SOS for fall: new lineup, same old story.

Byline: Terry Jackson

PASADENA, Calif. _ Syndicated television this fall is shaping up as the industry's dead zone. There's such a drought of compelling new ideas, the best hope for a breakout show rests on the uneven shoulders of "Partridge Family" bad boy Danny Bonaduce.

The nation's television critics this week received a preview of a handful of syndicated programs that will debut this September and the lineup has an unfortunate aura of deja vu with old game shows, reality dating programs and talk shows dominating the offerings that will round out local stations' daytime and early evening schedules.

But where producers of syndicated programming are having the most trouble is in trying to find the next big star of women-oriented daytime talk, someone who can step in when either Oprah Winfrey or Rosie O'Donnell move on.

This fall the spotlight will fall on 28-year-old Ananda Lewis, best known to young viewers as a host of MTV's "Total Request Live," "MTV Cribs" and "Hot Zone." She also was host of BET's weekly "Teen Summit" series and was named one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People of 2000.

Earnest in her pledge to make "The Ananda Lewis Show" different from daytime talk shows that emphasize sex and sleaze, Lewis said most of what she sees on the air "makes me want to throw up."

"There's no one who represents what my generation is," she said. "I don't feel I'm being spoken to."