If you’ve been watching NBC’s multichannel Olympics coverage like a die-hard sports fan - scouring daily newspaper TV listings and Internet sites to find your favorite sport - you’re already in training for the start of the 2004-05 fall TV season.

Whenever that is.

Good luck finding when, and where, your old favorites return with fresh episodes.

Better luck learning, and remembering, when the most intriguing new fall series surface. Some of them don’t appear until 2005; others are here already. I think. But I’m not sure, even when making my list and checking it twice. And this is supposed to be my job: knowing what’s coming, when it’s coming and whether it’s worth watching.

If I can’t figure it out without an abacus and a series of cross-checks, how can you? And with all this confusion, and with so many new shows not worth the time, why should you bother?

In the good old pre-cable days of the 1960s and ’70s, there were three networks to deal with: ABC, CBS and NBC. All of them rolled out their new fall shows the same week or so, timed to give Detroit the maximum audience for the unveiling of its newest line of automobiles.

Randy Newman once told me that as a kid he would wait eagerly for the annual TV Guide fall preview issue, then memorize the new schedules, carefully deciding which shows he would watch each night. I did the same. Today, there’s no reason for anyone to bother. Shows don’t last more than a few weeks. Neither do schedules - and lately, nor do seasons.

Traditionally, the new TV season begins the day after the Emmy Awards. This year, that’s Sept. 19, and CBS is sticking with tradition and presenting its new and returning shows that week. But NBC starts its new season next Monday, the day after its Olympics coverage ends, and Fox, and the WB already have started. Meanwhile, ABC launches some new and returning shows during traditional premiere week, but other series don’t premiere until midseason.

What’s the first new show of the 2004-05 season? NBC’s "Father of the Pride," which premieres Aug. 31? WB’s "Studio 7" or "Blue Collar TV," which premiered in July but are on most fall schedules? Or is it the Fox drama "North Shore," which premiered in June?

Cable TV has spawned, and added to, this confusion. HBO does so well tag-teaming shows in the same time slots - when "Sopranos" leaves, "Six Feet Under" or "Deadwood" takes its place - that broadcast networks are beginning to follow suit. At ABC, "Desperate Housewives," one of the few new fall shows worth sampling, starts Oct. 3 - and not until it is through with its fall run, at midseason, does "Alias" return with new episodes.

And over on USA Network, "Monk" just presented its third-season finale, only 10 weeks and nine episodes after presenting what it called its third-season premiere. Sci-Fi Channel shows are similarly short-stacked. The thinking seems to be, if Mother Nature can have four seasons a year, why can’t we?

The networks can, and are, but they shouldn’t. In theory, the 52-week season sounds great. In practice, it gives us little to get excited about, and no obvious time in which to get focused and excited. Without a uniform beginning to the fall season, there’s no starting gun, no thrill of competition, no sense of anything other than a sprawling, confusing mess.

Sadly, that also describes most of the new shows this year. If you can’t find them, for the most part you aren’t missing much.