Are you ready to play TV's longest-running survivor game?

        Thirty-three new series, plus 10 reality/game shows, will be beamed into your home soon — networks postponed some premieres after Tuesday's terrorist attacks — and your response will help determine who stays in the weekly Nielsen competition.

        You will decide if Jason Alexander's TV comeback, as ABC's Bob Patterson, lasts longer than Seinfeld co-star Michael Richards' did last year (two months).

Jason Alexander as Bob Patterson

        You can make Star Trek's new Enterprise soar, and chef Emeril Lagasse's Emeril sitcom toast. (You probably will.)

        Millions of viewers like you probably will provide immunity to Richard Dreyfus (The Education of Max Bickford), Keifer Sutherland (24), Dana Delany (Pasadena), John Stamos (Thieves), Jennifer Garner (Alias), Patrick Warburton (The Tick) and newcomers Zach Braff (Scrubs) and Jay Baruchel (Undeclared).

        But Ellen DeGeneres (The Ellen Show), Daniel Stern (Danny) and Lou Diamond Phillips (Wolf Lake) — all on CBS — won't be so lucky. They could be eliminated before the 33rd new series, Fox's Bernie Mac Show, debuts Nov. 7.

        One-third (10) of the 30 new shows survived last year, an abnormally high success rate in an industry where failure is the norm.

        This year's season looks even stronger — and so does the competition in the first fall filled with reality shows.

The cast of Fox's Bernie Mac Show,

        Survivor, TV's top show last season, makes its first appearance in the fall lineup. So does The Mole 2, Temptation Island 2, Popstars 2, Weakest Link, The Amazing Race, Ripley's Believe It or Not and Elimidate Deluxe.

        They join Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Cops, America's Most Wanted and Whose Line Is It Anyway? in a season with the most reality/game shows since the late 1950s.

        Welcome to TV's new reality.

        “Make no mistake, unscripted programming is a force that's here to stay,” says Les Moonves, the CBS president and CEO who put on Survivor last year. “Like news magazines, reality has earned a place as part of a balanced schedule, but scripted programming will still comprise the lion's share of CBS' lineup.”

        CBS has Survivor: Africa (Oct. 11) and The Amazing Race, the strongest two competitors in the reality arena. But CBS' scripted series are the weakest of the broadcasters, except for Mr. Dreyfuss' Max Bickford. (Imagine his Mr. Holland's Opus character teaching college history.)

        There's not a West Wing among the new dramas, but you could find several sleepers like last year's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Overall, the quality of drama is higher than usual, as the networks experiment with new and old forms:

        • Fox's 24 dramatizes in real time a CIA anti-terrorist expert (Keifer Sutherland) trying to thwart an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate (Dennis Haysbert, Now & Again). Each show will represent an hour in one 24-hour day, starting at midnight the day of the California primary.

        • ABC's CIA drama, Alias, goes the opposite direction — a fantasy double life of a college student (Jennifer Garner) working as an international spy. (CBS has the third CIA show, The Agency, a drab, by-the-numbers drama compared to these two.)

        • ABC has another butt-kicking female on Thieves. Australian soap star Melissa Georgeand John Stamos (Full House) form an alliance to retrieve stolen U.S. property for the FBI in a show that will remind some of ABC's old Moonlighting, It Takes A Thief or Hart to Hart.

        • Fox's Pasadena re-invents the prime-time soap opera by combining it with a murder mystery. Viewers are introduced to the wealthy Southern California newspaper family (starring Ms. Delany from China Beach) through the eyes of her teen-age daughter (unknown Alison Lohman).

        • WB's Smallville adds another chapter to Superman mythology with a special-effects-laden show about teen-ager Clark Kent (newcomer Tom Welling) and high school pals Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) and Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). Young Clark can't fly. He doesn't even wear tights.
       

Comedies

        None of the 15 comedies is another Friends, Frasier or Everybody Loves Raymond. But several definitely are funnier than Nikki and Yes, Dear, which survived for a second season. (Why weren't they voted off the island?)

Judy Reyes and Zach Braff in Scrubs

        • NBC's Scrubs, about a bumbling young doctor (Mr. Braff), will keep you in stitches — if you're not turned off by the sexual innuendo.

        • Fox's The Tick arguably is the fall's funniest show — as it was last year. Fearing a writers' strike in May, Fox shelved the tapes of this live-action sitcom about the big blue insect (Patrick Warburton, “Puddy” from Seinfeld) and crimefighting pals. You'll love prime-time's first Hispanic superhero, Bat Manuel (Nestor Carbonell). But you'll have to wait until Nov. 1 to see the premiere.

        Fox also has two other strong comedy competitors: the Bernie Mac Show, a Bill Cosby-style family comedy about one of the “Kings of Comedy” becoming surrogate father to his sister's three children, and Undeclared, set in a college freshmen dorm where the parties may make Temptation Island look like a day-care center.
       

Match-ups

        Watching these new shows — or some of your returning favorites — might first require a family Tribal Council. (Or purchasing additional TVs.)

        New time periods for NYPD Blue and Dharma & Greg, and a new network for Buffy the Vampire Slayer — plus all the reality shows —make this the most competitive fall in years.

        Even PBS viewers aren't immune from the musical chairs. A radical re-alignment in October moves Masterpiece Theatre to Monday, Frontline to Thursday, and American Masters and The American Experience to Sunday.

        “A new schedule may help us attract new viewers, and also increase program flow,” says Pat Mitchell, PBS president and CEO. “We've grouped our programs around subjects which we hope will make it more viewer-friendly.”

        Sunday will be history and biography night. Monday will be for drama; Tuesday for science shows; Wednesday for performances; Thursday for Antiques Roadshow UK and Frontline; and Friday for the new Life 360, an Omnibus-style mix of documentaries, essays, music and drama.

        On commercial networks, viewers will find survival battles almost every night of the week:

        • Sunday: ABC's Alias, Fox's The X-Files, NBC's new Law & Order: Criminal Intent and the CBS movie at 9 p.m.

        • Tuesday: Buffy The Vampire Slayer (on UPN), WB's Gilmore Girls and ABC's Dharma & Greg at 8 p.m.; ABC's Bob Patterson, Fox's 24, NBC's Frasier andWB's Smallville at 9 p.m.

        • Wednesday: Emmy-winning police dramas NYPD Blue and Law & Order at 10 p.m.

        • Monday: At 8 p.m. is the fall's big celebrity deathmatch: Regis Philbin's Who Wants to be a Millionaire vs. Anne Robinson's Weakest Link.

        Who is the weakest link? You decide.
       Contact John Kiesewetter by phone: 768-8519; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: jkiesewetter@enquirer.com.

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