ION: COMFORT TV

You ever just want to curl up and watch Mama's Family? These guys understand

Cable used to be littered with channels showing dusty reruns of shows like Gilligan's Island and Maude. They've all since gone the way of rabbit ears — even Nick at Nite has morphed into one endless Full House marathon. ION, which rose from the ashes of PAX, is now the only player in town. When it's not showing infomercials (about 60 percent of its programming), ION serves up Quantum Leap, Mama's Family and The Steve Harvey Show. Periodically, its slate of reruns changes. Sometimes it's The Wonder Years, sometimes Perfect Strangers, which has aged remarkably well. Even the infomercials are entertaining, particularly the one for the Time Life Classic Soft Rock collection, hosted by Air Supply and full of homoerotic overtones. ION may look like a UHF station from 1990, but it's a modern-day national cable channel — and the last bastion of irony-free entertainment on TV.

ANDY GREENE

BASEBALL ON TV THAT ISN'T BORING

DirecTV launches a channel for ADD diamond freaks. Or compulsive gamblers

Man, people love to bitch about baseball on TV. It's too long, too meandering, too full of Joe Morgan rambling on about what he ate for dinner in 1978. Well, we've got a solution, whiners. It's DirecTV's Strike Zone Channel. It's baseball TV for crackheads. You don't watch one game. You watch every game. At once. DirecTV flips from stadium to stadium, bringing you clutch moments as they happen. One minute you're watching Manny Ramirez with the bases loaded, the next you're checking to see if Brandon Webb can shut out the Dodgers. "We keep it movin'," says DirecTV executive VP Eric Shanks. "For the first time, baseball and TV might wear you out."

JASON GAY

Photo: DirectTV