I hate this week. I should really love it because you can sense the beginning of summer, and Memorial Day gives us a four-day work week. But an awful stench lingers in the air for me.

The television season has come to a close.

I will get over this feeling soon when I start to embrace the freedom to read on the porch past 8 p.m. without running inside to catch one of my favorite shows or, at the very least, popping in to make sure it has started to record.

I still don’t like having that kind of continuity. Some people may find this crazy, but I like the regularity of a television schedule. I love the time we live in with on-demand programming and many options for watching shows, but it all starts for me with the continuity of prime-time programming.

The other week, each television network trotted out its stars and fancy video presentations to announce the schedule for the upcoming fall season. That gave me something to look forward to as I started to entertain thoughts of how I would plan my weeknights in the fall.

As expected, the scheduling process caused angst for fans of many shows as the networks dangled the possibility of cancellation or made behind-the-scenes moves which could alter the direction of shows people have come to know and love.

That’s what we all focus on, but a long-time TV geek like me really wants to know about the other side. A lot of people created shows which the network turned into pilots which didn’t impress focus groups enough to make the fall schedule.

So those shows, which may or may not actually be pretty good, just disappear into the ether. All that work and money just goes right down the tubes.

I’m old enough to remember when summer television did not mean trotting out some chick to try and find her a husband or thinking of new ways to find good signers. I remember when pilots and reruns ruled the day when school was out.

In fact, rerun season pretty much made the classic show “MASH” into a big hit after its initial season. The ratings shot up in the summer, providing momentum for the second season.

Now I know things have changed and the availability of shows online and on DVD really cuts into the effectiveness of reruns, although I wish they would give shows which only had a handful of episodes a second chance in the summer. But the pilots should still have a chance.

Those of us who don’t get into reality TV really have no reason to turn the big four networks on this summer. I only watch one show in that genre – “Big Brother” – and will fill most of the rest of my time with sports and reruns.

But if they gave the pilots from people like Louis CK and Bill Lawrence a chance in the summer, executives might find out that the focus groups got things wrong. They might realize they have a potential hit on their hands. They also might give me something to do when I just don’t feel like reading.