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Scandal is the intriguing new drama from Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes. It's built around one of the strongest (in every sense) female characters to hit prime time in recent memory. Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) is a former Oval Office insider who has formed a thriving, teeming crisis-management firm in Washington, D.C. With her frighteningly fast-talking staff (Henry Ian Cusick of Lost, Columbus Short, Darby Stanchfield, Katie Lowes, and Guillermo Diaz), she represents clients - a Russian diplomat, a Georgetown madame, a decorated military hero - caught in compromising positions.

Editor's note: Due to a production error, this story did not appear in Tuesday's Daily News. It is being repeated in full today. PHILADELPHIA: THE GREAT EXPERIMENT. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, 6ABC. By ellen gray Daily News Television Critic IF FILMMAKER Ken Burns had had Sam Katz's budget, we might still be in the early innings of "Baseball. " But Katz, the former mayoral candidate, who, along with his son, Philip, has been at work for a few years on a documentary series on the history of Philadelphia, is making progress.

LOS ANGELES - Nicollette Sheridan should receive $6 million for being killed off "Desperate Housewives" after the show's creator slapped her, her attorney said yesterday, as a defense lawyer argued that her onscreen demise was a natural part of television. The dueling characterizations of a dispute between Sheridan and "Housewives" creator and executive producer Marc Cherry were presented to jurors in opening remarks of a case that will offer glimpses into the behind-the-scenes maneuvers of a hit TV show.

THE RIVER. 9 tonight, 6 ABC.   HOW FAR WOULD you follow Steven Spielberg? The second much-anticipated series credited to the uber-producer in two days - either the man never sleeps or he's been cloned - tonight's premiere of ABC's "The River," with its shaky, grainy camera shots, "found" footage and dearth of production numbers, bears little resemblance to NBC's "Smash. " But they're both about putting on a show. It's a long-running series, "The Undiscovered Country," that's made explorer and wildlife Dr. Emmett Cole (Bruce Greenwood)

LOS ANGELES - An anti-profanity crusader asked ABC on Tuesday to pull this week's Modern Family episode, in which a toddler appears to use a bleeped curse word. "Our main goal is to stop this from happening," said McKay Hatch, an 18-year-old college student who founded the No Cussing Club in 2007. "If we don't, at least ABC knows that people all over the world don't want to have a 2-year-old saying the 'F-bomb' on TV. " "We hope they know better," said Hatch. He was asking his club's membership, which he said totaled 35,000 in the United States and about three dozen other countries, to complain to ABC. ABC had yet to respond, he said Tuesday.

LOS ANGELES - The Amazing Race has returned to the winner's podium at the Emmy Awards, reclaiming the crown for best reality-competition program. The CBS show had been a consistent winner until last year, when Top Chef stole away the award. In other honors Sunday, The Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons won his second Emmy in a row as best lead actor in a comedy. Melissa McCarthy of Mike & Molly won the award for lead actress. "Holy smokes. Wow, it's my first and best pageant ever," said a beaming McCarthy.

Some spy must have journeyed to Hollywood from the land of the Amazons to put a potion in TV executives' apple martinis. Eleven new scripted series introduce themselves in the 2011-12 season Premiere Week, which ends next Sunday. Nine feature women as the lead characters. The three with the most buzz - ABC's Charlie's Angels and Pan Am , and NBC's The Playboy Club - all have their roots in the long-ago. Not surprisingly, those big-buildup series are also the worst of the nine, the groaner remake of the '70s Farrah Fawcett-Jaclyn Smith starrer coming in dead last among all new shows of the season.

AS REGULAR Tattle readers know, TV's never-ending onslaught of faux-reality and faux-talent shows gets on our nerves. And although we expected the morality crusaders to come out of the woodwork when Chaz Bono was picked for the new "Dancing with the Stars," even Tattle has been surprised by the volume of bigotry and hate shown a D-List celeb on a silly TV dance contest. The ABC message-board flaming has been so bad, the Hollywood Reporter wrote a story on it. Bellcindy wrote to ABC: "I do not hate Chaz as a person.

Cue the crickets. We're in one of the TV year's dead zones. It's so slow out there that MTV couldn't find anyone to host its Video Music Awards this weekend. Rather than stare at our navels, let us turn our gazes forward. With the new season fast approaching, I make the following fearless predictions: The winner of Dancing With the Stars will be a professional athlete and not an entertainer (or whatever the likes of David Arquette pass for). It will take only two episodes of Fox's new talent show, The X Factor , for old adversaries Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul to be going for each other's throats.