Broadcasters are more frequently embracing the cable TV idea of limited run series, of taking favorites off the air for a time instead of showing reruns, and of not treating summer as an afterthought. Television has typically started its new season in late September, a calendar that was set to coincide with the time auto manufacturers rolled out a shiny new line of cars, and wanted something shiny and new on TV to advertise them on. The approach has worked for cable networks, where "seasons" are generally shorter and creators don't have to worry about their shows being abruptly canceled. Fans are impatient with series that are interrupted by repeats during the season, so executives are looking at ways to run consecutive original episodes, then putting another series in the time slot for a few months when the original show takes a break. Even CBS has scheduled its new serial mystery "Hostages," to have a season finale in January, to be replaced by a new drama, "Intelligence." The networks have learned, through brutal experience, that viewers punish them for summer schedules clogged with reruns. For all the talk of breaking traditions, of broadcast networks losing relevance in a digital age, the annual week of schedule presentations offered a firm rebuttal. A media sector that is dying doesn't invest in 56 new programs, each with scripts to be written, production budgets to be kept and actors to be hired. Jimmy Kimmel, whose routine at the ABC presentation is always one of the week's highlights, described the process to advertising executives as throwing a bunch of (stuff) against the wall and seeing what sticks. Some big names are coming to TV, or returning, with Michael J. Fox leading a new NBC comedy and Robin Williams pairing with Sarah Michelle Gellar on a CBS sitcom. True to tradition, the actors in the CW's new dramas are pure eye candy; now they have to be vampires, aliens or possess telepathic ability.