by saying, "We look forward to returning the favor this Thursday night at 9."

Very funny. Even funnier, though, was an episode from a previous season of Two and a Half Men, in which Alan's sexy young bride at the time, Kandi (played by the delightful April Bowlby), auditioned for, and won, the part of a forensics investigator on a new TV crime series. That episode of Men ended with Alan and company watching her TV debut in disbelief, especially because of the blatant display of cleavage.

And what was the name of that new, sexed-up CSI spoof? Look below...

Viewers tuned to CBS last Friday night may have caught something that made their jaws drop. I know my jaw did...

It was the CBS on-air promo for next week's Moonlight, which warned that there were only two first-run episodes left in the season -- and basically threatened viewers with the show's impending absence.

"You'll miss them when they're gone," CBS warned of these last remaining romantic vampire dramas. "So don't miss them when they're on."

What colossal nerve.

First, I won't miss Moonlight, thanks. It's not that good a show. But what this ad is doing is saying, basically, that these shows presented on broadcast TV are precious jewels. If we don't watch them, it's our fault.

Sorry, but in a strike-crippled season, especially, that's not the way it works. Moonlight won its time slot last week, but overall prime-time broadcast viewership is down since the writers' strike began in November. Millions of people, literally millions, went elsewhere for their entertainment. In a few weeks, when the May sweeps end and summer programming begins, they'll repeat, and probably increase, that driven-by-boredom migration.

The question now becomes, or ought to: Can the broadcast networks field a compelling enough lineup in the fall, and promote it properly enough, to woo those lost viewers back to the fold? Here's a hint, networks. To do so, make better programs than Moonlight -- and promote them better than by scoldng viewers that they have a duty to watch.

If watching TV is a duty, not a pleasure, the networks are the ones at fault.

"You'll miss them when they're gone" is a harsh, threatening line that can be repeated right back to the networks -- referring to their viewers.

Ringo Starr talks with Dave Stewart about his life and career, and his new album, tonight at 11 p.m. ET on HBO's Ringo Starr: Off the Record. He also talks about his life and career, and his then-new album, on the new DVD John, Paul, Tom & Ringo: The Tomorrow Show, with Tom Snyder. Those two interviews, more than a quarter-century apart, make for a fascinating contrast.

On tonight's HBO special, Starr is completely at ease. That's because Stewart, the host of these infrequent Off the Record shows, collaborated on Starr's new CD, Liverpool. So when Stewart pulls out old album covers and asks, in effect, "Why did the Beatles cross the (Abbey) road?," Starr doesn't act bored by the question.

(The answer: After tossing around a bunch of complicated ideas for that album cover, they simply decided it would be easier to go outside and walk across the street. The same lazy problem-solving process eventually ended up with them going to the rooftop, rather than some exotic location, for their final live concert.)

Most of the stories are old, as is most of the footage. The fun part comes when Stewart, of Eurythmics, picks up his guitar and coaxes Ringo behind a drum kit. What comes out of that is lots of casual talk about how Ringo came up with some of his signature drum fills, and why he plays a right-handed drum kit even though he's left-handed.

On Shout Factory's John, Paul, Tom & Ringo: The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, three programs are presented over two discs. One is Snyder's 1980 tribute to John Lennon, featuring his 1975 interview that was Lennon's last. There's also a 1979 interview with Paul McCartney when he was with Wings, and a 1981 interview with Ringo Starr.

It was Snyder's first interview with Starr, and it was divided into two parts -- half with Ringo himself, and half with Ringo accompanied by recent bride Barbara Bach. In part one, Ringo and Snyder, both puffing away on cigarettes, banter nervously as Snyder finds ways of putting his guest at ease. That ease becomes evident only once Bach joins them, and Snyder begins by asking her whether she married Ringo Starr or Richard Starkey (his real name). She smiles, and says she married Richie.

For the rest of the segment, Ringo becomes Richie, talking unguardedly about his wife, himself, and his life at that point, the year after Lennon's death. (You can order the DVD here -- and if you're a Beatles fan, you should.)

It's fun comparing the two Ringos -- the vintage and the current ones -- but it's also a total joy watching hours of Snyder on Tomorrow.

What a natural, fascinating broadcaster.

Hoping to boost the audience levels for two of its Thursday sitcoms, Scrubs and 30 Rock, NBC has swapped their positions in the Thursday lineup. The newly shuffled prime-time lineup, which took into effect last week just as the May sweeps began, now looks like this: My Name Is Earl, Scrubs, The Office, 30 Rock, ER.

It's just the latest in a long line of NBC's Thursday night flip-flops, swaps, disappearing acts and acts of quiet desperation.

