When the fall rolls around, TV critics face one overarching challenge:

How to make an interesting story out of a process that essentially goes down the same way every year?

if you're a TV fan, you know what I'm saying. The big TV networks roll out most of their shows in the fall, with high expectations, big budgets and notable stars. Over the next three months, 60 to 70 percent of them will fail. And the big winners are almost always a surprise.

So what we've done this year is turn the networks' fight for viewers into a literal fight online -- click here to check out our cute little animation dramatizing the three biggest fights in fall TV: the fight among new shows airing at the same time on different channels; the fight among interesting shows on cable and returning shows on network TV and the fight among new network TV shows and returning shows trying to recapture past buzz.

Making things even more interesting is the Hollywood writers strike, which lingers over the fall TV debuts like a bad hangover. The strike, which ended back in March, had the combined effect of stunting the quality of most every show last season while pushing back production of new shows for this season.

Anyways, check out our little presentation -- a cheeky preamble to the Times' full-on Fall TV Preview print edition, eating up most of Sunday's Floridian section. Who knew playing a disembodied head could be so challenging?   

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