The Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which killed more than 6,000 people, even changed how we entertain ourselves.

        For now.

        We're hearing different songs on the radio. We're seeing different images on TV. Even Letterman and Leno aren't the same.

        Friday, we saw more than two dozen channels simulcast a fund-raising concert for the victims' families, unprecedented cooperation in the fiercely competitive TV world.

        What we're not seeing are promotions for new violent films, since shelved by Hollywood.

        We're witnessing a long overdue sensitivity by the entertainment industry about what we want to hear or see — instead of what will make the biggest profit for a media conglomerate.

        In this time of mourning — and uncertainty about everything from national security to job security — we're finding comfort in patriotic songs. So radio stations have dusted off Lee Greenwood's “God Bless the USA,” Ray Charles' soulful “America'' and Neil Diamond's “Coming to America.”

        An overzealous programmer at Clear Channel — the world's largest radio company with 1,200 stations, including eight here — even drew up a list of 160 songs we might find offensive. The tunes ranged from Bruce Springsteen's “I'm on Fire” to AC/DC's “Highway to Hell.”

        On WIZF-FM (100.9), we don't hear the line, “Blowin' up like the World Trade Center,” in the Notorious B.I.G.'s “Juicy.” The urban music station, not owned by Clear Channel, also stopped playing the Gap Band's “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.”

        We can't watch a newscast without seeing a U.S. flag fluttering somewhere — at rallies, prayer vigils, as the backdrop for local weather forecasts, or on cranes gingerly picking through the rubble at the former site of the World Trade Center, now known as “Ground Zero.”

        When we went to a movie last weekend, to escape the around-the-clock TV coverage of the tragedy, we watched Little League baseball. Keanu Reeves' Hardball, about a gambler forced to coach an inner-city baseball team, was No. 1 at the box office.

        Meanwhile, Hollywood studio and network executives have been scrambling to assess the collateral damage from the Sept. 11 attack.

        First on the list was an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie called Collateral Damage. We don't see promotions for the big-budget action movie about a man whose wife and child were killed in a skyscraper bombing. The Oct. 5 release has been indefinitely postponed.

        We also didn't see Big Trouble in theaters this weekend, as originally planned. A comedy about a suitcase bomb on a plane just didn't seem funny, even with gifted comedians Tim Allen and Janeane Garofalo.

        Gone, too, were movie trailers for Spider-Man showing the superhero spinning a web between the twin World Trade Center towers to foil a bank robbery.
       On Fox last Sunday, we didn't see a rerun of Independence Day, the 1996 thriller in which the White House was obliterated by an alien spaceship.

        No, we wouldn't want to see that now.

        We haven't seen commercials for 24, Fox's critically acclaimed Keifer Sutherland drama about a plot to kill a presidential candidate. The network hasn't announced what it will do about the Nov. 6 premiere in which a terrorist blows up a passenger jet over the Mohave Desert. (Could we be healed by then? Or already again desensitized to TV violence?)

        On CBS Thursday, we won't see the pilot episode of The Agency, the CIA drama from Wolfgang Petersen(The Perfect Storm, Das Boot). The pilot, screened for TV critics in July, made reference to terrorist Osama bin Laden in a plot about terrorist planning to bomb a London department store.

        A different episode of The Agency will air Thursday (10 p.m., Channels 12, 7) as the fall TV season finally arrives a week late because of the breaking news. We really didn't mind, did we? And how many of us won't care about Emeril Lagasse's silly sitcom, or CBS' new Survivor, after watching heroic firefighters, police and construction workers for two weeks?
       

Examining series

        While we watched the rescue efforts, TV programmers have been scrutinizing every frame of TV and movies.

        Law & Order: Special Victims Unit snipped scenes of the World Trade Center from its opening shots. Friends cut scenes of Monica and Chandler (Courteney Cox Arquette, Matthew Perry) arriving at the airport three hours before their honeymoon flight.

        Three weeks ago that was funny. Not now.

        Late-night TV has changed, too. We don't hear any cracks about President George W. Bush or Congress from David Letterman or Jay Leno.

        “In a world where people fly airplanes into buildings for the sole purpose of killing innocent people,” Mr. Leno said Tuesday, resuming The Tonight Show, “a job like this seems incredibly irrelevant.”

        We were shocked to see a somber, nervous Mr. Letterman when his Late Show returned Monday. The Indianapolis native, who has worked in Manhattan for 20 years, fidgeted with pencils as he struggled to make sense of the attack, saying some people attributed it to religious fervor.

        “If you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense?” he asked.

        On Mr. Letterman's show, we saw Dan Rather choke up and cry. Twice.

        On Mr. Leno's show, he promised that “in the coming weeks and months we are not going to be inappropriate, we are not going to be insensitive.”

        The show must go on.

        “We're not trying to make anybody forget,” Mr. Leno said. “We're just trying to take their mind off it for a minute.”

        The entertainment industry is trying to be sensitive to our needs. However, the big question is: What do we really want?

        Do we want kinder, gentler movies, lyrics and TV shows? Could this be the sea change awaited by those repelled by the oversaturation of media violence?

        Or is this just one of our passing fads that will vanish faster than the Macarena or mood rings?

        It's up to us, how long Hollywood's nonviolence campaign lasts.

        How soon will we put away the flags, and put on Independence Day ?

        Everything has changed. But for how long?
       
       Contact John Kiesewetter by phone: 768-8519; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: jkiesewetter@enquirer.com.

How long will kinder, gentler entertainment last?
Prime time of their lives
Cooking contestant a real pro
CCM alum Myers back onstage with 'Gypsy'
Mason's 'demented Martha'
WWII vet has an army of military artifacts
DAUGHERTY: Everyday
Fans can glimpse 'Ring' Monday
Pianist even busier playing with left hand only
Theaters wrestle with effects of crisis
Networks revamp premiere schedules
Where you can always go - downtown for weekend lunch
White wines of Spain diverse, flavorful
Dog guides blind man down 78 floors
Get to it