THURSDAY 13

8:00 (25) The 34th NAACP Image Awards. And in prime time, no less. At least Fox does this right. Of course, Foxer Cedric the Entertainer is this year’s host. Spike Lee gets the Hall of Fame nod; presenters include Halle Berry, Ice Cube, and Denzel Washington. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Bee Gees: One Night Only. We’ve heard that promise before, and here we are listing this 1997 Bee Gees concert from Vegas again. When will it end for real? (Until 11 p.m.)

FRIDAY 14

9:00 (2) Now with Bill Moyers. Who knows what tonight’s topics will be? After receiving one e-mail last Monday from the nice people at Moyers’s office describing the March 7 edition (see last week’s "Hot Dots" if you care) and then another on Tuesday — this one from the nice people at WGBH — which completely contradicted the one we got before we went to press, we’ve determined that we really can’t keep up. So we’ll just tell you that a lot of very bright people watch this show religiously, and you should as well. Perhaps Bill could compete with, say, MAD TV by replaying highlights from unelected president Bush’s March 6 press conference, which went something like this. Q: "Mr. President, why do you think most nations and more than half the world’s population disagree with your contention that we have to bomb the shit out of Iraq as soon as possible?" A: "My job is protect the American people. It’s like 9/11. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and he’s a terrorist — or he could sell the weapons to terrorists. That’s the lesson of 9/11." Q: "Mr. President, since there’s no documented connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and since North Korea certainly does have nuclear weapons, why are you waging war on Iraq?" A: "Its my job to protect the American people. That’s the lesson of 9/11. Saddam has been a threat for 12 years. I want the UN to work. Saddam is a terrorist. He butchers his own people. That’s the lesson of 9/11." Q: "Mr. President, prior to the Gulf War, didn’t the US back Saddam Hussein and sell him weapons of mass destruction to use against Iran, much as we backed the Taliban in Afghanistan?" A: "Well, Saddam hasn’t complied with 1441, has he? That’s the lesson of 9/11. My job is to protect the American people." Q: "Mr. President, aren’t you just a petty numb-nuts dictator masquerading as the leader of the free world? And won’t your foreign policies pretty much destroy every positive relationship America has cultivated since World War II?" A: "I pray every day for guidance. It’s my job to protect the American people. That’s the lesson of 2/7/33 . . . er . . . 9/11." Bush’s message was clear: Saddam should go into exile in North Korea, where it’s safe. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:30 (44) American Soundtrack: Rhythm, Love, and Soul. Repeated from last week. Another big oldies show from Pittsburgh, featuring Aretha Franklin, Gloria Gaynor, Jerry Butler, Lou Rawls, Mary Wilson, and more. To be repeated on Sunday at 8 p.m. on Channel 2. (Until midnight.)

SATURDAY 15

1:30 (4) Basketball. Big 10 semifinal tournament action.

6:00 (4) Basketball. Pac-10 championship game.

6:30 (2) Mwah! The Best of the Dinah Shore Show. Repeated from last week. Band singer Shore was once the highest-profile woman on television. Only the ancient remember her show (1957-’63), but this clip fest should be entertaining. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Simon and Garfunkel: The Concert in Central Park. More expected even than shows featuring tenors during a ’GBH fundraising period. Nice concert (from 1981). Why do we get to see it so often? (Until 10:30 p.m.)

8:00 (5) Frequency (movie). Uh . . . this movie is about . . . uh . . . the dangers of altering history. A New York cop plugs in a ham radio owned by his father, a New York firefighter who died in 1969, and hears messages from the day before his dad’s death. This is a sign that (a) he’s lost his grip, or (b) he can prevent his father’s demise. Sure. (Until 11 p.m.)

1:00 a.m. (44) Austin City Limits. Featuring music from Steve Earle and Kasey Chambers. (Until 2 a.m.)

SUNDAY 16

Noon (44) Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. Bill and Joe chat about God, art, eternity, and ancestral motifs all day. The entire series. (Until 8 p.m.)

3:30 (2) Jackie: Behind the Myth. Jackie O., long-suffering wife of our martyred 35th president, darling of the tabloids, and book editor, remembered through interviews with John Kenneth and Kitty Galbraith, Pierre Salinger, Isaac Stern, and I.M. Pei. To be repeated on Monday at 8 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 6:30 p.m.)

3:30 (5) Basketball. The Dallas Mavericks versus the Sacramento Kings.

6:30 (2) Will the Circle Be Unbroken? A roots concert from the Grand Ole Opry (by which we assume they mean at Opryland) featuring the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Earl and Randy Scruggs, Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, and the Del McCoury Band. (Until 8 p.m.)

7:00 (5) The Emperor’s New Groove (movie). A somewhat out-of-control film in which Eartha Kitt turns David Spade into a llama and John Goodman tries to help him regain his humanity. Fortunately, it’s all done with cartoon characters. Sting does some of the soundtrack. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (2) American Soundtrack: Rhythm, Love, and Soul. Repeated from Friday at 9:30 p.m.

