'Desperate' answers coming

Now that "Desperate Housewives" has premiered to boffo ratings — it was No. 1 last week — there are a lot of people out there asking, "What next?"

According to A.C. Nielsen, there are at least 21,645,000 viewers who want to know what the big secret is. Why Mary Alice killed herself. What her husband is doing digging up the pool in the back yard. Who Mike really is. And whether Susan is going to get away with (accidentally) burning down Edie's house.

I don't know the answer to any of those questions, but I do have it on good authority that this is not going to be an unending mystery dragged out until we're all sick to death of it.

"I'm not going to taunt people for years and years and years and never give them answers," said creator/writer/executive producer Marc Cherry. "I want some kind of satisfaction to be built, too. . . . The way I have it planned, we're going to be building some big reveals at the end of season one."

However, even when we get the answers to the current questions, that doesn't mean there won't be new questions waiting for their own answers. "I've also laid in a couple of other mysteries that then will come up right as the big stuff is being done," Cherry said. "So I think we've got enough juice to keep us going on that for a while."

I certainly hope so.

KNOCKED OUT: Despite all the free publicity that came when Fox stole NBC's idea for a boxing reality show, Fox couldn't make "The Next Great Champ" into a winner.

After four low-rated outings on the network, Oscar de la Hoya got KO'd again. Fox has shuttled the show over to Fox Sports Net, which will repeat on Sunday the four already-aired episodes and begin airing the remaining installments on Sunday, Oct. 17.

Excuse me a moment while I burst out laughing.

Sorry, but this is pretty funny. All this fussin' and feudin' and fightin' — and all this coverage from dummies like me — and "The Next Great Champ" is a total bomb in the ratings.

Whether this is good news or bad news for NBC and "The Contender" remains to be seen. No, NBC's reality/boxing show won't have to compete with Fox's reality/boxing show. But, on the other hand, Fox's boxing show would seem to indicate that Americans aren't all that interested in a reality/boxing show.