You don't hear me say this often, but when I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

Forget what I wrote last week about ABC's Home Alone 4 and Charles in Charge being the worst shows to air during November sweeps.

Ignore what I said about Dick Clark's Bloopers special with M*A*S*H has-been Jamie Farr.

I've been out-Foxed.

Want to hear about truly awful television? Read about the sleazy, cheap "reality" TV shows Fox has planned for sweeps.

Fox's tawdry TV lineup alone fills a Top 10 List of Sweeps Shows To Avoid.

Short-lived vow

The network which brought you Who Wants to Marry A Millionaire?, When Good Pets Go Bad, Celebrity Boxing and Busted on the Job is at it again - despite a vow by Fox executive Sandy Grushow to stop airing "this crap," to use his precise words.

Twice in the last three years Mr. Grushow has told TV critics that filling weak nights with exploitative specials, simply to pump up the ratings that set advertising rates, is the wrong way to run a network.

"In the long run, networks that use unscripted programming to mask their inability to create new scripted hits, they're going to fail. We know. It happened to Fox," said Mr. Grushow, Fox Entertainment chairman, in July 2001.

But he's doing it again this month to replace the canceled Girls Club, and at 8-10 p.m. Thursday, which Fox couldn't fill with regular series this fall.

So you'll see police being attacked by gun fire, or risking their lives to capture fleeing criminal suspects. That's entertainment to Fox, and unfortunately, the millions who watch this trash. (They wouldn't put this on TV if nobody watched; ask the Girls Club stars.)

Fox started the sleazy parade on Cops Saturday - with a "Shots Fired Special Edition" at 8 p.m., followed by a "Naked Cops Special Edition" where "officers deal with alleged criminals in various states of undress, including motorists, intruders, sunbathers and Mardi Gras partiers."

Hall of Shame

Sorry you missed them. But here's the rest of the Top 10 from Fox's TV Hall of Shame:

On a "Too Hot Special Edition" of Cops (8:30 p.m. Saturday, Channels 19, 45), Fox digs out archival footage of "a public skinny-dipper, and a colorful transvestite who displays his yo-yo skills to an officer."

The World's Most Dangerous Police Chases, a Fox ratings stunt for years, airs Thursday

(9 p.m.).

A variation on that theme, the World's Fastest Police Chases, airs Nov. 14 (9 p.m.).

A "Bad Girls Special Edition" of Cops (8:30 p.m., Nov. 23) features a prostitution sting by Indianapolis Police.

America's Most Wanted: America Fights Back "continues its battle for justice for crime victims everywhere" - or so Fox claims - by profiling accused bombers Saturday (9-10 p.m.).

On Nov. 23, America's Most Wanted battles for justice when it "travels to Las Vegas to catch `bad girls' . . . (and) profile some of the nation's worst female felons."

Funniest Animal Outtakes (9 p.m., Nov. 19) will include "animal bloopers from home videos, newscasts and commercials."

It could be worse. Fox could repeat its infamous When Animals Attack shows.

On Nov. 21, Fox repeats Stupid Behavior Caught on Tape (9 p.m.).

Speaking of stupid behavior caught on tape, let's go back to Mr. Grushow's press conference with TV critics in January 2000, when he promised not to air such "garbage" (his word).

No longer would Fox try "to improve our ratings overnight by saturating our schedule with blood-and-guts reality specials and series," Mr. Grushow said.

At the time, he promised never to air a When Celebrities Attack special in production, or film the crash of an empty passenger jet in the Mojave Desert for a sweeps special. To his credit, Fox hasn't done those shows.

It's too bad that the network which broadcasts 24, Boston Public, Malcolm in the Middle and Bernie Mac continues polluting the airwaves with such junk. A few years ago, NBC executives called the addictive big ratings for cheap, sensational reality specials like crack cocaine to a network.

"We've got to get away from this stuff, because, as powerful as it's been in the last couple of years in terms of driving our ratings (up), we believe it really is hurting (us)," Mr. Grushow said in 2000.

"I'd personally rather fail with quality than succeed with garbage," he declared.

But when David E. Kelley's Girls Club flops spectacularly, and Mr. Grushow can't find anything decent to air on Thursday against Friends and Survivor, Fox goes back to the same old sleazy tricks.

Now it's Mr. Grushow's turn to say he didn't mean what he said about eliminating TV's trash.

E-mail jkiesewetter@enquirer.com