I love this time of year. You can feel the difference in the air. A special electricity surrounds us.

You could blame it on the change from summer to autumn, but something else gives me this feeling – I can see the new television season on the horizon.

I have not had as hard of a time coping with the loss of my favorite shows this past summer. Maybe the Olympics filled enough of the void. Maybe the Orioles’ run to first place has distracted me. Maybe I just put myself in a good place last spring when all of my favorite shows survived cancellation.

Whatever the reason, I head into this new season with my usual sense of excitement, but without the signs of withdrawal which I sometimes go through as the summer comes to a close.

Since most shows don’t premiere until next week – a few of my favorites show up this week and some new ones have already debuted – I find this an odd development. I could easily get into my cranky old man persona and write wistfully of the days when shows started around Labor Day “and we liked it!”

But some of those reasons I mentioned earlier have made it easier to wait until now for my routine to resume. I have even managed to see the same “Big Bang Theory” reruns multiple times in one month without getting too salty.

The longer wait has allowed me to plan a little better than usual for this coming season, I believe. Not only do I have more time to consider whether I will add a show to my rotation, I have more resources at my disposal.

First of all, I pay attention to a number of television critics and bloggers who help me wade through the mess of shows that the networks throw at us. I would feel bad about following these people via social media, but there are people who actually care what the Kardashians say so I feel completely confident in my choice here.

Secondly, the networks have actually used some creative methods to show off their new offerings. NBC snuck some pilots into their Olympic coverage, a horrible idea only superseded by the horrible decision to green light a show about an animal hospital. Fox has put pilots of a couple of their new shows online for people to sample before they premiere.

That last option appealed to me which is why I will add a pair of Fox comedies to my lineup while probably not sampling any of NBC’s new shows. In reality, this has a lot more to do with the fact that NBC has pretty much lost the plot on picking good shows regardless of how they decided to give viewers a sneak peek.

So while I don’t get my favorite shows around Labor Day, I still have the opportunity to develop an irrational distaste for shows I haven’t seen yet and probably won’t watch at all. I think that will tide me over for a while, but some of my shows don’t debut for another month. This could get interesting.