Stealing 'The Defenders' for a title? We object!

There they go again.

We're talking about the TV networks and their habit of reusing the name of a show from the tube's past for a contemporary series.

Fox's new cop-buddy dramedy "The Good Guys" shares the title of a semi- obscure dope-buddy comedy starring a post-"Gilligan" Bob Denver and Herb Edelman that ran from 1968 to 1970.

Granted, only a handful of TV obsessives probably remember that one. But when this week's fall schedules were announced, CBS lifted the title of one of the network's most prestigious shows and grafted it onto a Las Vegas-set legal dramedy starring Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell.

Somewhere, preservers of TV's precious heritage are shuddering.

The show in question is "The Defenders," a landmark legal drama about father-and-son lawyers (E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed, pre-"Brady Bunch") whose firm tackled such controversial issues (for the day) as abortion, mercy killing and political blacklisting. The original "Defenders," which ran from 1961 to 1965, won seven Emmys and was nominated for 13 more. It was hailed by the Museum of Broadcast Communications as "perhaps the most socially conscious series the medium has ever seen."

What are the odds that the new "Defenders" - which is not a remake, like CBS' "Hawaii Five-0" - will get an accolade like that?