Big networks take tried-and-true approach while medium undergoes radical changes

As we gaze at the new network TV season, we're looking across a great divide one with the tech-minded, cable-watching and Internet-savvy on one side, staring at the people who still mark their viewing calendars based on what the broadcast networks do.

For the latter crowd, the next couple of weeks are a grand time: the period when network favorites and new shows begin providing new episodes and possibly answering old questions.

For the former, though, this is a blip. That crowd sees the arrival of new network shows as simply a seamless transition from a summer loaded with other new shows, with The Closer, Saving Grace, Mad Men, Rescue Me, Damages and the like. In the coming week, USA Network alone will air summer-season finales of Monk and Psych (both on Friday), The 4400 and The Dead Zone (both on Sept. 23) and Burn Notice (Thursday).

The curious will already have caught the pilots for new shows such as NBC's Bionic Woman and Chuck via a Time Warner on-demand channel, or skipped Fox's broadcast of the Nashville premiere last Friday because they already watched it on Fox's Web site. Or they're so busy making their own videos for YouTube, they don't have time to watch regular TV.

There's a radical redefinition of television going on, but it's one whose participants have to coexist with the folks who just want to know when CSI and Grey's Anatomy are back. (Sept. 27 for both, by the way.)

And even as companies consider new ways to deliver programs, they still have to use that system for shows that people will want to watch.

Which brings us to the new lineups. And a few trends. Television still looks to old sources for new ideas. The coming season includes ABC's Cavemen, a comedy inspired by the characters in a Geico commercial. NBC's Bionic Woman, a modernization of the old Lindsay Wagner series. CBS' Viva Laughlin, which takes the British series Viva Blackpool and relocates it in Nevada.

Such ideas hold possibilities. Like the commercials, Cavemen has edgy fun with the idea of Cro-Magnons as a much-stereotyped minority. (In the show's pilot, which is being retooled, a TV newscast has modern anchors and a caveman as the weather forecaster.) Viva Blackpool used pop songs, sung along to by the actors, to make points about the characters; Viva Laughlin uses the same device, though not as well, although the pilot made interesting spectacle of Hugh Jackman doing Sympathy for the Devil.

But probably the most anticipated form of creative reuse is an old-fashioned spinoff: ABC's Private Practice, with Grey's Anatomy's Addison (Kate Walsh) leaving Seattle for a new job and new co-workers in California. It's more deliberately humorous than Grey's, but I miss the tough, original Addison, now retooled into a giddy Mary Richards wannabe. The success of Heroes last season has prompted NBC to make an all-fantasy block of shows on Monday nights, beginning with Chuck, in which a loser becomes very important after tons of secret government data are downloaded into his brain, and ending with Journeyman, in which a journalist is abruptly sent back in time to right wrongs once he figures out what the wrong is and possibly deal with a long-ago loss of his own. (Heroes is in between.)

But that's not the end of fantasy. NBC is also delving into the field with Bionic Woman.

ABC has Pushing Daisies, an arch comedy-drama with a young man who has the power to bring the dead back to life. But the resurrections have a price that is not always easy to pay. And the very stylish look and tone of the show may not appeal to all viewers. (The series pilot prompted two critics to almost simultaneously use the word twee.)

CBS, meanwhile, will present Moonlight (a private investigator who is also a vampire), while The CW has Reaper, my favorite new show of the season.

On Reaper, Bret Harrison (The Loop) plays Sam, a man who on his 21st birthday learns that his parents have sold his soul to the Devil (Akron's Ray Wise). The Devil now owns Sam, and puts him to work collecting souls who have escaped from Hell. Very funny in the Ghostbusters tradition, and Wise has a grand time. Consider: ABC's Big Shots (male friends bond, especially over their issues with women), CBS' Big Bang Theory (nerdy guys try to impress hottie), ABC's Carpoolers (including a divorced guy, a henpecked guy and a guy who goes insecure when he thinks his wife is making more money than he is).

Then throw in the strong-women-together shows Cashmere Mafia from ABC and the similarly themed Lipstick Jungle (midseason on NBC), as well as Private Practice, where the women seem to call more shots than the men, and you have a good bit of battling of the sexes going on. The strange thing about this is that networks rightly believe women will enjoy seeing powerful females, but ABC thinks women will also like to watch unhappy, and often unadmirable, men. If you've been longing for a prime-time soap, CBS has one in Cane, a drama starring Jimmy Smits as the central figure in a large Cuban-American family with both a business to run and conflicts to resolve. ABC is also reviving the form, though with considerable humor, in Dirty Sexy Money, with an idealistic lawyer drawn into the web of a wealthy, tabloid-fodder family.

Although some observers have declared these tough times for sitcoms, they still fill time on ABC, CBS, NBC, The CW and Fox. That last network is keeping the faith with the return of 'Til Death and the premiere of Back to You, in which sitcom pros Kelsey Grammer (Cheers, Frasier) and Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond) play TV co-anchors with a lot of history. And if their comic talents aren't enough, the great Fred Willard (Best in Show) should steal more than his share of laughs.

Then there's Aliens in America, a CW comedy taking the much-tried TV idea of a fish out of water in a potentially controversial direction. It has a Wisconsin family housing a new exchange student: a 16-year-old Muslim from Pakistan.

Also, still plenty of crime shows, with Fox's New Orleans-set K-Ville and ABC's Women's Murder Club among the newcomers. And more reality TV, now including The Next Great American Band, Nashville and Kitchen Nightmares (all on Fox).

But overall, this season does not feel as promising as 2006-07, when the fall included happy talk about new shows such as 30 Rock, Ugly Betty, Jericho, Heroes and Friday Night Lights.

Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in a blog at http://www.ohio.com. Contact him at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.