Sorry Spectacle Television Is Steadily Sinking To New Depths Of Tastelessness. But For All The Concern Expressed Since Columbine, Those Graphic Reality Programs, Sleazy Talk Shows And Pro Wrestling Extravanganzas Won't Disappear Soon - For A Number Of Reasons.

How low can television go?

On Fox, there is Cheating Death and When Stunts Go Bad - terrifying footage of accidents, crashes and chases.

On Guinness World Records: Primetime, people shoot milk out of their noses and gobble live worms to make it into the record books.

On MTV's The Blame Game, former couples parade indiscretions so intimate they'd make Beavis and Butt-head blanch. On Comedy's Central's soon-to-premiere celebration of flatulence called The Man Show, every half-hour ends with scantily clad women bouncing on a trampoline.

And don't even get us started on pro wrestling.

Call it extreme television or even Spectacle TV - shows that push the envelope until it is in shreds. In terms of graphic, shocking, explicit programs, television is breaking - maybe plumbing is a better word - new ground every day.

"It's never been like this," said Robert Thompson, head of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television.

Viewers, politicians and even entertainers are starting to notice - something they might not have done until the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado in April. Then, everyone started looking for someone or something to blame.

"Has it ever been this bad? I guess bad is a relative term," said Garth Jowett, professor of communication at the University of Houston, who is writing a history of TV. "Has it ever been this explicit? The answer is no."

And it is only likely to get worse.

Economics is driving Spectacle TV. Networks are scrambling to find relatively cheap shows that grab young male viewers and fickle channel surfers long enough so that advertisers such as Turtle Wax and 1-800-Collect and Chef Boy-R-Dee can sell them some wares.

Pro wrestling brings young men in droves. An average of 1.7 million boys and men between 12 and 34 tuned in to cable channel USA's World Wrestling Federation shows on Monday nights in 1998. That's more than NBC, with 1.5 million of those viewers; more than CBS, with 885,000; and more than ABC, with 1.4 million male viewers - and Monday Night Football, to boot.