Based on a number of television-related responses, Sportscream has a certified special interest group (SIG) that, although they like sports, is very sharp on matters that have to do with television. Anytime a TV-related post goes up, a flood of notable responses follow. This group has grown from a handfull to hundreds, and we believe it started from a core of readers that spend time together in cancer treatment.

After ‘taking the drip’ the television becomes a best friend and it has spawned some astute commentary on the state of sports and network programming. Very little of the standard network audience manipulations gets by this group. With DVR, expanding cable channels and falling viewership at all the networks, you’d think they would be a little more responsible about what, when, how and where they show their programming.

Increasingly, it’s obvious that the networks want you to develop viewing habits and invest time in their shows, because that’s how they get advertisers and make money. But if it doesn’t make their numbers, “forget you, but please tune into what we have next.”

It was never so evident than last week when the networks paraded out their Fall 2009 schedules, in what has been labeled “Upfront Week,” when television critics and visionaries are exposed to the lineups conjured by the programming geniuses at Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC and the lesser networks. It’s the time when the suits explain what will be on-air and what will be cancelled.

They reveal the first clues of their audience manipulations by showing the lineups they are going to parade out in the fall before they begin manipulating the long season by stopping and starting shows, pulling them altogether, inserting them mid-season, shuffling to new timespots, promoting anticipation, going into re-runs, putting shows on hiatus and falsely manipulating demand by holding off on their releases. In 2009-10 we also have NBC’s new “Jay Leno Show” nightly at ten and the Winter Olympics to contend with.

Our band of merry men and women have seen it all and increasingly are becoming impatient with shows that require an investment of time, only to be pulled, leaving viewers to so many loose plot lines, and questioning themselves about having wasted their time. That’s not a little thing to people who fight cancer.

A current trend in nighttime drama is for so many of the prime time series’ to copy each other and provide duel plotlines and backstories that evolve at a snails pace, while weekly episodes solve the situation at hand. CBS’ only 2009 season hit, “The Mentalist,” is a great example, where each week the California Bureau of Investigation intuitively solves some crime, while main star Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) gets drips and drabs of info (mostly by a one-show-in-six ratio) about the sinister “Red John” who killed his family. If CBS followed the network norm, lost audience, and for some reason cancelled “The Mentalist,” the show would vanish and so would all the uneven clues about Red John.

With the “Upfront Week” revelations, this is exactly what has happened with NBC’s “Life,” and ABC’s “Dirty Sexy Money” and “Eli Stone.” “Life,” Starring Englishman Damian Lewis, was actually a good show that got caught up in NBC’s schedule bumbling, the writer’s strike and the old “put and pull” routine where viewers never really fell into a habit. Our commentators spent an inordinate amount of time trying to put the timeline together in a linear fashion of what appeared to be three seasons, but was actually two. That’s what a writer’s strike and network jumbling will do. Most put last year’s episodes together where Charlie Crews (Lewis) rescues partner Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi) and kills the villain Roman Nevikov. Earlier, Crews had solved the mystery of the death he was framed and had spent 10 years in prison for. Still, that left dangling plotlines that included (among many others) Crews and Reese’s burgeoning love affair, the role of Reese’s father and LA police cohorts in the conspiracy and the whereabouts of the daughter of his murdered partner.

Kudos to ABC for trying to do something about their programming pullaways by using its summer Saturday night time to play out stockpiled episodes of “Dirty Sexy Money,” “Pushing Daisies,” and “Eli Stone.” This gesture at least indicates that ABC gets it and values its viewers. One might be more inclined to invest in an ABC show now, knowing that they will do something to try to not leave them hanging and hollow. It still remains to be seen whether DSM explains who killed Nate’s father, whether Nate the pieman will ever get to touch his true love, or Eli loses to the brain tumor.

Of the main audience manipulations, here’s a rundown on those shows that gather you for extended periods before going off to mystery production land — a genre started by “The Sopranos“:

Fox will bring back Jack Bauer and “24,” but not until 2010. The good news is that “24” is slated for two more years and remains primetime TV’s most expensive ad time. “American Idol” remains Fox’s and TV’s most-watched and its ninth season is slated for a January 2010 return. Mercifully, the final season of ABC’s “Lost” is scheduled to launch in early 2010. AMC’s “Mad Men” will return in August. HBO will return “Entourage” somewhere in a July/August timeframe. Episodes began shooting in March. Still no word if its 12 or 20 episode season. The second season of “True Blood” is slated for return June 14th. “Friday Night Lights” will not be turned on network TV until next summer, although two more seasons of the content-sharing project between Direct TV and NBC are guaranteed.

Here’s some highlights from “Upfront Week:”

Among the notably cancelled are: Fox’s “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” ABC’s “According To Jim,” NBC’s “My Name Is Earl” (although there’s talk of a Fox pick-up), “Knight Rider,” “Lipstick Jungle,” “Kings,” “Caruso,” and “Kath and Kim.” CBS is dumping “The Unit” and “Without A Trace” along with “Worst Week,” “Eleventh Hour,” and “The Ex-List.”

Shifting days are CBS’ “The Mentalist” from Tuesday at 9 to Thursday at 10, “Ugly Betty” to Friday at 9 on ABC against “Southland” at 9 on NBC. ABC will also push and pull cycles of what’s-still -left-on-the-shelf “Scrubs” and “Better Off Ted” on Tuesdays. CBS holds “Rules of Engagement” as a plug for one of its new failures.