By David Kronke >TV Critic

"Congratulations on still having a job."

Those were among the first words I received by way of greeting at this summer's TV Press Tour, thus far a remarkably spiritless affair, for any number of reasons:

For the first time in memory, none of the networks (aside from CBS) sent out screeners of their fall programming, so there's precious little to talk about and nothing to start generating any buzz over, and what discussion there is as journalists slouch from session to session tends to concern fallen colleagues who are not in attendance because they've either lost their jobs or their papers have axed the TV beat or their publications have opted not to spend the money to send them to a swanky hotel for close to three weeks to interview what so far has predominantly been talent for an endless string of reality shows.

(There's one coming about a 500-pound woman who's trying to lose weight; during the session, she spoke darkly if fleetingly about repressed memories, but at least she has a job - if the show runs until she loses all the weight she wants, it could challenge "Law & Order's" longevity; oddest of all, it's on the Style Network.)

The first session I attended was for the Hallmark Channel, a dispiriting affair despite the banal uplift promised by each of the 10 movies trotted out. Already, the questions were of the rote, uninspired variety ("For any of the actors, do you guys have any favorite recipes that you're good at making?") usually reserved for the final day of press tour, when everyone is exhausted and miserable and just wants to go the hell home.

Chandra has Katherine's ungrateful back

Last month, Katherine Heigl, who won an Emmy for her work last year on "Grey's Anatomy," issued a curious statement saying, in effect, she wasn't going to put herself up for nomination again this year because, well, the material her writers gave her this year kind of stank. And while that may in fact be true (but certainly, she wasn't the only one singled out for that kind of material on that show this season), it seemed a bit, well, impolitic to point it out to the entire world.

But not according to her co-star Chandra Wilson, who Tuesday at the TV Press Tour tried to tamp down the flames of outrage circling her colleague:

"All actors have to do the exact same thing every single year," Wilson explained. "We have to decide, you know, `How do I submit and, if I submit, which clip to submit?' And I think the public at large doesn't understand that it's not about your body of work or it's not about the season. It's about the show that you submit.

"So - and especially when you're dealing with drama categories, OK? So it needs to be high drama, or it needs to be high comedy. So it can't really be kind of something in the middle. You can have a great seasonal arc, but if you don't have, like, that show that's, like, your show and you were breaking out in tears, well, then, that's not the right thing for the category. So we all have to do that every single time.

"Every single time we put our money up for our submission, that's the thing that we have to do. So it was amazing to me the way it kind of got blown out of proportion, because if you asked every single actor on every single show, they'll tell you the exact same thing. Some years you submit. Some years you don't."

That very diplomatic explanation might put Wilson in the running for some kind of award. At the very least, Heigl owes her one of the angel's wings off her trophy from last year.

David Kronke, (818) 713-3638 david.kronke@dailynews.com