The show is over and the dogs have gone home. Now, will somebody please tell me why Joe wasn't in the booth?

BY ALICIA MUNDY

You probably always assumed what the ?USA? in USA Networks stood for. You were wrong. It stands for ?Utterly Senseless Absurdity? Network. That became apparent when USA's execs ungraciously dropped the genial Joe Garagiola as co-host of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. That Joe G. sent their ratings skyward for nine years with his personality and passion apparently didn't count for squat. As the legendary sportswriter Frank Deford said to me, ?This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen.?

I learned about USA's sublimely silly decision in a wicked column by Washington Post TV writer Lisa de Moraes. She slammed the new producer of the WKC show, Ben Harvey, saying that the ?brain trust? at USA had had a ?brain belch,? and decried their replacement co-host, Mark McEwen, ?the jolly weatherman? formerly of the CBS Early Show.

USA didn't have the decency to call Garagiola to prepare him for the sad news. He figured it out on his own when the network failed to call him in November for their annual prep session.

In an interview from his home in Arizona, the 77-year-old Garagiola, who had nothing nasty to say about the boys at USA, said he told his wife, ?Oh, boy, training deadline is here,? and he hadn't been called up. Gordon Beck, SVP at USA, eventually got around to phoning Joe G. So did his co-host David Frei, who told me, ?I had a personal friendship with Joe.? But, Frei carefully added, he had ?chemistry with Mark.?

Garagiola's tenure at the WKC was so successful that he was immortalized in the movie Best in Show by the zany Fred Willard. How many other cable sports hosts can say their performance ended up in a Golden Globe- and Oscar-nominated film?

Said Deford, ?Joe was one of the best things about the dog show. He got so excited. He'd pick a dog and follow it. He was Everyman, and we were all watching the show through his eyes.?

Garagiola declined to applaud himself for popularizing the show, scoffing, ?Nah, you gotta give the credit to the dogs. When you have a good product, the host doesn't matter much.?

Oh, but he does. An executive with a Big Four network, who begged for anonymity, said, ?I didn't watch my own network for two nights. I love the dog show. But without Joe this year, it just wasn't as good.?

Many fans agreed, said a staffer with the WKC who also asked not to be named. ?We got a lot of calls on Tuesday asking where Joe had been Monday night.?

Mark McEwen was nice and harmless, like a taller version of Al Roker. But where was the passion, the humor, the off-the-wall asides, the unabashed love of dogs that Joe G. sent right through your TV screen? I remember Joe G. and the crowd rooting for the basset hound one year; he still says the basset was ?robbed.?

Neither Gordon Beck nor Ben Harvey returned many requests for an interview. I suppose if I'd perpetrated a no-class act on someone who'd made money for my network over the years, I'd be hiding from the media, too. But they put out an astounding press release announcing that the ratings had gone through the ?woof,? jumping 17% from 2002, a record, even.

Uh, fellas, aren't you forgetting something? Last year, while the dog show was on, so was the Olympics. Let me refresh your memory: Your first night, Feb. 11, was the wild Canadian-Russian pair-skating controversy, which boosted Olympic viewing the next night. Meanwhile, since the Olympics was on home turf, it blew out all competition. CBS suffered its worst made-for-TV movie ratings ever.

Despite that, the ratings drop at the WKC for 2002 was only 0.1 the first night of the show, and 0.4 on the second, among cable homes (according to figures provided by USA). In 1997, it was your fourth-rated event of the year, according to a Kagan analysis of Nielsen Media Research data, with a 1.6 rating of all households ? still higher than any of your 2002 shows, including Monk. Millions of folks tuned in this year looking for Joe, but got a bait and switch.

In the film North Dallas Forty, football legend John Matuszak complains about the sterile management policies enveloping his team: ?I want some F------FEELING!?

I know just what he means.