Bannigan: So much great television met an early demise because the canny old sausage-makers who run the major networks figure that programming that relies on irony, satire or abstract thought beyond a Wizard of Id-type level will alienate the soccer moms in flyover states and ultimately result in Family Matters reruns topping the Nielsens. Witness the stillborn status of works of genius like Lookwell!, the Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel-written detective spoof starring a delightfully-deluded Adam West as a former TV sleuth turned talentless real-life crimesolver, aided by his crew of acting students. They only made a pilot, but you can watch it for free, via YouTube, at http://tinyurl.com/fc2hm.

Collector’s edition: Incidentally, if you’d like to save some of those great net videos to your hard drive, instead of having to find an interweb connection and waste valuable time and bandwidth downloading them, KeepVid is the site for you. It can even provide Google Videos in DivX, iPod and PSP formats at www.keepvid.com.

Comments? Michael Citrome