A new game and anyone can play: Let’s call it Extreme Makeover, the Network Edition.

Start with CNN, you say? Sorry, among news networks, it may be beyond hope. Now that Lou Dobbs has taken his mock-up of Barack Obama’s “real” birth certificate and honorary membership in the Border Patrol to parts unknown, things may be even worse.

At NBC, though, I swear, there’s still hope. Remember that once upon a time, NBC ruled. That was when it was selling NBC Thursdays as “The best night of television ON television.”

But now the Nonpareil Broadcasting Company has become the Negligible Broadcasting Company when it isn’t people’s nomination for the Nauseating Broadcasting Company (too much Howie Mandel and “Fear Factor” did that). A dreadful thing to do, clearly, to the network of J. Fred Muggs, Sgt. Joe Friday, Jack Paar, Steve Allen and Jim Rockford.

Jay Leno is tanking and bringing down local affiliate news broadcasts with him; “Medium” is getting 23 percent better ratings on CBS than it ever did on NBC, and only “Sunday Night Football” is giving the network the kind of numbers networks crave.

People do give “30 Rock” prizes just for playing “Nearer My God to Thee” on the decks of the Titanic.

The NBC hack honchos’ reply can, essentially, be translated thusly: “We’re no longer in the television business, we’re in the profits business, and if that means constant cost-cutting by programming junk, so what? You make your profits making people happy, we prefer to make our profits by making everything cheap and tacky.”

And then there’s the old demographic dodge to explain the indefensible: Hey, we’ve got youthful demographics on our side.

Except that they don’t. Their numbers there aren’t so great, either.

The single reason so much went to hell in a plastic baggie is that Conan O’Brien was given the “Tonight Show” to keep him tethered to the network no matter what had to be done to Leno. The nightly Leno make-good at 10 p. m. (to keep him tethered) was symptomatic of what the idiot folly of “Keep Conan on the Payroll” did to an entire network.

Let’s pretend, for purposes of argument, that NBC might actually want to get back into the television business and not the soulless garbage profit business. How would it do it?

Well, I think there are some shows the honchos need to watch. Like:

1) “Castle.” It was Nielsen’s No. 20 for Oct. 28-Nov. 1. Yes, that’s because it follows “Dancing with the Stars.” But it’s also uncommonly clever TV whose cleverness can be emulated—a stylish, semi-sophisticated show of a sort that NBC excelled at once upon a time (“The Rogues” anyone? “Dear Phoebe?”) with clever dialogue and a diabolically cleverly designed family at the show’s heart: Nathan Fillion as mystery novelist Richard Castle, Susan Sullivan as his Broadway actress mother and Molly C. Quinn as his precociously bright daughter. Not only is the family dynamic distinctive, there was something hair-raisingly smart about the fact that Grandma Sullivan has the same flaming red hair as her lovely granddaughter. Lesson 1: Sophisticated, even literate, dialogue is good for you. Lesson 2: Details, details. And all that on what is basically a cop show.

2) “CSI: Miami” and “NCIS.” Charismatic old guys in the middle, surrounded by attractive young folks. People can’t get enough of Horatio Caine on “CSI: Miami” because they know that every week actor David Caruso is getting away with murder, even if the show’s miscreants aren’t. And they watch Mark Harmon’s saturnine performance on “NCIS” the next day because he looks like a disgusted actor who has just watched the nonsense that David Caruso got away with the night before. Lesson 1: Fear of middle age or worse is counterproductive. Baby boomers have money and are a smart advertising target. Keep the old guys in the middle strong and authoritative, decorate with young attractive nubility and not too much dweebiness. Lesson 2: Plan your nights. Make Tuesday at 8 p. m. lead logically from Monday at 10 p. m., Wednesday at 8 p. m. from Tuesday at 10 p. m., etc.

3) “Heroes,” “Chuck,” “The Fear Factor” and “Deal or No Deal.” Your own shows. Watch them carefully, no matter what their ratings are or were. They announced your suicide. Lesson No. 1: Don’t brand yourself the Dweeb network. Dweebs may love to see themselves triumph, but not if it means they have to keep hobnobbing with other dweebs. Lesson No. 2: Respect your audience. Once you’ve thrown Howie Mandel at them in prime time in “Deal or No Deal,” they are unlikely ever to believe again that you give a hoot whether your audience lives or dies. It makes everything 20 times harder for everything else you ever do.

RIP: One of my favorite people died Nov. 3 at the age of 92—The Great Ballantine, aka Carl Ballantine, the comedy magician whose tricks never worked. He’d get an expensive watch from an audience member, put it into a top hat, crack open an egg on top of it and then pound the daylights out of the whole mixture with a hammer. Then, with a splendid flourish, he’d dip his hand into the top hat and emerge with a horribly mangled piece of jewelry, dripping oozy and disgusting

eggy fluids from every busted spring and bent wheel.

In close-up.

Obviously, Penn and Teller learned a couple things from Carl Ballantine. Not so obviously, one of his biggest admirers was Steve Martin. Not obviously at all, though, was the degree to which Don Adams’ delivery was an offshoot of Ballantine’s and, even less obviously, the degree to which Woody Allen’s earliest stand-up routines sounded like a combination of Bob Hope and Mort Sahl filtered through the style of Carl Ballantine.

I’ve missed him on TV for at least 20 years.