San Francisco, as you already know, is one of the most cultured, literate, media-savvy cities in the country. It's also one of the wealthiest, which makes us an advertiser's dream. By these two standards, we should have a host of quality local television shows to choose from, hosted by Bay Area citizens, addressing Bay Area issues. Unfortunately, television production is so expensive that it's safer and cheaper for network affiliates, public and private, to syndicate old episodes of Friends or concerts by doo-wop groups than to risk money (and executive jobs) on locally produced shows.

It's the same old story: some of the very qualities that give us our charm and relaxed lifestyle keep us on the outskirts of relevance. Television programs get made in New York and L.A., not here. So we have our Bay Area Backroads, our episodes of Spark, and the local news, but otherwise we might as well be in Oklahoma.

At least, that was true until this fall. Now we have two new Bay Area programs and can only hope they are the first of many. One is a revved-up, revamped Evening Magazine—with a new format, theme song, and name (Eye on the Bay), and three telegenic hosts—on KPIX each weeknight. The other is KQED's weekly half-hour talk show starring beloved monologuist Josh Kornbluth. So: two new shows, one commerical, one nonprofit. One slick and stylish enough to speak to the Marina in us, one offbeat and idiosyncratic enough to speak to the Mission in us.

Eye on the Bay gives its hosts more of a say in reporting and producing the night's offering than Evening Magazine did, and each show has a theme: auctions, cheap eats, real estate, scandals, shoe shopping. One of the hosts is Liam Mayclem, still convivially chatting in the charming brogue we recall from his on-location segments for KRON News 4 in the mornings. Malou Nubla and Brian Hackney are Emmy-winning veterans of local television, Nubla from Evening Magazine, Hackney as a KRON meteorologist. It's as cozy and familiar a trio of Bay Area fixtures as Coit Tower, Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Unfortinately, everything about Eye on the Bay feels cozy and familiar. The three hosts are worthy dispensers of worthy information, but there's a big difference between being a personality and showing personality. Fans of Mayclem's unscripted antics as a roving reporter on KRON will be disappointed with his relatively bland new style, and a peek at Hackney's witty blogging on the KPIX news site gives a hint of what we're missing from him on TV.

Relentlessly upbeat delivery, cue card witticisms, and clichéd language don't help. We're treated to racy scandals, spectacular locales, and inspiring local heroes over and over again. In one episode about Highway 1, the views from the road were called "breathtaking" at least twice. All in all, the show errs consistantly on the side of the obvious. A reference to Allen Ginsberg's Howl is accompanied by the song "Werewolves of London"; a scandalous-news montage gets Prince's "Controversy"; the shoes episode has (of

course) "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'."

I liked hearing about the San Francisco gym where you can try out the latest fitness craze (modified pole dancing, at S Factor in Cow Hollow), the Italian restaurant that serves excellent pasta for uner $10 (Bocce Café, in North Beach), the advice on whether adding a swimming pool is a good real estate investment (it isn't). But these days, you can find that kind of information on the Internet, and thanks to TiVo and DVR, we aren't prime-time prisoners anymore.

If Eye on the Bay is all about useful information and submerged personality, The Josh Kornbluth Show is all about useless (in the service sense) information and gobs of personality, specifically the good-natured, compulsive personality of its host. As a monologuist, Brooklyn-born Kornbluth (Haiku Tunnel, Red Diaper Baby, Ben Franklin: Unplugged) is someone you either love or you don't. He's a cuddly neurotic, Woody Allen blown up to twice his normal size and crossed with a Teletubby.

Hyperarticulate, self-deprecating, and sweet like your grandma's kugel, Kornbluth is to my taste more of a dessert than an entrée, and I'd expected that it would be hard for him to dial himself down enough to let others take the stage. But as a host, the gifted motormouth proves he has ears, too. In his perceptive interviews with, say, Burning Man impresario Larry Harvey, Senator Barbara Boxer, actor Alan Alda, and author Anthony Swofford (Jarhead), you get the sense that Kornbluth is having the discussion more to satisfy his curiosity than to package content for a TV show. Like Michael Krasny and Charlie Rose, he's done his homework and seems completely engaged in the conversation.

Kornbluth is the total opposite of telegenic—in fact, he almost didn't get the gig until someone at KQED thought better of it. He moves his hands too much, he stutters, he gushes, and his constant references to his own inadequacies veer uncomfortably close to shtick. But he has that one incomparable gift of intelligent interlocutorship: genuine interest in his guests. And for the die-hard fans who long to See Josh Run, most episodes have a Wandering Josh segment. He tries stunt basketball, he takes driving lessons (a true New Yorker, Kornbluth does not have a driver's license), he chats up some Burning Man installation artists. At the end of each episode, he wraps up with a short rumination on what the show has brought up in his mind.

These two new shows hit very different notes, but both deserve rooting for. Not only do they offer much-needed local programming, they also represent two different sides of the city. One is well off, pleasure seeking, consumed with lifestyle. (The closest we get to frugality in the Eye on the Bay segments I caught was a chef explaining how to throw a dinner party for less than $100.) The other

is smart, witty, and...I suppose the word is edgy, though describing Kornbluth, who offers his guests Rice Krispy treats each week, as edgy stretches credibility a bit.

Since an obsession with real estate is the order of the day, think of Eye on the Bay as a shiny new Marina apartment, complete with recessed lighting, deep pile carpeting, and, of course, a "breathtaking" view of the bay. The Josh Kornbluth Show is that charming Victorian fixer-upper in the outer Mission that the Dead Kennedys supposedly rented in the seventies, the one with the quirky thrift shop decor. You'll prefer one over the other, but each celebrates a different side of where we live and, more important, why we live here.