The sad truth of the matter is, NBC used to own Thursdays for decades, ever since The Cosby Show hit like a tsunami in 1984, no matter how good or bad the sitcoms it televised. Routinely, NBC would sprinkle sub-standard comedies between its reliable hits, expecting viewers to sit still for almost anything. And, for the most part, they did.

The irony is that, now that NBC has a wall-to-wall lineup of excellent, inventive, delghtful comedies, Must-See TV has turned into Please-Watch TV. With Cosby, Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld and others, NBC ruled Thursdays, and was a dominant number one in the time slot. Now NBC, with its most solid lineup in years, is number four... and slipping.

Last week, when NBC shifted its Thursday lineup, Earl was fourth in its time slot, behind not only Survivor on CBS and Ugly Betty on ABC, but drawing two million fewer viewers than Fox's Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Scrubs, transplanted to 8:30 ET, did even worse. It was within only about a half million viewers of being lapped by Al Diablo con los Guapos, on Univision.

At 9 ET, the fact that NBC's The Office actually gains viewers from its lead-in, against Top 10 powerhouses CSI and Grey's Anatomy, is impressive, but 5th Grader trounced it, too. And 30 Rock, the best comedy on TV right now? According to A.C. Nielsen, last week's audience was only 300,000 viewers ahead of Univision's Pasion. Ay caramba!

NBC could claim, I guess, that after so many fourth-place showings in the time slot, ER deserves credit for finishing third. But that's only because Fox doesn't broadcast nationally at 10 ET, and stops competing.

The real shame is that NBC's Thursday lineup should be supported, but the truth is that there are more watchable broadcast-TV shows on this night than on any other. The networks are playing chicken on Thursdays, jockeying for weekend movie advertising, and NBC, right now, is running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

And after so many years of taking its Thursday audience for granted, there's no sense crying fowl.

Simon Cowell's assessment, as usual, was right on the money. This time, though, at the end of last night's American Idol, he was judging the program itself: "This is officially," he said with a smile, "the strangest show we've ever done."

In part, it's because the Idol producers tried something new last night that was a horrible idea from the start, and became a train wreck in the middle. The idea was to have the final five contestants sing two songs apiece -- standard for this point in the contest -- but to do it in a one-hour slot, rather than a more leisurely 90 minutes.

Why American Idol, whose weekly results shows have more padding than a mattress factory, suddenly decided to go sleek and streamlined is a mystery. But not a tough mystery. Ratings are off this year, so the producers have vowed to shake things up next season, and clearly are tweaking as they go this year as well.

This season's fall-off could be due to either the writers' strike, which clearly has reduced TV audience levels almost across the board, or the lackluster level of this year's contestants. Last night's performances, by and large, were painful to watch, except for one good performance by David Cook.

But the show's big error last night was to take the judges out of the proceedings until the midway point, after all five contestants had sung their first songs. That's just stupid. Without instant feedback, American Idol becomes a national karaoke bar. Besides, the task of taking, storing and reading notes, and summarizing them quickly, turned out to be much too daunting a task for Paula Abdul.

The dispatch that came from Planet Paula last night was the biggest live TV blunder since Miss Teen USA's South Carolina representative went on and on about "the Iraq." Paula, criticizing the two songs sung by Jason Castro, told him, "The two songs made me feel like you're not trying hard enough to get into the Top Four."

Problem is, at that point in the show, Castro had sung only once. Castro, the other contestants, host Ryan Seacrest -- everyone looked at her in mute, confused disbelief.

"Oh my God, I thought you sang twice!" Abdul said to Castro, when this error was pointed out to her by fellow judge Randy Jackson. "This is hard!"

Yes, and that was ridiculous. And live, so there was no escape. Judge not, lest ye be embarrassed on national television...

Speaking of being embarrassed on national television, tonight is the premiere of CW's Farmer Wants a Wife. It's the sort of show that sounds like it could be fun, but it isn't. This particular variation has been done on TV so many times, from Outback Jack to the spoiled-girls-in-heels-on-a-farm premise of the original The Simple Life, that there's nothing at all unfamiliar or entertaining here.

Yes, one of the young city women, walking across farmland in her high heels, steps in some manure. That's no surprise -- not only because we've seen it all before on other reality shows, but because, on Farmer Wants a Wife, the manure, once you tune in, is inescapable.

It's a big, showy part. A bit too showy, actually. In the world of SVU, which usually plays fairly realistically, Williams' character is more like a villain from the old Batman TV series -- thinking eight steps in advance, setting up elaborate traps and tests, always having an escape hatch nearby. There's even a scene where he gets famous enough to go on Joe Scarborough's Morning Joe, as a courtroom celebrity, with a sheep in tow. And the detectives from SVU watch him on TV.

