By Michael Colton and Peter Bogdanovich

March 14, 1999 | 7:00 p.m

Wednesday, March 10

From Feb. 3 through March 5, the networks were doing anything they could to get your attention–Monica and Barbara sat around and talked on an ABC stage set; Martin Short acted nuts as the Mad Hatter; Hitler was on the History Channel and sharks were in the waters of the Discovery Channel; ABC even aired consecutive new episodes of NYPD Blue . But now, nothing. Shows that were fresh in the fall–like the Dharma & Greg episode featuring Floyd (Red Crow) Westerman, the lachrymose Native American of the 70's anti-litter ad–are served up as TV leftovers now. [WABC, 7, 8 P.M.] Even public television doesn't care about you now: Tonight at 11:30 P.M., in the guise of "empowering television for viewers like you," Channel 13 broadcasts an infomercial-like pep talk full of psychobabble called Suze Orman: The Courage to Be Rich . It's a repeat, no less. [WNET, 13, 11:30 P.M.] Thursday, March 11 y Call it improvisational programming. Billy Crystal went by The Daily Show last week to plug his new movie, Analyze This . Host Jon Stewart spoke to him for four minutes, the standard interview length for the show, and then thanked him for coming by. But Mr. Crystal refused to leave. Don't you people want more of me? he said–and the audience cheered him on. So Mr. Stewart kept going. And every time he tried to go to a commercial, Mr. Crystal jumped in with another bit. The host finally succeeded in taking a break only after rolling tape for 14 minutes. The show's producer, Madeleine Smithberg, and Eileen Katz, Comedy Central's vice president of programming, conferred: If they had only eight more minutes, they would have a separate half-hour special. Mr. Crystal agreed. And now, with The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Interview Special: Billy Crystal , cable viewers can learn even more about Mr. Crystal and his hit movie. Thank you, Comedy Central. [Comedy Central, 45, 10:30 P.M.] The exhibitionist dating show Change of Heart is proving to be a syndicated success; it's given WPIX its highest numbers for the 1 A.M. time period in more than a decade, and its rating among women aged 18 to 34 is up 146 percent from the same slot in November. The show takes a real couple and screws with their minds by matching up each person up with a date who is different from their usual partner. (Call it Eyes Wide Shut , the TV show.) Then all four people join together to share their experiences (and insult each other) for the camera. After that, the original couple decides if they want to stay together or break up. It's both embarrassing and engrossing, and everyone who watches has the same question: Who are these people? Why would anyone risk being dumped on national television? Many viewers assume the couples are actors, and that's usually correct. But that doesn't mean the show is faked; Change of Heart is taped in Los Angeles, so wannabe stars are always looking for TV time, even if they're playing themselves. According to executive producer Scott St. John, guest coordinators for the show–"professional party people"–hit the clubs every night, along with swing dance classes and movie premieres, to recruit folks for the show, both couples and singles. Mr. St. John said participants are paid a standard game-show fee of $200. "Honestly, the majority of couples have been dating for about five months," he said. "They're not going to go to a marriage counselor or professional help. With us, the bets are off for one night, and you can see what it's like to date someone else." About half the couples end up staying together. Occasionally, only one person wants to stay together. That scenario, of course, makes for the best TV. [WPIX, 11, 1 A.M.] Friday, March 12 Sweeps are over and your network is not getting out of sixth place any time soon. Quick–what's the next move? Do you: (a) show reruns of programs that nobody watched the first time; (b) spend 50 grand or so for some old Tom Cruise movie like, maybe, All the Right Moves or Cocktail ; (c) get people from all over the country to send in videos of their pets and slap some dumb title on it–oh, I don't know, you could call it America's Greatest Pets –and let it run for a hour of cheap TV? If you chose (c), you have the makings of a UPN executive. [WWOR, 9, 8 P.M.] Saturday, March 13 Even public television doesn't care about you now: Tonight at 8 P.M., under the guise of "cultural diversity," WNET yet again turns to that mad Irishman, Michael Flatley–and this