At first wince, the WB Network is merely awful, a collection of low-rent sitcoms funny only to a laugh-track machine.
But when you consider that it comes from Time Warner, the nation's most powerful media company, you're sickened in a way that its crude jokes about sperm banks and clods who leave the toilet seat up can only approach.Given just two hours a week to try to entertain us, this is the best Time Warner can do?
This is what Time Warner thinks America craves?
Cynical, isn't it?
The WB and the people behind it apparently hold us viewers in contempt. If WB's debut is any indication, their estimation of the lowest common denominator has hit a new low.
And that's saying something, coming from a conglomerate that's given us People, "Extra," Urkel and that Sly Stallone-Sharon Stone brain teaser "The Specialist." How proud its executives must be.
The WB is Fox Lite - all the calories and none of the taste - not surprising given the fact that it's being run by former Fox executives Jamie Kellner and Garth Ancier, though Ancier is probably better-known now for the ambitiously crass "Ricki Lake."
WB opened its Wednesday night block of programming with an NBC reject, "The Wayans Brothers," which featured (no, not the ones you know, Keenen and Damon) Shawn and Marlon. It's like promising the Jacksons - Tito and Randy.
WB also has a shameless knockoff of Fox's "Married . . . With Children" from the makers of that show. "Ever After" makes "Married . . . " come across like the best of Noel Coward.
"Ever After's" innovations are to have the parents divorced and add a pill-popping, chain-smoking mother-in-law. Creative, huh? There's also a witless stuffed bunny who sounds like ALF with a hangover.
If that theft of unintellectual property weren't enough, WB also boasts "Muscle," a moronic serial from the producers of "Soap" that also steals aggressively and unabashedly from its parent.
The most promising WB show, a series with Big Mac pitchman Robert Townsend, is promising only because of its star.
If you're wondering why Time Warner would sully a reputation for TV excellence cultivated through HBO, its pay-cable service, it's because it wants to secure its spot in the broadcast-channel spectrum in case opportunities in the till-now lucrative syndication market continue drying up.
This might be sound business, but, so far at least, it's bad television. All WB has done is make viewers appreciate the relative sophistication and high standards of ABC, CBS, NBC and even Fox.
Meanwhile, the United Paramount Network - an enterprise of Viacom-owned Paramount and Chris Craft - launched for many of the same reasons. It has its own former Fox executive in charge in Lucie Salhany, who gave us "The Chevy Chase Show."
Among its first shows was "Voyager," yet another "Star Trek" merchandise showcase without any of its predecessors' originality to bog it down. There is a sitcom for comedian Richard Jeni and another that's appropriately called "Pig Sty."
There's also "Marker," which marks the return of Richard Grieco to TV, and "The Watcher," which gives a series to Sir Mix-a-Lot, a rap artist whose hit ditty, "Baby Got Back," is just an excuse to ogle derrieres in its accompanying video.
Amazing WB didn't ask him to base a series on it.
Face it, we are a nation of squandered resources.
Time Warner's WB Network is the latest example.