It's nice that the detectives of an NBC series make a habit of watching an MSNBC morning talk show. It's not quite as implausible as when the terrorist-hunting experts on the Fox drama series 24 keep their TV monitors tuned to Fox News -- but still. Yet the guest spot itself, in a grand way, is show business, too. Watch for Williams to be nominated for an Emmy in the Guest Actor character later this year. Doubtlessly, it was written, and accepted, with that in mind.

When did this trend begin? Not recently. Williams himself did a similar showy guest shot in 1994, when Barry Levinson, co-executive producer of Homicide: Life on the Street, talked his old Good Morning, Vietnam star into appearing in an episode. (Williams was nominated for an Emmy then, for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, but didn't win.) And it goes back long before that.

Before those one-shot or recurring roles were given their own Emmy categories, actors could swoop in on existing series, knock a guest role out of the park, and walk away winning a Supporting Actor or Actress award -- competing against regulars who toiled for the entire year on their series and character. It may not have been fair, but it was fun. On St. Elsewhere, in its first season in 1982-83, both James Coco and Doris Roberts guest starred as homeless people in love -- and both of them won Emmys.

That same season of St. Elsewhere also introduced a recurring character and actor who didn't win an Emmy that year, but who played a very memorable role, has enjoyed a strong and multi-faceted career since, and has been a star of this blog recently: Tim Robbins. In the first episodes of St. Elsewhere, he played an angry radical bomber... very, very memorably.

And long before that, Robert Altman once told me that when he directed episodes of the 1960s TV WWII series Combat, and a script called for a new character -- a one-shot guest spot in more ways than one -- to be killed or wounded in action, Altman would hire the actor a few episodes earlier, and lace him into the stories and action just so viewers would get to know him a little. Then, Altman said, the death would be more surprising, and have more dramatic resonance.

Altman was on to something then -- and TV has been stealing from his playbook ever since.

With House returning to TV tonight, the prime-time schedule as we know it is back, with original episodes for all its big shows, for the first time since the writers' strike. The May ratings sweeps period gives us almost nothing special, figuring fresh episodes of our favorite shows is good enough. And, for the most part, that's true.

But if we're so grateful, and so aware of the value of quality entertainment series, why aren't the networks?

Case in point, since it's televised tonight and its future remains in doubt: How I Met Your Mother, shown at 8:30 p.m. ET on CBS.

This is a show that has done everything it can to earn renewal. It's presented a breakout character in Barney, the well-dressed womanizer played by Neil Patrick Harris. It's amassed lots of free publicity, and extra viewers, by casting Britney Spears in a guest role -- her one positive public activity in more than a year. And Jason Segal, who plays Marshall, has gotten extra mileage, and exposure, by starring in and writing the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

So with all that, why hasn't CBS given How I Met Your Mother a vote of confidence by renewing it for another season?

The same question could be asked of another CBS sitcom, the ill-treated The New Adventures of Old Christine -- another program that does its job wonderfully, is very funny, and showcases lots of strong comedic performances.

CBS announces its 2008-09 fall schedule May 14 at the upfronts, and we'll learn the fate of these two comedies then, if not before. But May 11, just a few days earlier, is Mother's Day. Why not give the cast and creators of How I Met Your Mother, and its fans, a timely Mother's Day present, and announce the show's renewal as a happy holiday bouquet?

--

Hours after today's blog was posted, I heard this from the folks at How I Met Your Mother:

Production begins today on a new episode, scheduled to air May 12, in which Britney Spears reprises her role of Abby, the smitten tattoo-removal receptionist. This time, she and Barney team up, for different reasons, to make Ted jealous.

If two Spears appearances in a single season don't get CBS to renew the show, then something's really wrong at the network level.

Regardless of your political leanings, or your opinion of Moyers, one thing you have to concede. Wright is talking to Moyers not because Moyers is the only TV journalist interested in interviewing him (Wright, right now, is one of the biggest journalistic "gets" around), but because Moyers will ask serious questions about Wright's faith, meanings and motives. (As they say, check your local listings.)

Moyers has done entire PBS series on faith and religion -- several of them outstanding -- so he's earned the right to challenge Wright to explain himself. But if you're measuring the intelligence of the man painted by most mainstream media outlets only in terms of fiery sound bites, one measure of that intelligence is where he went to discuss his ministry.

Some might say it's a case of Wright seeking out a "left-wing" platform to state his case. I see something else. I see Wright -- described by Obama the democratic candidate, in part, as someone "of a certain age" whose perspective is formed by volatile past experiences -- seeking out someone else with the same tenured perspective.

And maybe it's time for perspective, for experience, to play more of a part in this year's political debates.

Except for occasional primary-night appearances by Tom Brokaw, the broadcast networks have little use these days for those who helped build or maintain the reputations of their news divisions. But they're around, and active, and, in some news cycle instances, sorely missed.

