Press Tour. Two words that fill television executives with equal parts anticipation and anxiety.

It happens twice a year. Two hundred television critics from all over the country assemble at a hotel in Pasadena, California. They come to watch television and quiz the people who make the shows, all so they can tell you what to expect when you turn on your set this September.

The days are all the same. Morning, afternoon and evening sessions, meticulously planned by TV executives, devoted to each and every comedy, drama, movie of the week, miniseries, and reality program. The creative folks behind each show sit on a dais; the critics lob the questions in a press conference setting.

Lunchtime, as designated on the schedule, does not really mean lunch, dinner is not just dinner, and a party isn't a party. These are all sneaky ways to schedule additional Q and A sessions, this time with food and nice linens. Free time on a press tour schedule isn't really free time - for those writers who file daily stories, free time means writing time. (Bedtime is also a misnomer; when a "party" ends, even at 10 pm., most of the critics return to their rooms to write some more.) Three weeks of this, with each network averaging two days of pitching time, with studios and cable companies getting a whack at the critics' time as well.

For many years, I was on the network side of the press tour. I was part of the team deciding who should be on that dais, judging the mood of the critics, deciding what kind of food to serve them, where should we take them for dinner, how much should we do in the hotel and outside the hotel. My responsibilities for the press tour began four months in advance, and the worrying didn't stop till the two days of the 21-day press tour allotted to my network arrived - too fast, it seemed -in July and in January.

I love every minute of it.

The members of the Television Critics Association are some of the smartest, funniest, most invested professionals I have ever met. Twice a year we talk TV - great off-the-record conversations spiked with the must-have "sell" conversations every publicity executive is supposed to have when the critics are in our backyard. We talk about other stuff too, that has nothing to do with TV.

And now I'm on their side. As the TV writer for DISH, with my network days behind me, I am now covering the shows, asking the questions, being wined and dined and pitched. The TCA members have kindly welcomed me in, and have helped me learn the tour from their perspective.