Next Summer We’ll Repeat This Column

What follows are all-new sentences in all-new paragraphs in an all-new column containing all-new information exclusive to lucky you unless it’s already been written by others and appeared in other papers.

Curious how things on TV come together. “60 Minutes” delivered a rip-roaring funny piece from a smirking Morley Safer Sunday on the obscure fringes of modern art, whose basis for existing nearly always eludes the naked eye. You know, grandiosely presented art that is actually a lot of bunk.

Somehow, it reminded me of the exotic, peculiarly hollow universe of television promos.

The more abstruse and pretentious the printed analyses accompanying these artworks displayed on “60 Minutes,” it seemed, the more flimsy and fraudulent the art. Although a bit facile, the segment’s message had merit: If you’re too dumb to get it, chances are there’s nothing to get.

For example, a massive yellow canvas with nothing visible--no brush strokes, utterly nothing--except yellow. Or museum workers setting up an exhibit, but getting confused by the absentee artist’s printed instructions when trying to mount his two lightbulbs upon his two bricks. Or an exhibit consisting of a mound of dust on the floor looking remarkably like, well, dust.

So the message is that TV promos are art? No, no, no. Only rarely--the cream of the elite these days being ESPN’s witty promotional ads for “Sports Center” that creatively mingle the performance skills of its own anchors with actual athletes.

In most cases, though, the pile-of-dust analogy works better, one case being that the TV season is still young enough to be attached to its umbilical cord and yet networks are already tagging prime-time shows “all-new.” NBC did that a lot last season, but only late last season.

Yet ABC on Monday advertised an “all-new” episode of “Hiller and Diller” and CBS an “all-new” episode of “Brooklyn South,” both of them series in only their third week of life. The bill of goods they’re hoping to sell, in effect, is that viewers should be grateful for not being subjected to reruns.

That’s amazing. But farce shot through the roof when, only seconds after the premiere of its new “Dellaventura,” CBS boasted: “Next week, an all-new episode of ‘Dellaventura.’ ” A reader, F.D. McMillan of Los Angeles, could hardly believe it, writing:

“Now, think about this for a second. At the time this was said, the world had seen exactly one episode of this show. If the next episode was not ‘all-new,’ it would obviously mean that what we (suckers) would be seeing is a repeat of the only episode ever aired!”

McMillan will be pleased to learn that Tuesday’s “Dellaventura” was also “all-new” on CBS, as was Tuesday’s “JAG.” And tonight’s “Chicago Hope”? Yup, lucky fans, “all-new.” And so on and so on.

Yes, it’s not only a new season but also, as a bonus, one with new shows.

And old acts.

It was Thursday, and Dan Rather was anchoring another edition of “The CBS Evening News,” which included footage promoting that night’s “48 Hours,” the weekly prime-time series that he hosts. Rather to his newscast viewers: “This is a real good show, folks.”

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It was at once a tiny, fleeting thing and significant--symbolizing just how far TV news ethics have slid when it comes to chauvinism within a newscast. Rather would not have anointed ABC’s “20/20” or NBC’s “ER,” each a “48 Hours” competitor, “a real good show, folks.” He wouldn’t have called Bill Clinton “a real good president, folks” or Newt Gingrich “a real good speaker, folks.”

Giving his own show a glowing review in his newscast is not real good anchoring, folks.

At least as odious is the tendency of newscasts, nearly across the board, to fill portions of their news holes with puffy coverage of their own station’s or network’s entertainment shows--in effect, tainting their overall credibility. Now too commonplace to be called a trend, the practice has been institutionalized in most areas of TV news. And the more it happens, the more viewers become desensitized to it.

So there were Lisa McRee and Charles Gibson of ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tuesday with their colleagues, Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson, stars of ABC’s new “Dharma & Greg.” Later, in a devastatingly candid interview, McRee got them to admit they enjoyed doing their sitcom, which Gibson called “the newest television series making waves.”

Making a bigger splash on “The KTLA Morning News” Monday was its own WB network series “7th Heaven,” where entertainment reporter Sam Rubin was “live . . . all morning.” That included lying in bed (an act of striking symbolism) on the set with co-star Catherine Hicks and the show’s furry dog at one point, while introducing a clip of an episode that, Rubin dutifully noted, “airs on WB at 8 tonight.”

“Oh, cool,” said Hicks.

Then it was back to the news set where anchors Carlos Amezcua and Barbara Beck were conducting a breaking interview with the star of a syndicated series premiering Saturday.

“Right here on Channel 5,” Beck chirped.

As KTLA was doing that, meanwhile, CBS had “This Morning” co-anchor Mark McEwen fawning over Bill Cosby in advance of that night’s “Cosby” episode on CBS. McEwen’s tag: “ ‘Cosby’ is doing well--Monday nights.” Later he’d be seen asking the tough questions with stars of a new “Dallas” movie coming to CBS.

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Although it was good, old-fashioned, crass promotion instead of cross-promotion, striking oil in Los Angeles was KCBS-TV Channel 2 when managing recently to include a shot of one of its logo-bearing news vans behind a reporter doing a live stand-up in the field. Actually, this was a taste upgrade. It was Channel 2, remember, that did an interview of a murdered boy’s parents last April while they were wearing Channel 2 T-shirts, although KCBS executives later denied that promotion was the intent.

And there was Channel 2 again Monday and Tuesday, heavily promoting Tritia Toyota’s multipart interview of embattled Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Hernandez, whom the station said was “speaking candidly and exclusively right here on CBS News.” That ignored a front-page Monday interview of Hernandez in the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion and another of him shown Monday on Spanish-language KMEX-TV Channel 34.

“Look forward to hearing you,” anchor Ann Martin told Toyota on the news set Monday, then promising, “We’ll be here tomorrow.” They don’t pay her the bucks for nothing.

As the dust settles.