Ted Koppel is laboring for cable's Discovery Channel, doing excellent work. Daniel Schorr, the only one of "Murrow's boys" still working, is cranking out pithy pieces for NPR's All Things Considered at age 90. Moyers is a PBS fixture again, and Dan Rather is toiling in the isolated but unfettered vineyards of HD Net.

The League of Women Voters may not be able to host a political debate this season -- with a woman as candidate, that may smack as much of perceived bias as the NAACP hosting one. But someone should step up, prior to the Indiana-North Carolina primaries next month, and give the most experienced journalists a chance to ask the questions.

Assemble a Mount Rushmore of veteran broadcast journalists, and see what happens. Mount Rushmore, in fact, has only four chiseled faces, but I can think of at least five for this hypothetical moderator table: Bill Moyers, Daniel Schorr, Ted Koppel, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather.

Yes, they're all aging white men, posing questions to a woman, and an African-American, who aspire to be president. Isn't that a measure of change right there? And be honest: Wouldn't such a debate be must-see TV, for all the right reasons? And couldn't you guarantee 90 minutes of political discussion without a single mention of lapel pins?

ABC's lineup returns with all-new episodes tonight, the first post-strike installments of Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy and Lost. The other broadcast networks present all-new episodes, too, continuing their post-strike rollouts of such shows as NBC's 30 Rock and CBS's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. But now that the networks have rebuilt their normal schedules, will viewers return at the same levels?

In other words: If they build it, will we come?

Hard to tell. I'm thrilled to have new episodes of Lost over which to puzzle -- but even though it hasn't been that long since the previous episode, I still have a problem remembering where things stood at the last cliffhangers. Ben's daughter was surrounded by hostile forces and her mother and boyfriend were killed (or were they?), and Sayid, on the freighter, had outed Michael as a former castaway... but I'm hazy on the rest. And it's supposed to be my job to keep up with this stuff.

Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy, back after much longer hiatuses (hiati?), have me even more confused. More to the point, they have me a little less engaged and involved. In television land, absence doesn't necessarily make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes, it merely forces the heart to look elsewhere.

ABC's Desperate Housewives, for example, was stalled by the strike just as a tornado descended on Wisteria Lane, and the show was running in full creative stride. The series returned two weeks ago, picking up just where it left off (chronologically and creatively), but not all of the viewers returned with it.

Last Sunday's episode of Desperate Housewives was the fourth most popular program of the week, behind only two installments of American Idol and one of Dancing with the Stars. So that's good news, and a victory for scripted programming, right? Not necessarily.

While that Housewives episode was ranked fourth for the week, it also ranked as the lowest-rated episode in the series' history, attracting 15.7 million viewers. That's not a season low, but a low for the show's entire four-year run. That's a statistic the networks should be looking at very closely -- because it's a clue that viewers aren't watching them as closely in this post-strike environment.

And now, as I talk to people in Hollywood, what I'm hearing is that the threatened Screen Actors Guild strike, which would take place at the end of June if it occurs, is not as unlikely as it once seemed. In this climate, talk of a second Hollywood strike in the same one-year period is pathetically short-sighted.

If TV at its best can't lure viewers back to the tube at pre-strike levels, what will a second round of TV at its worst do? Sadly, we may all have the misfortune to find out.

Last night, CNN chief national correspondent John King broke down the votes, city by city and precinct by precinct, with his fancy-schmancy political touch screen, which is fast becoming to 2008 what Tim Russert's low-tech hard-held scribble board was to the presidential race of 2000. Meanwhile, on MSNBC last night, Russert himself was looking at Hillary Clinton's 10-percentage-point win over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary as a setup for the next big contest, the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, and all but smacking his lips in anticipation.

"These next two weeks are going to be unbelievable," Russert told viewers. "They are critical... Strap yourself in, America!"

Well, Pennsylvania was supposed to be do or die, too, for the Democratic candidates -- but after they both did, neither died. And long before Pennsylvania, other contests were described, in advance, as pivotal, only to emerge as just one more link in what is turning out to be a very long chain.

On the Fox series American Idol last night, Syesha Mercado sang in the leadoff spot, which Idol pundits (yes, there are such things) have proclaimed as cursed -- yet she did very well. And though, from very early on, David Archuleta's ascension to the ultimate Idol crown has been pegged as all but inevitable -- well, early on in the political campaign, so was Hillary Clinton's claim to the Democratic nomination.

In both cases, there's no predicting what voters will do, especially as we get closer to the finals. The only difference is that, when it comes to the political primaries, we don't have Ryan Seacrest standing there and saying, "America has voted, and...," before giving us the results.

Instead, we have John King.