It's Fall: Line up.

Well, it’s that time again. The candidates are making their best pitch. Can the lure of change and something new lure people away from the familiar? Everywhere there is buzz and spin. The debates are proliferating, and in the morning around the water cooler and amongst the cubicles, the best moments, the merits and flaws are all picked over with passion and detail.

Campaign ’08? No, the new fall TV season in America.

No living American who is ambulatory and taking nourishment can escape the networks’ promotional onslaught.

Literally.

Last year, for instance, CBS invaded refrigerators to use “egg-vertising, “ a process by which eggs can be laser-printed. (“CSI: Crack the Case!”) The saying used to be, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.” Now it’s, “You can’t make an omelet without checking some TV time slots.” Advertising on your food. Sounds like a kitchen nightmare. Oh, wait -- that’s an actual new show this season on Fox. (Wednesdays at 9pm.)

There’s even news amidst the new programming. Or promotion masquerading as news. It’s hard to tell anymore.

Surely you’ve caught some of the uproar over CBS’s controversial new series, “Kid Nation,” a reality show in which 40 children (ages 8-15) struggle to govern themselves and create order in a desert town. Actually, sounds a lot like Baghdad.

But these are kids! Away from home, no parents, being cruelly separated into rude social classes. Are they being exploited? Are we reaching a new low? Are CBS network execs pinching themselves right now with all this free publicity? Yes, yes, and yes.

And if you think some of those Kid Nation kids’ parents made a pact with the devil to allow their children to be used like that, there is actually a new show this fall that is even more hellish in its premise. “Reaper” (which airs on something called a “CW”) is about a young man whose parents actually sold his soul to the devil before he was born.

As opposed to those “Kid Nation” parents, who sold their own souls for $20,000.

And speaking of money, some returning shows need to be updated. Who can afford to merely be a millionaire anymore? According to Federal Reserve figures, if you bought $1 million dollars worth of goods in 1957, you would need $7.3 million to buy the same goods today. “Who Wants to be a Billionaire?” would be more like it. Or perhaps, “Who Wants Free Healthcare?” Or, “Who Wants to Sell their Home for even Close to what you Bought it for?” Those are program changes that the average viewer could relate to.

Being a man, I am continually struck at how many new shows each season are centered around men acting like cavemen. From “My Name is Earl” (who spends every waking day working his way through a list of people he’s wronged), to “King of the Hill”, “Big Shots”, and “Two And a Half Men,” there is never any shortage of shows where men look and act like Troglodytes. In fact, this season the transformation back to knuckle-dragging Neanderthal is complete with the premiere of “Cavemen.” (ABC.)

“Cavemen” was inspired (not sure if that word can apply here) by a series of TV commercials for a car insurance company. Now that is some kind of successful promotion. Be prepared next year for, “Dancing with the Charmin Squeezers.”

And sometimes the shows mimic real-life in other ways. This season, “Survivor” goes to China where contestants will gut it out and rat each other out. A “Survivor” press release states that the show “had a government overseer with us at all times to make sure we didn’t desecrate the country’s image.” Presumably, the Chinese would prefer to do that themselves with killer toys, food, political repression, totalitarian censorship and environmental disaster.

But, its Fall, it’s a new TV season, and it’s all about escape and entertainment, after all.
For the networks, needless to say, it’s all about the “Numbers” (CBS), and making as much of that “Dirty, Sexy Money” (ABC) as they possibly can. But watching some shows, you can’t help but wonder -- “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” (FOX)

“Back to You.” (FOX)