9:00 (4) Mafia Doctor (movie). Here’s the moral ambiguity behind this 2003 BIFTVM (based-in-fact TV-movie): what if the Mafia pays for your medical education and then asks you to do stuff that violates the Hippocratic oath? That’s what Danny Nucci faces. With Olympia Dukakis, passing for Italian, and Paul Sorvino. (Until 11 p.m.)

MONDAY 17

7:30 (2) Judy Garland: The Concert Years. Who gives money to Channel 2? Working the target demographics backward, we’ve got to figure it’s people desperate for amateur advice about money and self-actualization who like anything sung by a tenor, or Simon and Garfunkel, or Judy Garland, or the Moody Blues. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Jackie: Behind the Myth. Repeated from Sunday at 3:30 p.m.

9:30 (2) American Soundtrack: This Land Is Your Land. A too-often repeated — but pleasant — tribute to ’60s folk music hosted by the Smothers Brothers and Judy Collins. Featuring modern performances by Glenn Yarbrough, the Limelighters, the Highwaymen, the Brothers Four, Roger McGuinn, and John Sebastian. (Until 11 p.m.)

TUESDAY 18

7:30 (2) La Plaza: Far from Cuba. The quick version of the saga of Cuban children sent to the US without the parents back when Castro took over the island. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (2) Nova: Sultan’s Lost Treasure. Said sultan lost his stuff in the South China Sea in the 15th century. Divers investigate the wreck and learn a lot about the earliest international-trade network. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Domestic Violence. The folks at WGBH made the mistake of comparing this pair of Frederick Wiseman films to reality TV. It’s not like that at all — but there is no narration. Wiseman looks at domestic violence in Florida with a pair of documentaries that follow Tampa cops on DV calls, look at life in the city’s largest victims’ shelter, and finally head to the courtroom to see how threatening domestic situations are, or aren’t, sorted out. (Until 12:30 a.m.)

WEDNESDAY 19

8:00 (2) Nature: Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees. Jane introduces us to the chimp clans she’s studied for decades. Lots of behavioralist revelations — sort of like a short, hairy soap opera. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) American Masters: Alice Waters and Her Delicious Revolution. California food messiah Waters prepares a 30th-anniversary spread for 600 at her legendary Chez Panisse. We didn’t know this, but, we’re told, Waters’s fresh-food approach changed the way we all eat. Yeah, okay, but it makes her happy to hear stuff like that. To be repeated tonight at 1 a.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Yours for a Song: The Women of Tin Pan Alley. Profiles of four female show-tune/pop composers — Dorothy Fields, Kay Swift, Ann Ronell, and Dana Suesse — who gave us such memorable standards as "Big Spender" and "Can This Be Love." With vintage performances of same by Ella, Perry, Frank, and Rosemary. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Bill Moyers in Conversation with Sister Wendy. See, we told you Bill was hot on PBS these days. This old show has him confronting the strange but lovable Art Nun, Sister Wendy Beckett. (Until 11 p.m.)

THURSDAY 20

Noon (4) Basketball. That fabled March Madness thing returns with some first-round NCAA contests. The games break for the nightly news, then pick up again at 7 p.m.

7:30 (2) That’s Entertainment (movie). What’s remarkable is that this 1974 anthology of hot numbers from MGM musicals is still entertaining. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Great Performances: Renée Fleming and Bryn Terfel: Music Under the Stars. Repeated from last week. The American soprano teams up with the Welsh bass-baritone for a selection of Broadway tunes (from Ragtime, Sweeney Todd, The Music Man, and The King and I) performed in North Wales. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

The 525th line. What’s worse than arena football? Any reality-TV show. Fox’s Cops, the original no-budget reality show created as filler during an ’80s screenwriters’ strike, now plays like Tolstoy compared with the totally faked-up un-reality soapers like Joe Millionaire and gross-out torture contests like Fear Factor. And it seems that television is seeking ever lower standards. We thought Bachlorettes in Alaska was about as dumb as something could get. But the thoroughly confusing Hey, I’m a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here (or whatever) proved otherwise. Now, to be fair, we have a limited time on earth and have chosen not to watch this kind of programming for more than five minutes a week, so there may be some hidden (well-hidden) virtue to televising parents giving their son’s girlfriends polygraph tests or 20-year-olds confronting their totally understandable fear of eating maggots that’s escaped us. But we doubt it. It’s clear the networks have abandoned any mission that doesn’t entail raking in the dough. If ad revenues dip, they’ll compensate by devising ever cheaper programming. And we’re the ones being cheated. So let’s fight back. Send an e-mail to the TV network of your choice saying something like: "Hey, I’m not a moron. Your fill-in-the-blank show offends my intelligence. What right do you have to use the public airwaves to destroy our culture? I’m boycotting all your advertisers and thinking rude thoughts about your mothers." See, these people are greedy, but underneath, they’re really simpleminded and nothing if not married to the art of pandering to public opinion. It might work.