First, the obvious: Please, watch all the new shows on ABC...KMBC Channel 9. They are all absolutely the best TV has to offer. Okay, now that that's out of the way, let me tell you what I really know about any of the new programs: . Frankly, I have not watched one new show this season. Not one. Part of the reason why has to do with getting up at two in the morning, which makes my personal prime-time viewing fall somewhere in the noon neighborhood. Also, I just don't know if I can make a commitment to another TV show right now. I still have deep feelings for the oldies.

It wasn't always this way. I used to wait with great anticipation for the big thick fall preview issue of the TV Guide. If I had studied my science books as carefully as that little tome, you'd be addressing Dr. Joel Nichols right now. As it is, after watching lots of Medical Center, I do think I could successfully perform an appendectomy. Any takers? No? Okay, your loss as I was offering a free nose-hair clipping at no extra charge this month, not to mention green stamps and the first in my series of Dogs on Water Skis commemorative glasses. Anyway, I would sit down with that steroid-added magazine, which made the regular issues look like pathetic weaklings, and carefully plot out how I was going to see every single new show. It was easier back then with only three networks and no cable. You'd get pretty excited to see a movie that had come out a half dozen years earlier finally coming to the small screen. Instant gratification was a much slower process back then. I would take a magic marker or crayon and plan my tube attack. I probably saw the first episode of more series than was good for me. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that this fall Guide mania stuck with me into adulthood. Then, a couple of things happened...neither being me becoming more mature. First, the official start of the new season became much less defined. Not every show premiered the same week and many didn't make it past a month on the air. So, that created a new season about half way through the first new season. I could sort of tolerate that but, then, TV Guide went and changed its format! It was no longer the little book-like thing that you could page through and pretend it was real literature. No! Now, it looks just like any other magazine and, by necessity, they don't have most listings and they seem to deal with a lot of celebrity news in which I just don't have a great interest.

For awhile, here at KMBC, it was part of my job to be interested in the new season. I would get VHS tapes filled with the new shows which my wife, kids and I would watch. Then, ABC would fly me and about 19 other local TV types out to Hollywood to talk to the stars of the upcoming shows. After the weekend of chatter, I'd come back to Channel 9 and put together previews of the new shows to air on the news.

My wife had a better eye for the shows that had "HIT" potential. She knew, for example, that NYPD Blue would be a big show. I tended to be off the mark. For example, I had high hopes for a show called The Marshal starring Jeff Fahey. What? Who? We watched a show about a genie and the actress who once played Marcia Brady. We watched a show with actor William Devane about a child tennis star called Phenom. It wasn't. We watched a cop show starring Jim Belushi and another with Eric Roberts...or was that the same one? I don't remember. We watched a show that paired Betty White and Marie Osmond and another with George Foreman. Or was that Betty White and George Foreman? We watched Tony Danza in a lot of different programs. Of course, most of the shows would sink like stones by January and, sometimes, during the interviews you could tell the stars knew they were riding a turkey.

The interviews for these shows were set up like a giant Lazy Susan. Except, instead of spinning from salad dressing to celery, you'd spin from celebrity to celebrity to not-quite-a-celebrity. The ABC folks would set up five stations around the pool area with a couple of chairs and cameras at each spot. You'd get your schedule in the morning and proceed to the right area. Each of us got about five minutes to ask questions before being hustled out of the way. It was interesting meeting some of the other local TV people. A couple of brothers from an Oklahoma station always made sure the interview was about them. In fact, on more than one occasion they'd interview each other while the series star just looked on. There was a serious news anchor from DC who had gotten sent on the junket by accident and he had no idea who he was talking to at any given moment. Also, when he tried to get the stars of Lois and Clark to discuss deficit spending, the interview really went down hill. My strategy was to try and make small talk before the interview started by showing off a photo of my kids. I mean, if the star knew I was the father of such adorable little moppets, he or she would certainly be kind and loosen up, right? It really did work.

For example, the picture got Michael J. Fox to talk a little about his family and the fact that he has a son named Sam, the same age as my daughter named Samantha. I used the picture to remind Ellen Degeneres that once, many years before in a satellite interview, she had promised to marry my oldest son who thought she was so funny. Well, that's not going to happen!

Most of the stars were great. Pleasant and friendly. They knew they were there to sell their shows and selves and they probably got pretty tired of all the similar questions, but, for the most part, they were terrific. However, not too many years ago, ABC decided the whole "Let's fly out a bunch of yahoos...put them up in a swanky hotel and buy all their food...plus give them gifts like an ABC bathrobe and slippers" idea was not really cost-effective. It was at that point that I really lost touch with prime-time.

So, over the last few years, when my family mentioned Lost, I figured they were just talking about me. Or, Desperate Housewives: just commenting on my wife's lamentatious life. Now, this new season,when they say Dirty. Sexy. Money. I'm pretty sure it has very little to do with me.