DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL . . . : Stretching out the fall season: a painful exercise

Well, the new television season is under way. That is, I think it is. It sort of trickled in.

The fall premieres at Fox Broadcasting started Aug. 22 with “Living Single.” Over at CBS it was “The Trouble With Larry” on Aug. 25, which ran into trouble pretty quickly (it was pulled off the air after just three episodes). ABC, on Aug. 30, dove into autumn with “Missing Persons.” And NBC started fall with “The John Larroquette Show” on Sept. 2.

Yes, the fall season trickled in, but at least the puddle’s finally here. Well, not quite. ABC’s “The Paula Poundstone Show” pulls in the rear with an Oct. 30 fall season debut.

This sort of “trickle-down tele-nomics” makes me long for a time in the not-too-distant past. A time when all the new fall shows started on the same Sunday night and ran through Saturday night.

Yes, boys and girls, there once was a time like this and it was called “The New Fall Season.”

It was a long, long time ago (maybe not that long because I’m not that old). A time before VCRs and cable. You actually had to get up out of the sofa to change the channel yourself. Unless, of course, you had a little sister you could bully into changing the channel for you. (Yes, I was one of those unfortunate little sisters.) It was a time when the wisdom of Solomon was needed to make the decision: Do I watch the premiere of “The Carol Burnett Show” or “The Big Valley”? (Agony! That was one of the tougher ones.)

That “New Fall Season” of old was not a fantasy! I know it was not, for I lived in that time. And though I am old enough to remember watching the first episode of “Gilligan’s Island” in black and white, on Saturday night, Sept. 26, 1964, I am not so old that I wonder if senility is setting in.

I know at least one of you out there must remember this old “New Fall Season” too. Like me, you remember when a program aired on Wednesday night at 8 and stayed on Wednesday night at 8!

But now ... a show “previews” Wednesday night at 8, then “premieres” Thursday night at 9, then “moves” to its regular Tuesday night slot at 10.

But why do that to us? Why confuse us so? I thought the whole idea of television was to get the audience to tune in. So why, I ask you, why?

One veteran of the TV wars put it simply: ratings. If a network can get an audience interested in a particular show before the season starts, then when that show does “premiere,” the audience will be familiar with it, will tune in and, therefore, the show will get higher ratings. And, after all, we know that the higher the ratings, the more the network can charge for advertising during that show.

So, the basis for all the change and confusion is ... money. Wow, money at the core of confusion? I guess that’s no “premiere.”