Who's your daddy? I don't know. And I don't really think it's any of my business.

But who's the tackiest broadcast network? That one's easy.

Fox continues to lead the way with tasteless reality shows. Others have tried, but no one has been able to knock the network from its perch atop that mountain. OK, no one has been able to swim to the depths of the muck hole Fox occupies on this one.

Latest case in point — the 90-minute special "Who's Your Daddy?" that Fox has scheduled to air on Monday, Jan. 3. The premise is pure Fox and pure trash — a young woman who was adopted at birth has to identify her biological father from a group of eight men, each of whom is trying to convince her that he's the real thing.

If the adoptee picks the right guy, she wins $100,000. If she's wrong, the guy she picks wins the hundred grand.

How often do you suppose Fox programmers have to shower to get the slime off?

This is actually the first of six such "specials" that Fox has sitting on the shelf waiting for airtime. How proud they must be.

The addendum (or is that adden-dumb?) to this is that "Who's Your Daddy?" was part of a very public, rather amusing spat between Fox and NBC this past summer. NBC head honcho Jeff Zucker was in a snit because Fox had appropriated the idea for his reality/boxing show, so he broke The Network Executives Code and told those of us gathered for the Television Critics Association summer press tour that Fox was developing a show called "Who's My Daddy?" (and his description of it was pretty much dead-on), as well as a fake version of "The Apprentice" (which became the low-rated "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss").

Fox execs wouldn't confirm those reports at the time, being in a snit themselves over the whole Breaking of The Network Executives Code thing.

The second adden-dumb is that Fox's much-hurried boxing show, "The Next Great Champ," bombed badly and was shuffled off to cable's Fox Sports Net. NBC's boxing show, "The Contender," which has been delayed and delayed again, is currently slated to debut in late February.

NO SURPRISE: Today's least surprising news is that CBS has ordered two more editions of "Survivor" beyond the one that will debut early next year, enough to carry through the 2005-06 season.

"Survivor: Vanuatu" averaged 19.65 million viewers, making it the No. 5 show for the season to date. Its finale couldn't bring down ratings buzz saw "Desperate Housewives" on ABC, but it finished a strong second from 8-9 p.m. and won its three-hour time slot overall.

ZELL TO FOX NEWS: The Fox News Channel announced it has signed retiring Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) as a contributor.

Can't you just hear it now? FNC will trumpet the presence of a Democrat as proof that the channel is "fair and balanced."

Miller is, however, the Democrat who campaigned for George W. Bush and assailed John Kerry at the GOP convention.

He's also the senator who, just days before the war in Iraq began, took to the Senate floor and passionately assailed CBS for the network's development of a (still unproduced) reality series based on "The Beverly Hillbillies."

Nice to know he has his priorities straight.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com