EVERYTHING OLD
IS OLD AGAIN

The networks' sort-of new season

By JOYCE MILLMAN
Illustration by Zach Trenholm

the Fall TV season begins in earnest this week and the big news is -- and try to remain calm, here -- a lot of old stars are coming back! Bill Cosby is back. So is Ted Danson. And Michael J. Fox and Rhea Perlman. And Scott Bakula from "Quantum Leap," and Hope and Michael from "thirtysomething" (back, but not together), and Gerald McRaney -- yes, "Major Dad" is in the house. Can you feel the excitement? And the networks wonder why they're losing viewers like water through a sieve. It's no big secret that TV does more recycling than BFI, but this season the endless loop seems to be spinning in overdrive. Stung by some of the lowest season-total Nielsen ratings ever and fighting -- apparently unsuccessfully -- the siphoning effects of Fox, cable and "emerging" networks like UPN and WB, the Big Three are looking back wistfully upon those glory days of network viewership, the mid-'80s. That's when NBC's wildly popular sitcoms "The Cosby Show," "Cheers" and "Family Ties" drew viewers to the tube in the kinds of numbers you don't see nowadays except for really big events, like the Olympics or an Oprah interview with Michael Jackson. With typical tunnel vision, second-place CBS and third-place ABC figure that if they pay a lot of money to get the stars of those old NBC shows back on TV, viewers will automatically come back too. CBS is even using a "Coming Home" theme in its fall season ads, a deliberate echo of NBC's "Come Home to NBC" campaign of the '80s. I'm no network executive, but a few things stand out like red flags here. Next: True or false: America loves Ted Danson A look at the week's premieres.