BY DAVID KRONKE >TV CRITIC

Jan Brown, a reader, sent Your Mayor the following e-mail:

"At a Television Academy event the other night for `Mad Men,' a number of us were enjoying the after-show munchies when I brought up the subject of how irritating it has become to have to watch all TV shows with some giant network logo always in the picture. Everyone within earshot immediately chimed in – everyone is sick and tired of having to try to focus on a program with some obtrusive logo superimposed over up to 1/4 of the screen, made even more obnoxious by the recent addition of animated figures and little people and titles and messages jumping in and out of the picture.

"What can be done about this? Can you run a poll or something or see if others are as bothered by this as we all are?"

Clearly, Jan struck a nerve amongst her (or, maybe, his; I neglected to ask) fellow television aficionados. I explained that the logos "are for the benefit of those who are channel-surfing but to the detriment of those actually watching the show. And don't get me started on those promos that take up the bottom third of the screen. The only good thing about those is that `The Simpsons' has done some funny parodies of them."

Contemplating this further, it occurs to me that it would behoove some networks to not run their logo at the bottom of the screen, as it would serve as an automatic warning to viewers to flee immediately: The CW, or A&E or, for straight males at least, Bravo.

Conversely, there are shows that one would think networks really wouldn't want to splash their logos across, as they really shouldn't want to take credit (or blame) for them: NBC's "My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad," CBS' "Big Brother," Fox's "The Return of Jezebel James" and, of course, ABC's "According to Jim."

So: What do you think? Do networks owe viewers respect and logo-free programming? Or do they not bother you because you've learned to ignore them?

And: What other TV irritants really bother you? As that logo (oops, sorry) above declares, we're here to solve every problem in television, but we can't until we know what they are. Leave a comment at david.kronke@dailynews.com.

No news is bad news

America has lost almost 4,000 soldiers in the Iraq war, which is now five years old. The cost of the war has surpassed $503 billion. That's $16 billion for those living in Los Angeles County alone, money that could've provided health care for 6.8 million people or 49,000 affordable-housing units or 237,000 school teachers. Our grandchildren, wondering why their taxes are so high, will still be paying for it. John McCain has said that American soldiers might be there for another 100 years.

Kind of a downer, huh?

Well, don't worry: The Associated Press reports that if you're watching TV news, you're no longer being reminded of the debacle:

"Statistics clearly illustrate the diminished attention. For the first 10 weeks of the year, the war accounted for 3 percent of television, newspaper and Internet stories in the Project for Excellence in Journalism's survey of news coverage. During the same period in 2007, Iraq filled 23 percent of the news hole.

"The difference is even more stark on cable news networks: 24 percent of the time spent on Iraq last year, just 1 percent this year."

Veterans of the war are noticing the war fatigue, says the San Diego Union-Tribune: "The military's all-volunteer force means only a small segment of the U.S. population is directly affected by the war, said former Marine Capt. Nathaniel Fick, 30, who commanded a Camp Pendleton-based infantry unit in Afghanistan and Iraq and later wrote a best-selling memoir, `One Bullet Away.'

"The Pentagon continues to forbid the photographing of service members' flag-draped caskets. That makes it easy for the public to forget the war's toll, especially as casualty counts have fallen in the past year, Fick said.

" `There's been a concerted effort, in some ways, to keep the war out of the headlines,' said Fick, now a graduate student at Harvard University."