time he's got 84 dancers with him in a "dancing adventure" called Feet of Flames . Mr. Flatley, as the Lord of the Dance, dance-fights the Dark Lord (Daire Nolan). Some are calling it "the dance of the decade." We call it crap! [WNET, 13, 8 P.M.] Sunday, March 14 For parents of small, screaming children, there will be household tranquillity on a Sunday night, made possible by a special 7:30 P.M. episode of Blue's Clues ("Blue's Big Treasure Hunt"). With host Steven Burn (who's exactly between Mister Rogers and Pee-wee Herman) and guests Rue McClanahan, Carol Kane and Gregory Hines. [Nickelodeon, 6, 7:30 P.M.] Some shows are declared hits even before they go on the air. Remember Felicity ? There was a lot of hype, including an Entertainment Weekly cover, and then … and then the show came out. It turned out to be all right–kind of like a slightly sexier version of Relativity –and now it regularly finishes fifth in its time slot. (Remember Relativity , by the way? It was a stately hourlong "romantic drama" on ABC that was a hit among critics for its brief run during the '96-'97 season.) Anyway, now the hype's rolling for Futurama , the soon-to-debut cartoon from Simpsons creator Matt Groening and Simpsons executive producer David Cohen. Despite the pedigree, Futurama could be a flop. But that hasn't stopped devotional Web sites from sprouting up all over the Internet. They have names like "Futurama-Rama" and "Futurama: A Kick-ass Page for a Kick-ass Show." There are even Futurama Web sites that keep track of the other Futurama Web sites. In addition, the launch of Futurama is getting coverage in publications that don't usually cover TV: Wired (those techies love The Simpsons ) and Mother Jones (Mr. Groening's a lefty). It's nice to get the word out, but hype comes with its price. "No matter what show we put on the air, we're fully expecting reviews along the lines of 'It's fine, but it's no Simpsons ,'" Mr. Cohen said. Soon after The Simpsons debuted in 1990, there seemed to be Bart Simpson merchandise on every street corner. Fox's licensing and merchandise division plans to start selling Futurama junk this fall as part of the effort to make Rupert Murdoch even richer. Mr. Cohen is already toying with potential catch phrases along the lines of Bart Simpson's "Don't have a cow, man!" One character on the show is Bender, a chain-smoking, pornography-loving robot. His first line on Futurama sounds T-shirt-ready: "Bite my shiny metal ass!" Tonight on the Simpsons repeat: Homer drops out of society, becomes a hippie. [WNYW, 5, 8 P.M.] Monday, March 15 For all the strides women have made in the television industry, a gross imbalance remains: genitals. Cable television loves female nudity, but generally shies away from the male organ. Tonight, though, HBO presents more information about and images of the penis than you ever wanted to see, "Private Dicks: Men Exposed," on America Undercover . It sounds like the bad idea of a freshman sociology major: Collect a diverse group of men to sit naked in a studio and talk about their penises. The experiment works, though, because of the honesty of the subjects: a 57-year-old musician who proudly admits to his two-inch erection; a porno actor; an ad director, paralyzed from mid-torso down; a retired professor who contracted syphilis and gonorrhea during World War II; a transsexual; a gay man with a generously sized package; three immature frat boys. They talk frankly about sex and sexuality, virility and mortality. "I was amazed," said co-director Meema Spadola. "I had never heard men talk that way before." Ms. Spadola, 29, found her subjects by distributing questionnaires in bars and doctors' offices with queries like "Describe your relationship with your penis (e.g., sidekick, friend, enemy, simple body part)." When she taped her subjects, she found some of their stereotypical male responses shocking. "They weren't soft-pedaling reality," she said. "Some of them said sex is 'about the pound'–about being aggressive and getting off, and not about the emotional connection or valuing the person you're with. It wasn't comfortable to hear." HBO, she said, fully supported her decision to show penises. "If you make a documentary about trains, you want to see the trains you're talking about." But erections were verboten . "I don't think it's legal," Ms. Spadola said. "But it's not an issue for us. I didn't want to have a segment where guys jerk off for us, either." In addition to the penis video, Ms. Spadola's main documentary credit is a similarly themed video called Breasts. What's next? Assholes ? "I'm off body parts," said Ms. Spadola, who will next be making a documentary about the children of gay and lesbian parents. [HBO, 32, 11 P.M.] Tuesday, March 16 Tonight's Spin City is not a repeat. There must be a catch, right? On tonight's episode, the staff grumbles over having to work on "Oscar Sunday"–and guess which network will be airing the Oscars on Sunday, March 21. ABC! And guess who owns the movie that was nominated 13 times. That's right, Disney-ABC. The scoundrels. [WABC, 7, 9 P.M.] Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week With the meaning of celebrity becoming ever more ambiguous, and Andy Warhol's notorious prediction coming true that eventually everybody will be famous for 15 minutes, the touchingly delightful 1954 George Cukor-Garson Kanin-Judy Holliday-Jack Lemmon satirical New York comedy about fame, It Should Happen to You [Sunday, March 14, Turner Classic Movies, 82, 1:30 P.M.; also on videocassette], now seems not only still most relevant but also absolutely prescient. Kanin, who wrote the original screenplay, initially called the picture (far more appropriately) A Name for Herself , but the studio thought it could do better and didn't. Jack Lemmon, whose beguiling debut in pictures this was, has always blamed the movie's lackluster box office on its meaninglessly general title. The plot is that a slightly askew young woman known as Gladys Glover–beautifully incarnated by the wondrous Judy Holliday–wants to make a "name for herself" so she buys a huge billboard at the old (pre-Coliseum) Columbus Circle and has her name printed on it in gigantic letters: "Gladys Glover," and that's all. The loony idea, which her would-be boyfriend–a young, idealistic documentary filmmaker played with heartwarming innocence by Mr. Lemmon–thinks is awful, works ! People want to find out who Gladys Glover is, and pretty soon she's famous as "the woman who put her name on a sign at Columbus Circle." Among the hazards of notoriety that come her way is an ace lothario businessman, perfectly cast with Peter Lawford in probably his best performance. Eventually, Gladys comes to understand that fame by itself without real achievement (and sometimes even with it) is hollow, meaningless: a message for the 90's! Although Judy Holliday, the most original screen comedienne since Carole Lombard, was to make only four other films before her tragic death from cancer in 1965 at age 43, It Should Happen to You was the last thoroughly satisfying one. Her swan song, the Betty Comden-Adolph Green-Jule Styne musical Bells Are Ringing (1960), directed by Vincente Minnelli, was likable and remains fun, but she and the show were far better on stage, there being a strain to parts of the movie, which there never is to It Should . Nor, indeed, to any of the other three comedy classics she did with director George Cukor, each written by Garson Kanin–two co-written with his brilliant wife, Ruth Gordon: Adam's Rib (1949), in which Judy almost stole the picture from Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy; Born Yesterday (1950), the movie version of her breakout stage success as Billie Dawn which won her the Oscar for best actress over Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard ; and the little-known gem The Marrying Kind (1952), an often dramatic, deeply human look at a working-class marriage, introducing Aldo Ray in a superbly artless performance. The chemistry between him and Holliday is as affecting as that between her and Mr. Lemmon in It Should , in which the complex charm emanating from them throughout–and especially in their lovely improvisational scene singing at the piano–is rare and memorable. But then Cukor's dazzling success with newcomers (like Holliday, Mr. Lemmon, Katharine Hepburn, Angela Lansbury, etc.) is as continually impressive as his control over stars (like Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, John Barrymore, Ronald Colman, etc.), and has resulted in an amazing number of films that hold up to the old test of time far better than many more "cinematically" flamboyant jobs. Though often damned with appellations like "woman's director" or "studio man," Cukor had remarkable versatility: There is little more evocative work on real Manhattan locations than that found in the Cukor-Holliday comedies–especially those lovely Central Park sequences in It Should Happen to You , which now bring a sharp clutch of nostalgia for much simpler days from the middle of the 20th century.