BY now, most of us don’t need to be told when a TV sweeps period is on. That’s when, based on local TV news reports, “sweeps food” is sold at food stores and served at eateries. Sweeps weeks are when package-printed expiration dates refer less to the food than to the checkout time for those who ingest it.

Eating in New York is only dangerous the moment a sweeps period begins. On either side of those periods, dig in, the food’s fine.

Time-tasted reasoning tells us that New York’s grocers and restaurateurs wait for sweeps periods before loading up on Gowanus Parkway road kill, free-range rodent and asbestos-fed veal. It’s the only time food-preparers take off their gloves and work without a (hair) net.

Sweeps periods are apparently the only times when car dealers decide to pull fast ones, home improvement contractors show no improvement and business schools give students the business. If I were an unlicensed school bus driver or a stonemason who took everything for granite, sweeps periods are when I’d call in sick perhaps from eating sweeps food.

Sweeps periods can turn the classier shows into the “Jerry Springer Show” and their higherminded hosts into Jerry

Springer. For example, here are three consecutive Oprah Winfrey shows that aired April 27, 28 and 29. The descriptions were supplied by the show for printed listings.

April 27 “Dating advice.”

April 28 “Oprah talks to Clara Harris, in prison for running over her husband in her car and killing him.”

April 29 “A woman explains why she stays married to a transsexual.”

Okay, now take a wild guess; when did the spring sweeps begin?

Did you guess April 28th? See, we told you. No one needs to be told when we’re in a sweeps period. You can see it; you can hear it; you can feel it; you can smell it.

Speaking of smell, what’s that? Why its tainted tilapia! Funny, it wasn’t there on April 27th.

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It’s hard to gauge who the bigger phony is, Don Imus or the highbrow guests he has on his morning MSNBC/WFAN simulcasts, guests desperate for cross and self-promotion or those so eager to sell something that they’ll sell themselves to Imus.

Last week, Imus took a few minutes off from his gutter-centric genitalia festival to interview PBS “NewsHour” anchor Jim Lehrer, the gentleman scholar who was pitching his latest book. Lehrer seemed very familiar with Imus and his show. But he went on, anyway.

The two engaged in a lengthy lament about the absence of character in modern American men and women of public stature. Yeah, fellas, what a pity, now that low-roaders now dominate our cultural landscape.

And then, with Lehrer gone, Imus returned to conducting his usual hateful put-down and crotch-grab session.

But the latest and worst sellout is MSNBC, which successfully begged Imus to relocate his vile show to its studios for the on-site cross-promotion it could provide MSNBC shows and hosts.

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I’ve a confession to make. I’m a “Cops” junkie. I can’t get enough of it. I watch it on FX, Fox, Ch. 9 and Court TV. Something about watching bad guys going down turns me on, keeps me from believing that crime pays, keeps

me from taking the law into my own hands when someone doesn’t observe an alternate merge.

I even know the three most frequently asked questions on Cops. They come in quick order:

1) “Then whose car is it?”

2) “What’s your friend’s name?”

3) “Your friend gave you his car and you don’t know his name?”

Last week, I came to grips with being a “Cops”-aholic. Last week, while watching “The First 48,” a reality detective show on A&E, I recognized Joe Shillaci, a regularly featured Miami PD homicide investigator. I recognized him from when he patrolled on an old episode of “Cops.”

That’s how bad I’ve got it.

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‘Sweeps can turn classier shows into ‘The Jerry Springer Show.’