Top 5 Shows That Suck and Should Die Horribly 1) Frasier: Once witty, now weak. Die. 2) Ricki Lake: Better when fat, wannabe Oprah on a bad day. 3) Grownups: Urkel! You ain't foolin' nobody! Go date Todd Bridges! 4) Talk To Me: Kyra Sedgewick gets a show for having Travolta come on her. 5) Dharma and Greg: Again, the joke is over. Go home. Top 5 Great Shows that TV Killed Stupidly 1) Cupid: Brilliant, original, sensitive. Cancelled. 2) Getting Personal: Wild, zany, funny. Cancelled 3) Profit: Daring, ruthless, insighful. Cancelled. 4) Action: Satirical, smart, packed with talent. Cancelled. 5) Sports Night: Fast-paced, well written, well acted. Is this still on?

The curd-lapping masses stare dumbly into the cathode-ray affection of electric capitalism, night after night, in a disgusting display of conditioned loyalty.

At one time, during television's silver age, the fans could expect crisp, all-new television shows, starting in August, clear through to June with only brief interruptions for the holidays. In this glorious future we have crafted with our hands, the giants of the field -- Cosby, Duchovny, Grammer -- cough up half the work they used to for scores more money.

How did such a sad state of affairs come to exist? Why is it that new network programming only comes in November, February, and May, when Massa Nielsen is paying the most attention? Did it start with The X-Files, when Gillian Anderson wanted to raise the ante and make Mulder money? Was it the great Friends-out, when each of the impossibly boring sextet got in excess of a quarter mil each per episode?

No -- it all began when TV started supplanting attention and babysitters as the first place senseless, sugar-addled kids turn for comfort. It began when advertisers realized how much of their marked-up, foreign made, high profit margin crap they could brainwash you into buying, making them willing to pay truckloads of dirty cash to Ross, Phoebe, and the rest of their sextet a quarter mil each without beginning to dig into the show's profit or production costs.

TV shows (all the way back to everybody's cross-dressing, cigar-smoking Semite Uncle Miltie) have been ways to keep audiences looking the right way so they'd see corporate logos and consumer products.

The networks know a good commercial will keep the people coming back, despite weeks of microwaved, leftover reruns sloughing their way to syndicated immortality. Why bother making a full season of shows when five month's worth will do? The Microsofts and Volkswagens of the world will shell up the dough for the time spot, regardless of how many times the episode has stared back at the dewy-eyed ignorance of John & Jane Q. Public. What's that? Frasier and Scully guest starring on Ally McBeal, directed by Cindy Crawford? Cancel that date, girl, you know I can't program the VCR!

It's the first week of May, and the rheumy, pus-dripping eyes of Nielsen are once again straining to focus on the unusually aroused beast that is Amerikkkan viewing habits. It's pointless to tell you to turn that radioactive death box off, since if you're reading this, chances are you're one of the widely-ignored-but-often-imitated "minorities" that Nielsen ignores anyway.

So watch your Simpsons and your WWF Smackdown, packed tightly in the knowledge that you helped create this all by paying your cable bill and being normal. Rest easy in the knowledge that the "people who matter" consider you an ignorant, drunken, boy-f*cking consumer drone, and that your life is worth less than a dried spot of come in a New York alley.

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