Crying Wolf is too much

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — News flash! Dick Wolf hates TV critics!

OK, that's old news. Wolf, the executive producer of all things "Law & Order," is always surly and disdainful when he meets with the critics. Which he seems to have done every six months for the past 15 years.

I can certainly understand why. He's got all those shows on the air — shows that have almost universally been well-received by critics.

But still he wants "to get this off my chest" about his "pet peeve" that "there are no good-news newspapers."

What good news does he want to read? That the "Law & Order" brand "exists at the moment alone in the cosmology of long-term profitability."

Gee, I was working on a column using those exact words.

He went on to complain that "Alias" star Jennifer Garner got all kinds of media attention and Emmy nominations while "Criminal Intent" star Vincent D'Onofrio was largely ignored. "He was doing a job that, if you guys had been paying attention, I firmly believe he would have gotten an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe nomination the first season," he said.

Yes, because TV critics decide those sorts of things. We control the Television Academy.

He went on to "prove" us wrong by pointing to the fact that "Alias" repeats recently sold for $175,000 an episode and "Criminal Intent" repeats sold for six times that much. "You guys don't report the financial aspects of how successful the brand is," he threw at us.

Duh! We're not business reporters. We write about how good shows are, not how profitable.

All of which led to one of my favorite press-tour questions ever, asked as politely as possible by a colleague: "You're sitting there with three very well-reviewed actors. (Vincent D'Onofrio, Mariska Hargitay and Annie Parisse.) Your shows regularly get good reviews. You're the only series of shows on television where cast changes are reported, generally, with gusto. But you always seem to be angry at us.

"I'm seriously wondering what it is that you would consider fair treatment?"

Hear! Hear!

Wolf insisted he wasn't angry.

"Very few reviews have made me angry over the years," he said angrily. "Very few analyses of the show have made me angry. What makes me angry is the lack of sophisticated business reportage."

Oh, I get it. He's mad at us for not doing someone else's job.