You would think that, with over 75 years of day to day experience in improving the quality and content  of television, the industry should be able to produce a slam-bang extravaganza when it came to honoring itself.

How then can you explain the three-hour abortion that was foisted on the public last Sunday?

Award shows, by their very nature, have always been tedious, self-congratulatory and BORING!  Knowing this, you would think the TV "mavens" would try to present the most sparkling show they could create.

But no.  Year after year, these nonstop orgies of egomania have gotten "worser and worser."  They have gone from dull to deadly.  What I saw the other night reminded me of Rosie O'Donnell's feeble attempts to revive the musical show last season, but even more pitiful.

When the host is a star of the first magnitude or a bright comedian like Billy Crystal or Whoopee Goldberg or Ellen De Generes, or even the irreplaceable Bob Hope, the humor and residual glitz can save the day.

Hugh Jackman helped pump a lot of life into the Oscars.

Likewise, the production numbers, the montages, and documentaries help add a note of interest and professionalism, while the real banalities of the award process are in progress.

Unfortunately, aside from the opening number and a haunting In Memoriam song, there were no highlights  (They didn't even have a streaker dash across the stage.)

The evening started promisingly enough with Neal Patrick Harris' opening number  It was a bright, witty, word-packed plea to "Don't Touch the Remote!"  The song was a scintillating mix of Danny Kaye and Gilbert and Sullivan, that got the evening off to a roaring start.

Sadly, after that, the whole evening went into the crapper.  Aside from Harris' topical reference to Kanye West and a few other gags, his attempts were weak puerile and embarrassing.  The running joke of his not getting an award was limp and labored.  That it even got in at all can be explained by the fact that he was the producer of the show.

Aside from that, the show was a singularly humorless affair.

I have always wondered how people whose business is interpreting the words of others, should have such a hard time formulating their own.

Most entertainers, movie and TV stars are, it seems, conversational k;utzes.  Aside from the blessed few who can speak for themselves, and those coached by the company flak, most show business types need a bit of Extemporaneous Ex-Lax to get going. (Pun intended.).

Kristin Chenoweth, the first winner. for "Pshing Daisies," was a raving idiot.  Despite the fact that she is a multiaward winner, she could not string two words together without giggling or crying.  It was not only that she was surprised (?) at winning the award, it was her personality. I have heard her equally incomprehensible on other shows as well.

The presenters did not fare any better.

I am amzed that a business that could spawn the manic and memorable humor of Seinfeld, M*A*S*H, Friends, 30 Rock and Two and a Half Men could not call on some of their best gagsters to put a few witty words in their mouths.

What the writers of the show did do was pen lines that tried to deal with the category (excuse me, "genre") and the personna and the idiosyncracies of the presenters.  They failed miserably.

When you have such larger than life figures like Alec Baldwin, Charlie Sheen, Tina Fey, you could get a few good yoks, but the rest were such colorless and anonymous people that you couldn't say that much about them.

Halfway through the show the producers decided is was useless trying to wring the slightest bit of levity out of the beautiful but inanimate zombies.

Some of the men were such clods, that they were limited to reading the nominees and announcing the winners.  It seemed that the peoducer had a case of "get 'em, get 'em off and getting this behemoth out of the way as soon as possible.

The clock was a vicious taskmaster, and the fear of running over pervaded the evening. The director was more likea slasher.

The dividing of the show into "genres" (excuse me) did nothing to increase the respectability and the entertsinment value of the presentation.  Further, it impeded the cohseion and the coherence of the program.

Harris and cohorts completely wasted the opportunity that was given to them.  They could have started each segment with a retrospective or a documentary or a lesson which would have given narrative content and impact to the material

They used only only fuzzy still shots to illustrate the category or the nominated show.  If clips had been added, the sudience and the people at home, who did not see the original, would have a clue as to why the award was being given,

Considering the great musical boost that was given at the beginning, why not interpolate other musical numbers to refresh the otherwise arid waits between presentations.

Whole segments could be done on Country and Rock and choreographed classic theme songs or hit songs that started on TV.

A large part of the problem of timing had to do with trying to cram too much into a three-hour broadcast.  There were just tooo many categories.

Get rid of the garbage categories. Add those awards to the afternoon guest star and tech presentation.  I know this would put many surgically reconstructed noses out of joint, but it would save the nighttime audience from having to suffer the torment.

Limit the awards to the top ones: Best Comedy, Best Drama, Best Actor and Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Writer, Director and maybe a few others.

Since the awards are only voted on by members of the trade and the Academy, the only ones reakky interested in these incestuous proceeding are the studios, the producers, the agents and every artist and artisan whose next job depends on the success of the project.

The product-buying public does not need to be subjected to it.

The actors congratulating Harris for the "wonderful" job he was doing as host are further proof of the velvet hypocrisy that exists in show business.

Get the awards, the self-adulation portion of the program out of the way early.

Then turn the remainder of the affair into pure entertainment.  Let the winning actors and actresses perform a scene from a show.  Let them do classic scenes from older shows.  Show some of the winning stars in their earlier roles and commercials.

Do a tribute to Ed Sullivan and Arthur Godfrey.

Use a Where Are They Now segment.  Restage famous numbers from previous shows.  See how many "kines" they could resurrect.

Television is a performance medium: place the emphasis on performance, current performance.

(This is a lesson that "America's Got Talent+ should learn. Rebroadcasting the events of the night before is either filling or killing time.

Indisputably the oldest enemy of the award show format has always been the thank you speeches.  They are a necessary but burdensome evil of the process.

True, the purpose of the show is to award achievement and achievers, but not every person who ever drove a nail or served a cop of coffee on a production.

Limit or eliminate the thank you's completely. (Sacrilege!)

Let the spokesperson say, : I would like to thank everybody who helped make this award possible."  Then they should only be allwed to name the studio, the producer, the director, the writers and co-stars.  After that, if they are not particularly articulate or charismatic, like Ken Howard was, tell them to shut up.

The specter of the producer or the star marching up to the stage with an entourage of 12 people, further snaring the time continuum is ridiculous and indulgent. ("Hey, ma. look me!")

Eliminating the excess talk, the show would gain extra time to show vignettes or tell funny anecdotal stories about the production.

Another thing the Academy should do is work on the premise that every nominee might win and shouand insist they prepare an acceptance speefch which could then be edited, formatted and placed on teleprompter.  True this might interfere with the spontaneity,  insanity and  danger of the situation, but it would save time and useless babble.

Since the dawn of mankind, the motto has been "Upward and onward." On the contrary, for award shows, it had been downward and backward.

I think it was Julia Louis Dreyfus who said something like welcome to the last year of network television.

Well, the award shows, especially the Emmys, had better pay heed or this may prove horribly prophetic,