What’s working for me:

Let me just say at the outset, I know which of these two shows debuting tonight was designed for me: "Gary Unmarried," of course, which stars Jay Mohr, who's close to my age and plays a single dad with a disagreeable ex -- not unlike some people I know.

And then there's "Knight Rider," a show clearly aimed at a viewer one third my age. The star is a Ford Mustang that talks, solves complex problems and can turn itself into a pickup truck in about five seconds ... while going 100 mph. Reality TV it ain't. But kids loved the original, which starred German sensation David Hasselhoff and a Pontiac Trans Am, and so, like salmonella in the kitchens of the unvigilant, it has returned.

I like "Gary Unmarried." It's like other sitcoms I've seen of late involving newly broken-up households (remember when the sitcom single dad was a widower instead of a divorcee?). It's directed by James Burrows, a comedy legend who directed every "Will & Grace" ever. It's got lots of laughs.

But not as many laughs as tonight's episode of the new "Knight Rider."

If you are in the market for a graphic design artist and are a big fan of "Mad Men," then have I found a prospect for you.

An artist who goes by the name of Dyna Moe has been designing wallpapers based on each new episode of the second season of AMC"s newly minted best drama of the year. Above is Joan with, of course, the Xerox machine.

A number of readers have written in telling me their stories about trying to pull in digital TV signals using their new converter boxes. (For those of you who have every TV set in your house hooked up to cable or satellite, you may skip this article.)

"The worst High Def station in Kansas City is KMBC," reads one letter. "Their picture quality is horrible compared to the others. What do you know about KMBC's High Def signal?"

Here's what I know. KMBC is the only station that is broadcasting digitally on VHF -- channel 7 to be exact. But not for much longer.

Two weeks after 9/11, CBS unveiled an oddly appealing little drama series on Tuesday nights called "The Guardian." It starred someone few Americans had heard of, an Australian actor named Simon Baker, as a soft-spoken attorney who, in order to avoid being disbarred for a drug conviction, agreed to perform community service as a legal advocate for kids in trouble.

Social work is not a sure-fire idea for a hit prime-time TV show, but "The Guardian" stuck around for four years of modest ratings thanks in large part to its unlikely lead actor. And so, in its usual conservative fashion, CBS has signed up Baker for another series (his third with the network) that marries his "Guardian" role to a "CSI"-style police procedural. "The Mentalist" is safe, predictable, manufactured crime drama ... and it works.

Sam is having a bad week. In fact, you could say he's having his worst week since the last time he went to visit his prospective in-laws and accidentally set their house on fire.

Well, the show is called "Worst Week," after all, and as you might guess, Sam's fortunes aren't going to get any better next week, either. Although it will be hard to top what we see in the first half hour of tonight's pilot -- comically bad driving and ill-timed phone calls and impolitic utterances and people stepping in the wrong place at the wrong time and even a man mistaken for a corpse. "Worst Week" is Rube Goldberg meets Murphy's Law meets the parents. And it's hysterical.

After I was done splitting my sides, though, I had a question for this bright new comedy on CBS: How can things possibly be this bad -- I mean good -- next week?

If you haven't seen the offending portions of this weekend's "SNL," I've made a low-res video of the relevant clips below.

KOGO's Chip Franklin and I talked about this "SNL" sketch that used insinuations of incest in the Palin family as a punchline ... twice.

(or download now)

And here's the video. Judge for yourself:

Ha! Can you tell I'm not in market today? The station that aired the Chiefs game was, of course, KCTV-5. I'll forward this email (privately!) to management there.

But if WDAF could please to unblock the Gmail, I'm sure more than I would appreciate it.

The channel formerly known as American Movie Classics made its grand debut at television's fancy ball Sunday night, as its series "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad," in their first year of eligibility, took home two of the gaudiest prizes at the 60th edition of the Primetime Emmy Awards. (Above: Creator Matthew Weiner and the crew and cast of "Mad Men.")

The wins by cable networks AMC and FX also added some surprise and spark to a broadcast that veered from lifeless to cringeworthy.

What worked and didn't work for me Sunday night:

"John Adams" winning big. The 13 Emmys for HBO's latest historic miniseries masterpiece made history itself. No program had ever won more than 11 Emmys in a single year (when the eight prizes from last week's Creative Arts Emmys are added).

Little shows that could. "Mad Men," a little-watched drama about advertising men and their lives in the early 1960s, won best drama for AMC, a channel that had never aired a one-hour original scripted program before July 2007. "Mad Men," FX's "Damages" and AMC's "Breaking Bad" all took home major Emmys.

So, I'm not in Kansas City right now, but in Seattle, land of evergreens and rainy season, where my vacation is about to begin ... just as soon as the Emmys are over.

As you may know, Seattle is in the the Pacific Time Zone, where many live TV events air on a two-hour delay. Since my colleagues at the Kansas City Star are counting on me to meet their deadlines, which are inconveniently pegged to Central Time, I'll be watching the festivities on an East Coast TV station via satellite.

6:10 p.m. CT: Jimmy Kimmel is hosting his pre-Emmys special. Think "anti-Barbara Walters" and you're in the neighborhood. Tinkly music, gauzy lens, Jimmy doing deadpan interviews in a fancy mansion. If you have the sound down, you almost think he's playing it straight. But then, you see Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps laughing. Had you had the sound up, you'd know Jimmy had just asked him, "You pee in the pool, right? Which country leads the world in peeing the pool?"

