Network

A strange pre-holiday ritual begins today. Each year, as the November sweeps ratings period wraps up, television's top executives begin - in a series of teleconference calls - spinning how each network is performing. This year, they'll be spinning faster than usual. For the first time in the 55-year history of prime-time television, no single new network series can be called a hit. Already - only two months into the season - some analysts are characterizing 2003-2004 as The Year of the Flop.

THIS SUNDAY, Home Box Office begins airing a 10-part World War II series called "Band of Brothers." The production price tag is $125 million - or 10 times the cost of an average hour of television drama and three times the cost of an episode of "The West Wing." Premium cable providers are no longer content with just running Hollywood movies. With half a dozen or more channels to fill in their lineups, industry leaders HBO and Showtime increasingly challenge networks as producers of original programming.

PARIS - French antiterrorist police detained six suspected Islamic militants in the predawn hours yesterday, including five of Pakistani background, police officials said. The six are suspected of belonging to a network that supported Richard C. Reid, a Briton who pleaded guilty last month in Boston to having tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in December with explosives hidden in his shoes. The raid was the latest in four waves of arrests in four days, as the French police, like those elsewhere in Europe, remain on high alert to thwart possible attacks by radical Islamic groups.

"Nasty" Nestor Aparicio is going national five days a week for four hours. Beginning April 3, Baltimore's Aparicio will be heard in 140 radio markets around the country on the One On One radio network of Northbrook, Ill. Aparicio, 31, will have the 2 to 6 p.m. time slot Monday through Friday for his "Nasty Nationwide" show that will be aired locally each day from 2 to 4 p.m. on WBIS (1190 AM). WBIS is a 10,000-watt business radio station located in Annapolis. The station is scheduled to be upgraded to 50,000 watts this summer.

Police and firefighters using videoconferences for training. High school students taking college-level courses online. Residents telecommuting instead of racking up mileage and gas bills. Carroll County officials envision these scenarios, and more, as potential benefits of a fiber-optic cable network winding its way through the area. Today, representatives from county agencies - the government, school system, community college and library - plan to celebrate the developing 110-mile network.

The programming heads of the major networks yesterday finally came out of hiding to take questions about one of the worst fall seasons in the medium's history. But after a day of conference calls filled with wall-to-wall spin about their November sweeps ratings and overall performance during the first three months of the television year, one thing became crystal clear: They have no new answers as to how to fix schedules suffering an overall drop of 10 percent compared with last year's viewership numbers.

When conservatives raised a ruckus last year over The Reagans, CBS ended up dumping the TV movie about the former first family. Then Janet Jackson's impromptu strip during CBS' Super Bowl halftime show re-ignited a national debate about broadcast indecency. Now the network finds itself with another potentially troublesome project, this one involving mass murderer Charles Manson. One of CBS' main events for the critical May ratings sweep is Helter Skelter, a new three-hour adaptation of former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi's best seller about the 1969 Manson murders.

ABC's efforts to land late-night host David Letterman have cast a shadow over the fate of Nightline, Ted Koppel's highly regarded news program at the struggling network. Staffers at ABC said that the news division, including ABC News President David Westin, first learned of the Letterman negotiations on Thursday night. Like Nightline, Letterman's current CBS show airs weeknights at 11:35. But senior ABC network executives have recently made it clear to Letterman they would be willing to shift or cancel the news program to accommodate him. Several people at ABC News confirmed the network's eagerness yesterday to pursue Letterman, even at Nightline's expense.

The shift in the bedrock of primetime television is evident in the fortunes of NBC's no-frills game show 1 vs 100 and its lavish drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Last month, NBC added 1 vs 100, a quiz program featuring stunningly easy questions, a roster of talent that begins and ends with B-list comic Bob Saget, and contestants who compete in a stadium-like setting with 100 opponents at a time. Instantly, it became the most-watched Friday-night show on network TV with 12.3 million viewers.

Pointing to the early success of two new series - CBS' Jericho and NBC's Heroes - network and cable executives say they have in their sights what is considered the most elusive TV audience segment: Young adult males. Armed this fall with a technological arsenal that includes On Demand downloads and online video streams, television executives say for the first time they are reaching young men between 18 and 34 years of age, the demographic group considered hardest to reach and most desired by TV advertisers.