It used to be that summer shows across American television networks were experimental fare or throwaways. This premise has been the subject of several columns this week nationally, and each writer has suggested just how good summer programming has become over the past few years.

They're right, although I don't think summers past had ever really been good for the boob-tube.

With all industry eyes focused on Fox' "So You Think You Can Dance," ABC plops in this harmless little celebrity-impersonator contest called "The Next Best Thing" on Wednesday night.

At work, we took one look at the show and thought, "How dopey."

After the hour was up, we thought, "This will be a hit, and it should be, as its title suggests, the next big thing."

While it didn't blow everybody out of the water, NBT, as we'll call it, did win its timeslot both here in the Oklahoma City metro area and nationally, albeit barely over the first hour of Fox' summer smash, in its third season.

The gist of the show is that impersonators compete for $100,000. They have to get past the judges to a later round and then, presumably, to a finals competition of some sort, in which somebody will win the loot. These people impersonate everybody from President Bush to the Honeymooners to Cher.

The contestant's collective schtick is at times pretty damned funny, and at others, it's so bad it's funny. What's consistent is that the show's judges are actually pretty funny, too, within the realm of critiquing the contestants Idol style.

NBT is not rocket science. It's geezers dressed up as Elvis and gay men dressed up as Cher. However, when a guy comes out dressed up as Robin Williams and is actually as funny as the comic with original material, it's hard not to be entertained.

When Jackie Gleason and Art Carney come out doing their Honeymooners thing to timely topics and edgy barbs, it makes one wonder why such a classic couldn't be reproduced for real in the right hands, and after an hour breezed by, completely entertained, I knew I was hooked.

The real trick to a show like this one is how well it can entertain three or four weeks into a season. Whether it can or not is yet to be seen, but I suspect it will pick up a significantly larger audience next week given that everybody I know who has watched it is telling somebody else about it.