Here's how bare the programming cupboards are at the network that was for years broadcast TV's most dominant and innovative: Next week, NBC will air 12 hours of Law & Order in its various, if not varied, incarnations, allowing the franchise to occupy more than half its schedule.

It's as if the network were purposely pursuing the TV version of the perfect storm, that fatal point where creative exhaustion meets audience ennui.

Oddest of all, right in the middle of that Order onslaught (which drops to a mere nine hours the week after), NBC will premiere the fourth show in the franchise, Law & Order: Trial by Jury. Can you think of a better way to make viewers think they're simply getting more of the same than by surrounding Jury with more of the same? It could be the first show in TV history to premiere as a rerun.

The reason for this late February influx is ratings. NBC is in danger of finishing fourth in the soon-to-be-concluded sweeps — not just in total viewers, but also in the younger viewers the network used to brag about capturing. So it's making use of one of the only weapons it has at its command. What else can it do? Supersize Joey, a once-promising sitcom that has bled viewers and goodwill as the network, the studio and the producers dithered?

The question is how NBC allowed itself to become so reliant on one franchise — a franchise that, unlike CBS' CSI juggernaut, doesn't even hold a spot in the Top 10. Indeed, other than SVU, L&O shows don't even consistently win their time slots.

Still, given that NBC is so dependent on L&O, reason says the network would be wise to avoid exhausting it. Yes, overall, the shows are holding up remarkably well, given that they sometimes air as much as 10 hours a day between network and cable.

But as ABC learned with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, it's virtually impossible to tell when a series has reached the exhaustion point until it has — and by then, it's too late. Ask the buffalo hunters, if you can find any.

Clearly NBC isn't the only network to work a show or a genre to death, or to have trouble coming up with new ideas. Between the falling Numb3rs and the vacant CSI: NY, which is no more than a title in search of a show, CBS has clearly drained the procedural well dry.

Over at Fox, the network's only true hit is the mega-smash American Idol— though wisely the network has used it to boost two great hours, 24 and House. And although ABC has struck the mother lode with Desperate Housewives and Lost, it's propping up the rest of its schedule with various versions of Extreme Makeover.

Still, whether you base your judgment on what people actually do watch or what they should watch, NBC is clearly at the bottom of the network Big Four. Its only series in the season-to-date Top 10 is the aged wonder ER. Its next best performer is The Apprentice, a show that can do no better than a distant second place in a time slot NBC owned for decades.

That's such a dismal development record, you might think the network was being run by a secret cabal of ABC, CBS and Fox executives.

The hopeful news is that network ratings collapses are nothing new, and they often have the same salutatory effect as a forest fire. They're terrible as they rage, but they clear out the deadwood and make room for new growth. Indeed, the farther networks fall, the more prone they are to the kind of experimentation that leads to new, breakout hits. Look at ABC, which went from desperate network to Desperate Housewives in one artistic leap.

Maybe next year, NBC will have a similar recovery. Or maybe it will give us Law & Order: Chapter Five. In which case, we can all just order up another network.

• Chew •

That being the case, I actually have an interest in picking up the new series due to some of the cast. Can anybody give me a little pre-show rundown of what the focus of this version is?