Forget reality and keep dreaming

Starting Monday, the broadcast television networks will announce their new fall season lineups.

Can’t you just feel the excitement? Me, I’m all tingly.

Office pools are everywhere, Chris Berman has nicknames for every new show, and … wait, never mind, that was the NFL draft.

The truth is, there isn’t much buzz over the 2008-09 season, at least not yet, in part because there’s not much buzz about network television.

That’s one big reason the networks can’t get this muddled, strikus-interruptus 2007-08 season in their rearview mirrors fast enough. NBC is so keen to move on, it announced its new lineup a month ago.

The nets are all hurting in ratings. So far in the May “sweeps,” total viewership is down 10 percent to 20 percent, depending on the network.

And for viewers ages 18-49 – the people advertisers want most – the numbers are down even more: 15 percent to 25 percent.

The writers’ strike is certainly one major reason for the drop. The 100-day halt to TV production threw lots of series into repeats or pushed them off the air entirely, effectively breaking the connection viewers had with their shows.

Television is a habit. Once viewers have moved away from shows – particularly the soapy, serialized ones – it’s hard to remember why you cared so much.

It didn’t help that the networks mostly fell back on reality shows, which was all they could produce during the strike. But those come with a cost: They wear thin quickly.

For example, NBC scored big – for a couple weeks – when it brought back “American Gladiators.” Then the ratings dropped pretty much every time it aired.

Reality shows also blur the line between the supposedly higher-caliber major broadcasters like CBS or NBC and the cable networks. They encourage viewers to wander the dial – either because they’re searching for more reality, or because they hate reality and are looking for something else.

Still, ratings weren’t so great before the strike, and lots of the new shows that debuted last fall were doing only OK.

That’s why some of the better rookie shows, like ABC’s “Pushing Daisies” and NBC’s “Chuck” and “Life,” got put in limbo this spring. Their networks didn’t want to bring the young, vulnerable series back for short runs, then have them disappear again over the summer.

So those shows, among others, will get re-launched in September in the hope that this time they’ll get better ratings.

All in all, it doesn’t seem like these new lineups will suddenly rekindle the magic.

But that’s the thing about TV. No one saw “Lost” or “Heroes” coming until the pilots showed up. No one in the industry saw the hit potential for “CSI” until after it had aired.

So I’m staying optimistic, because I want to. I like thinking that the next great hit is coming, that the next blast of originality or coolness or big-time funny is about to climb up on the stage.

Of course, I also think this could be the year, come late October, that we are finally going to see the rise of the Great Pumpkin.