I'm not kidding, but TV is: A lot of the new or best stuff on television today is aimed squarely at children.
* "A. J.'s Time Travelers" (11:30 a.m.-noon, Channel 45) -- This new Saturday-morning Fox series has colorful production values, playful tone and an educational bent: It's about a 15-year-old named A. J. (John Patrick White) who uses a machine to travel through time with his buddies, as Mr. Peabody and Sherman did on "The Bullwinkle Show." They travel with help from pages of an encyclopedia, and there are moral lessons as well as historical ones throughout. It sounds like a noble effort, but the pilot is a little weak, some of the characters look like leftover villains from "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," and I'd feel a lot better about this show's educational potential if the press material hadn't misspelled one of its upcoming characters as "Edgar Alan Poe."
* "Saturday Night Live" (11:30 p.m.-1 a.m., Channel 2) -- In a way, this show, too, is for the kids -- at least for my kids. They watch "Roseanne" each week, so they would be interested in seeing her as guest host here (though, if Chris Farley does his dead-on impersonation of Tom Arnold again, as he did the last time Roseanne was host, things could get a bit raw). And the musical guest is Green Day, the gleefully energetic group whose new CD my 10-year-old son has played loudly every day since its release, drumming along with every song. And I like their music a lot, too, which may be the last thing Green Day wants to hear.
Cable
* "U to U" (6 p.m.-6:30 p.m., NIK) -- Nickelodeon is billing this as "television's first interactive video magazine show." It's for kids, it has for hosts hyper-enthusiastic Ali Rivera and Sertrone Starks, and it encourages submissions from its young viewers -- everything from songs to home movies. And for those who have neither the equipment nor the cash, "U to U" involves professionals to realize the rough drafts and dreams of songs, films, video games, and so on. In this premiere, the wildest thing is a virtual-reality ostrich race. (A 'strich in time saves nine . . .)