AN EARLY WORD TO THE NETWORKS: WAIT UNTIL THANKSGIVING TO KILL THE TURKEYS

Finding what to watch on TV is like playing croquet with Alice in Wonderland, where the wickets get up and move or even disappear before you can take aim.

As the fall season draws ever nearer, my fondest wish is--no--not better shows than last season’s (maybe that would be Wish No. 2). Instead, my principal plea to the networks’ hyperactive programmers is this: patience. Whatever you’ve come up with for our prime-time delectation, leave it be, through, say, November. Until then, give us new episodes of each series each week at the same time. Establish a routine. So that we can, too.

That way, viewers will give your lineup the consideration it deserves. Then when Thanksgiving gets here, you’ll know what to do: have a turkey shoot.

Sure, it sounds naive, but this year, couldn’t the networks let the dust settle so we can see what’s what? Because, going into the 1995-96 season, they’ve really gone and stirred things up.

“This fall, 50% of the schedule is either new programs or returning programs in a new time period,” media analyst Steve Sternberg noted last month. Soon afterward, the just-unveiled schedule he referred to fell prey to its first round of revisions.

This was at the hands of CBS, which announced that its new high school drama “Matt Waters,” starring Montel Williams, wouldn’t be in the starting lineup after all.

Instead, “New York News,” a drama starring Mary Tyler Moore and Madeline Kahn that had barely missed out originally, was given a reprieve. With “News” occupying its Thursday 9 p.m., “John Grisham’s The Client” was shifted to what had been “Matt’s” berth, Tuesdays at 8 p.m.

Since the beginning, every network has played to win, of course. But the game hasn’t always been musical chairs.

Grant Tinker, president of NBC in the early 1980s, remembers when the fall schedules were engraved in stone in February--not in May with the ink still wet and subject to continuing revisions. As a promotion, NBC would distribute a beach towel that displayed, in presumably indelible ink, its fall lineup.

“But one year we had to change one series for some production reason, Thursday at 7:30,” Tinker recalls. “Everybody was panicked because the towel was gone. I said, ‘Let’s send out a face cloth with the new show on it.’ ”

Now, the networks should send out a blackboard and eraser.

When the season actually arrives, each network’s schedule is even more of a moving target. The reason is simple: an ever-more-competitive environment, with more cable and broadcast rivals all the time.

Every fraction of a ratings point counts--but too often in the battle for numbers, viewers’ interests are overlooked.

It’s gotten so bad that when CBS’ “Due South” surfaced last month for three last-ditch Friday airings after weeks in exile from its Thursday slot, its producers introduced what they called “the world’s first television wake-up call”: Viewers who asked for it were phoned with a reminder to watch each episode right before it came on.

There must be a better way.

Maybe NBC’s “Sisters” offers a clue. Although stuck off in the 10 p.m. Saturday backwater, when few people are watching anything at all, this unremarkable drama has quietly proved itself a ratings-getter.

Why? Well, according to one theory, simply because the show is there. Reliably. Week after week. For its three years on the air.

In other words, viewers watch “Sisters” not necessarily because they like it and make a point to tune in. Instead, a certain number of the people watching TV on a Saturday night turn to NBC at 10 p.m. because they know--with no research or prompting--what they’ll find when they get there.

Sweet dependability is what they’ll find.