Comedy, sci-fi and girls, girls, girls...
Each year television executives perform their own rites of spring. They hide away in dark screening rooms, watch dozens of hours of pilots for new shows, then emerge, red-eyed but exultant, to announce what the American public will see in the fall. Last week both ABC and CBS ended their ceremonies with the traditional flourish of self-congratulatory press releases; NBC was due to announce its schedule this week. This year, however, the ceremony seems more like a rehearsal than the real thing: Fred Silverman, the high priest of programming, has yet to make his entrance, and...