Producers pitch next year's shows

What with the onslaught of so-called "reality shows," these are tough times for the people who produce comedies and dramas. And this is the always-stressful pilot season, when producers pitch their latest ideas (or retreads of somebody else's ideas) to network executives, who then have some huge decisions to make.

First, should they produce a pilot?

Second, if they produce a pilot, should they pick up that show for next season?

From the outside looking in, this can be fairly amusing — because some of these proposed pilots are so, well, wacky. NBC, for example, has a drama (?) called "Miss Match" that stars Alicia Silverstone as a divorce lawyer who moonlights as a matchmaker. The WB has "Shadow Walkers," about a pair of married archaeologists who have to hunt down various evil things after their naughty teenagers open Pandora's box.

UPN is working on "Kamelot," which updates King Arthur into a "young, hip revolutionary" far in the future. ABC is pondering the fate of "Then Came Jones ," a Western about a guy who runs a brothel in 1899 El Paso. NBC is looking at "The Ripples," about a couple celebrating their 4,000th anniversary, whose son appears to be 15 but is really 3,985.

And CBS could have a show on the air next season titled "Joan of Arcadia," about a young girl to whom God appears in a different form every week.

I am not making this up.

The vast majority of these shows will never make it on the air. Only a handful are picked up by the networks. And, of course, most of those don't last long.

Just looking at the long lists of pilot projects reveals that, in addition to desperation, there's not a lot of originality out there. There are literally dozens of family sitcoms and dramas with titles like "All About the Andersons," "All Grown Up," "Are We There Yet?" "Arrested Development," "Come to Papa," "Family Friends," "The Family Show," "Happy Family," "Immediate Family," "The Mallards," "My Life With Men" and "These Guys."

There are also dozens of cop shows with titles like, "10-8," "Alaska," "Battle Creek," "The Break," "Chasing Alice," "Cold Cases," "Criminology 101," "Expert Witnesses," "Fearless," "Dicks," "Future Tense," "Homeland Security," "NYPD 2069," "The Partners," "Street Boss," "Sunset Division," "Threat Matrix" and "Violent Crime."

And lawyers certainly aren't under-represented — they've got shows titled "Century City," "The D.A.," "EDNY," "The Flannerys," "Karen Sisco," "The Lyon's Den" and "The Street Lawyer."