The TV Zone

Here we are again: the time of year that UPS, FedEx and DHL just love -- all that money to be made from TV networks wooing TV critics to love their new fall slates.

Every day now for us, it’s Christmas in July -- make that September -- as delivery services dump upon us piles of not only episodes for review, but also title-slathered products, lest we forget what we’re writing about. These little “treasures” turn our desks into journalist versions of those doctors’ offices littered with pharmaceutical-branded pens, note pads, tissues and other inexpensive debris.

I mean, collectible premiums.

Right here is a “Back to You” notepad and pen from the new Fox sitcom debuting Sept. 19 with Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton playing quarrelsome news anchors. (There’s also a squishy mini news van for us to exercise our typing fingers with.)

And there’s a Regis and Kelly coffee mug (with a one-cup coffee press!), commemorating the live morning show’s 20th anniversary season starting Sept. 10.

We get show-branded T-shirts and Sharpies and bobbleheads and tote bags (“Two and a Half Men”! But only one bag!), and even DVD sets of last season in case we missed it.

But some publicists really put on their thinking caps and come up with promotional items so cleverly related to their shows, yet so off-the-wall, that somebody should be giving them high-fives.

Well, here’s my palm slap.

The people at “Cops” -- the Fox reality/verite series celebrating both its 20th season and 700th episode in the season starting this Saturday -- decided to worm their way into critics’ hearts by sending out a keychain-sized battery-operated alcohol breath tester (with, of course, the COPS logo emblazened upon it). They even included the batteries. Plus instructions explaining the green, yellow and red lights that, upon breathing onto the device, indicate how soused you might be (0.05% is yellow, 0.08% is red).

If only we’d had this handy little gadget back in the days when newspaper people were drinkin’, smokin’, hard-livin’ word crunchers with ink in our veins and clattersome presses ringing in our ears. We sure could’ve used it. (Please don’t check our rap sheets.)

But now we’re all college-educated, cyber-savvy, video-ready “professionals” who can’t smoke within X feet of tidy “media corporation” buildings, who’d be fired for having a bottle of booze anywhere near the workplace, who type on shiny computers that create pixels satellite-beamed to some distant press location whose noise and dirt never have to sully our refined senses.

Boy, do I want a beer. Or seven.

C’mon, “Cavemen.” Top this.