Young Viewers

The first thing Paul Romer, the executive producer of "Big Brother," wants viewers to know is that his new "reality" series premiering tonight on CBS is not "The Truman Show" and he is not Christoff, the beret-wearing, television producer-Svengali played by Ed Harris in that film. "The big difference between `The Truman Show' and `Big Brother' is that `The Truman Show' was fiction, and `Big Brother' is real," Romer said in a telephone conference call to promote the series that puts 10 strangers in a house for three months and lets us play peeping tom via 28 cameras and 60 microphones.

My friend Kelly has been through a lot. In the 10 years I've known her, she's overdosed on diet pills, been badly burned in a house fire, joined a cult, landed in drug rehab, been stalked by a fellow addict, suffered a miscarriage, been shot in the belly, overcome amnesia, called off a marriage to her friend Brandon at the altar, been raped and then shot and killed her attacker. And all by the age of 25. Now I worry that she will make the mistake of marrying the wrong man. In a few days, she must choose between her fiance, Matt, a boring attorney, and her lifelong friend, Dylan, a tortured soul who has been through equal amounts of life trauma.

IF TELEVISION had a golden age, when would it have been?Many nostalgic people with flawed memories date it around the time Edward R. Murrow was making a legend of himself in the '50s. The legend, sadly, comes across as a fuzzy, pompous bore when rerun today. The situation comedies of the '50s cause the eyes to glaze before the first commercial.There followed in the '60s and '70s the glory days of broadcast networks, when they were overstaffed, spent money like drunks, killed good shows like homicidal maniacs, owned the airways, owned the Federal Communications Commission as well and first started paying their anchors seven-figure salaries.

Good heavens!Now there's a machine that will kick the &$?%! out of your television. And maybe replace it with something nice.It's called the Foul Language Filter, or, more formally, TVGuardian. It's a black box you hook up to your cable box or VCR that reads the closed-captioning signal encoded into a show.When the box picks up one of 100 or so words or phrases deemed offensive, it mutes the audio for a second or two. That way, you don't hear what you don't want to hear or, more to the point, what you don't want your kids to hear.

LOS ANGELES -- In one of the most abrupt reversals of strategy in network television history, CBS announced during the weekend that it is through chasing after viewers in their 20 and 30s and wants to win back its older audience.It was only six months ago that the struggling network launched 11 new series -- like "Central Park West," a prime-time soap opera from the creator of Fox's "Melrose Place" -- and a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign aimed exclusively at young viewers."In terms of looking at what's happened to the CBS schedule over the last six months, there were mistakes that we made," said Leslie Moonves, president of CBS Entertainment.

I'm not kidding, but TV is: A lot of the new or best stuff on television today is aimed squarely at children.* "A. J.'s Time Travelers" (11:30 a.m.-noon, Channel 45) -- This new Saturday-morning Fox series has colorful production values, playful tone and an educational bent: It's about a 15-year-old named A. J. (John Patrick White) who uses a machine to travel through time with his buddies, as Mr. Peabody and Sherman did on "The Bullwinkle Show." They travel with help from pages of an encyclopedia, and there are moral lessons as well as historical ones throughout.

The 1992-'93 TV season officially ended at midnight last night, and it must feel like it's morning in America again for CBS stockholders.Not only did CBS win the prime-time ratings race by going against the grain of youth-oriented and niche programming, but it made money doing so. Last season, CBS won the ratings race, but lost millions in the process.But while CBS's fortunes have rebounded, the larger picture for network TV has worsened. The combined audience for CBS, NBC and ABC hit an all-time low -- a 60 percent share, down from 63 percent last year.

Los Angeles -- Aaron Spelling is a surprising guy.For openers, take the turnaround in his image.Since the 1970s, his name has regularly appeared in newspaper stories followed by a comma and the word schlockmeister.There was justification for that characterization. As the producer of such shows as "Charlie's Angels" and "Fantasy Island," his work was popular, but it defined much of what many found worst about commercial TV: It was heavily escapist, sometimes sexist and often lightweight in terms of social conscience.

Baby boomers are about to get a shock. For the first time in their adult lives, they are not going to be the center of attention for television programmers and advertisers.And that means, starting this summer and accelerating this fall, boomers are no longer going to be the engine driving popular culture -- with their generational tastes, interests and shared memories celebrated above all else on the tube.The new darlings of Madison Avenue and Network Row are persons in their 20s -- the group that advertisers have dubbed the baby-bust generation and that TV executives are talking about when they say they want "young viewers."

NBC announced its fall schedule yesterday and there was good news for fans of quality drama: Rookie series "I'll Fly Away" and "Reasonable Doubts" were renewed. There was good news for fans of Norman Lear: His political satire "The Powers That Be" won a spot.But there was bad news, too: The sleaziest reality show yet, "I Witness Video," which features amateur videos of real-life murders and beatings, is going to be on every Sunday night at 9 come fall.Overall, demographics will be the name of the game at NBC next year.