WE must thank the broadcasters for their renewed effort to revive the art of conversation. Network controllers, aware that their medium has long been blamed for killing social intercourse, are belatedly attempting to make amends.

For some time now, they have done what they can to compel us to switch off and hold a faltering dialogue with thingy, you know, that person you live with. Thanks to such atrocities as Celebrity Sleepover with Vanessa Feltz, Esther Rantzen: Star Lives, This Is My Moment, and Carol Vorderman, thousands of marriages have been saved.

Now BBC and ITV execs are going a step further by entering into a pact. As each channel laid out its threadbare autumn schedule before us, it became clear that they have pledged not to screen a single exciting programme for the rest of the year.

Already, thanks to the kindness of telly bosses, we have enjoyed a summer of love. Look forward to a mini-population boom in nine months akin to that which followed the Seventies' power blackouts.

People trapped indoors by baby-sitting duty used to rely on the television to see them through to slumber. More recently they had to find an alternative form of recreation after skimming the telly pages to find that the highlight was the flabby love romp involving Michael Elphick and Barbara Windsor four-times a week in EastEnders. Aaargh!

August has traditionally been the month of repeats. But UK Gold now looks cutting edge compared to the mainstream broadcasters. This week, BBC and ITV gave us yet another chance to see Dad's Army, Not The Nine O'Clock News, The Darling Buds Of May, To The Manor Born, A Touch Of Frost and Porridge. Then there are the "new" shows, like, erm, I Love The Nineties.

So it would have come as a terrible shock to the system if the telly bosses had organised a fantastic line-up of must-see TV for the autumn. Mercifully, they haven't.

Both main channels have hit upon the idea of reanimating the rotting corpses of comedies.

The BBC has re-activated the old ITV hit Auf Wiedersehen Pet, and its loveable gang of northern brickies. This was a hit in the Eighties because it reflected the recession-hit times. These days, builders have never had it so good. Revive this and you might as well bring back Boys From The Blackstuff with Yosser Hughes in charge of a City headhunting firm.

BBC1 is bringing back Absolutely Fabulous, despite the fact that the bubbles in its champagne had gone flat long before the end of the "last ever" series.

What else can we ignore this autumn? There's ITV1's 2DTV, featuring the crazily original idea of a Posh and Becks spoof. BBC1 is following up its hit series Walking With Dinosaurs, so expect another series long on fancy computer graphics and short on facts. And it's nicked the Kathy Burke comedy Gimme Gimme Gimme from BBC2.

Channel 4, meanwhile, continues its policy of putting its best shows - mostly American imports - on E4 first and filling its own schedules with tat. Just as it became clear that reality TV was beginning to annoy the UK's underpants off, Channel Bore has come up with Model Behaviour (anorexic girls compete for a photo-shoot), Lost (contestants get lost in the jungle and viewers think good riddance); and Bar Wars, where two teams compete to run the most profitable Spanish bar.

You can have too much of a bad thing, of course.

So well played BBC2.

It has scheduled some interesting and original programming in between sitcom reruns, without which Britain would be facing a population explosion.