6:14 p.m. CT: Hilarious fake clip from "Grey's Anatomy" starring Phelps in a Speedo as "Dr. McSwimmy." (Interesting: Every time the camera shows him from the front, there's a black spot with the word CENSORED over his package. Was that deliberate or did standards & practices demand it?) Phelps is pretty much two eyebrows and a couple of paddle feet. So the fact the interview was actually pretty entertaining says a lot for Kimmel and his staff.

Another roundup of local TV-related news items, including the Metro Sports show that's gone national, KTWU's congressional debate wants your questions, and news about "High School Confidential," the reality show filmed here.

• A week after stormy weather forced KCPT to cancel its annual fundraiser at the Liberty Memorial, the station got some much better news: The National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) will provide more than $800,000 in funding to KCPT to help it with its costly conversion from analog to digital transmission (aka DTV). The money was announced by Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who sits on the Senate Commerce Committee, which works closely with NTIA on the DTV transition.

If you think you're shelling out a lot of money so your TV is ready for the digital switch next February, think about KCPT. It started converting to digital before any other station in the market, way back in 1997, and it's still got miles to go.

And no, there is no mention of Emmy anywhere in the episode -- though two-time Emmy winner Beau Bridges appears as Earl's dad (for which he has been nominated, and lost, twice now).

For the record, Emmy has been pretty darned sweet to "My Name Is Earl": 11 nominations and five wins.

Here is one fearless prediction I am willing to venture about this year's Emmy Awards: "John Adams," the HBO miniseries that thrust us so effectively into the small world of the American colonies and the life of the republic's great founding family, will go home with at least eight trophies.

Want another? OK, "Mad Men," the show no self-respecting television critic has failed to praise effusively, will take home at least four Emmy Awards.

How can I make such bold forecasts? Easy... because those programs won those awards last week at the Creative Arts ceremony. It's unlikely you tune in for those -- they will air in heavily edited form Saturday night on E! -- but that is where the bulk of the Emmy hardware is actually handed out.

In the past two weeks, Barack Obama's campaign has unleashed two angry email campaigns to mobilize supporters against a Chicago radio host they claimed was smearing Obama. News stories covering the controversy have repeated the campaign's contention that they were merely being vigilant against any and all attempts to "swift-boat" their candidate. The noun that's become a verb is used as shorthand, both by politicos and the press, to describe any non-issue-related attack on a Democrat.

If that's really true, then he couldn't have picked a more inappropriate target.

Obama didn't go after Rush Limbaugh or Jerry Agar or Glenn Beck or Mark Levin or any number of other right-wing radio hosts (as featured in the terrific book Shock Jocks by my colleague Rory O'Connor). No, he went after WGN Radio's Milt Rosenberg -- a genial University of Chicago professor who for 35 years has hosted possibly the most civilized two hours of commercial radio anywhere in America, "Extension 720."

Few people have exposed more authors to more readers in that time than Milt Rosenberg has. Barack Obama should know. He was a guest on "Extension 720" in 1995 ... when he had a book to promote.

Rosenberg's crime? Interviewing two journalists, Stanley Kurtz and David Freddoso, who have written critically about Obama's political, social and financial connections.

It's been 10 years since my little pre-information-explosion experiment, Barnhart's Unauthorized TV 98, was published. At the time I was trying to make a mark, and make a buck, by bringing to light a lot of the then-obscure statistical research that explained why certain TV shows get made and not other ones, and why certain TV shows get cancelled and other ones renewed.

I wrote in the intro: "Barnhart’s Unauthorized TV ’98 attempts to be a comprehensive guide to the 1998–99 television season, with capsule reviews of each of the 123 prime-time programs on the broadcast schedule this fall, as well as selected cable, syndicated and late-night fare. It attempts to perforate much of the hype that accompanies a fall season rollout, hype that I believe harms the broadcast industry in the long run because it makes viewers more cynical and, as they say, cable-ready."

Every month on the Walt Bodine Show on KCUR-FM, we take calls from listeners. Of course, if you have a burning question you're free to email me with them, but this edited version of the KCUR Lightning Round for September may answer questions you never even thought to ask!

(or download it)

Here's a little tip for actresses -- or in the politically correct-speak of Hollywood, actors who happen to be women -- looking to advance their careers with some meaningful on-screen parts on television.

If your agent calls with a role on the CW series "Supernatural," hang up! Step away from the phone! Take that hand modeling job instead!

OK, perhaps I'm overreacting to the "Supernatural" season starter that airs at 8 p.m. CT Thursday on the CW. And full disclosure, I can't say I have ever been a fan of this show. But because it follows in the great tradition of CW/WB programs that use Kansas as a touchstone for all things decent and middle-American ("90210," "Smallville," "Summerland"), and because the fourth season screener was accompanied by a vest-pocket edition of the Holy Bible with a bookmark stuck in Revelation -- the King James version, which I always read in a loud, British-sounding voice -- I was intrigued enough to give it a whirl.

Forty-two minutes and three expendable females later, I had to go watch something on Oxygen.

Despite the reluctance of critics like me to embrace the latest creation, "True Blood," from "Six Feet Under" creator Alan Ball (above, with Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer), HBO isn't wasting any time giving it a second-season renewal. (See release below) But it's not the only division of Time Warner willing to settle for less than the best. Did you see that item yesterday that TNT was renewing "Raising the Bar"? The worst new drama of the fall season?? With that crazy judge and her bisexual boy toy?