Michael Moore's "TV nation" is the best new show of the year. And the year-in-review special edition of the irreverent magazine show tonight at 8 on NBC proves why.

      The show began last summer, a time so lethal that intelligent viewers were watching re-re-re-runs of "I'll Fly Away." "I got so bored one night," Irene Barrett of Huntington Station confessed, "I actually ordered a ring from the Home Shopping Club."

      Into this miasma came Michael Moore, the film maker ("Roger & Me"), serving as executive producer/director/writer/correspondent and shlubby man on the street conduction some of the wildest interviews in the history of TV journalism.

      "TV Nation" made all the other new magazine shows look like the imitations they are. It was the only one that dared to have a distinct point of view, a raison d'etre beyond being cheaper than entertainment shows or getting good ratings.

      What is the zeitgeist of Stone Phillips or Forrest Sawyer on "Day One" or "Day Two," "Turning Point" or "Boiling Point"? Does it matter if Connie or Diane on "Nose to Nose" is on two or three nights a week? Or Debbie Norville was leaving "America Tonight" for "Inside Edition"? All the other magazine shows were going after the same hot celebrities du jour, trying to push the audience's same button.

      What other magazine this past year invented a whole new approach to the news? Instead of just providing straight information, "TV Nation" looked at things slightly awry.

      It had to find an audience for something new, and it did. "What a quirky riot," explained Joan Talbot of Masapequa Park. "He's the closest thing we've got to real news," wrote Ed Healy of Harpersfield, N.Y. "The Bosnia Pizza, the Serial Killer Neighbors. It just never ends," exulted Bill Paladino of Kings Park. "The great thing is not only was it funny," added Maureen Hunt of Syracuse, "it was extremely interesting."

      Moore invented a whole new form of communication called satire. His "TV Nation" is sick, twisted, opinionated, unfair, and I love it. Who else in his year-end review would single out the least understood, most despised groups in America - smokers, telemarketers, Satanic worshipers, gyn teachers, landlords - and give them rides in a Jacuzzi limo down the Great White Way?

      What other magazine would keep flashing pictures of those cultural heroes of 1994 - Tonya, O.J., Bobbitt and the Menendez brothers - and that's it. No stories. What a commentary of the other magazines. And instead of paying tribute to those who died in the past year, what other magazine would salute those who haven't died in 1994? Don Knotts, Bob Hope, Gallagher, Don Ho, among others. "TV Nation" is the sort of iconoclastic alternative program you expect to see on public TV, the most stimulating magazine since "The Great American Dream Machine."

      The greatest thing about Moore's work is it is unauthorized. So much of what we see on the news today is actually set up by PR people. But nobody wants to get their clients on Moore's show. "60 Minutes" used to be great when it did ambush interviews making corporate executives sweat and squirm. But corporate America has since learned how to deal with Wallace & Co. CEOs attend Workshops where they are trained in answering when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife questions when Mike and his ilk spring out from behind potted palms. Moore has created a new form of interviewing, the we-just-have-a-little-question school of throwing a bomb from left field. When a corporate type runs away from this bowling pin with a baseball hat who asks silly little questions in his charming, beguiling way, it really looks bad.

      In the spirit of the holidays tonight, Moore tries to donate money to several companies that have been hit hard with criminal and civil fines for polluting the environment and other crimes. While everybody else is giving to the Salvation Army, the poor and the homeless, Michael wants to give to the rich.

      He tries to help out Pfizer, which had to pay $225 million in 1994 for heart valves that didn't work. The PR wimp says no. The kind of march-of-dollars campaign finally hits pay dirt at Exxon, fined $5 billion for the Valdez oil spill, where Moore attempts to donate the pot of money collected at a "Corp-Aid" concert the Meat Puppets gave on Wall Street last fall.

      "They say 200 bald eagles were killed by the oil spill," Michaels tells the Exxon PR exec in his beguiling way. "It's the eagles' fault. What are they doing in the water anyway? Theyıre supposed to be in the air."

      Exxon had a sense of humor about it. Guess if you have $5 billion to pay out you can laugh. They at least accepted a "TV Nation" cap and book. Someday the other PR guys will learn they should have taken the money and donated it to help Moore get a life or some other worthwhile charity. Like other TV major information shows, "TV Nation" helps shape policy. The show tonight asks the question, "Where should we send our boys in '95?" After Haiti, Somalia and Kuwait, what's left? Like a think tank run amok, Moore scientifically plots the next hot spot, with experts from his travel agency (where he gets the cheapest group rates) to former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers.

      Without meaning to give away any military secrets, it's either Belize or France. "The European home of the rude Frenchman," Moore says, explaining the rationale for U.S. involvement, "the pompous, boring, intellectual, overpriced pastries, thick cholesterol rich sauces and Jerry Lewis-lovers." And then in a salute to interactive TV, the show winds up asking the American people to vote tonight using 900 phone numbers: Should we invade 1) Belize, 2) France, or 3) None of the above, give the money to better our schools.

      "TV Nation's" belated analysis of the November election is a salute to our new leaders, Newt Gingrich, the 92 year-old Strom Thurmond, Al D'Amato and others promising a new day for America. It concludes: "We are not waiting for a constitutional amendment allowing prayer in schools. We are starting to pray right now."

      The amazing thing to me is not how consistently good "TV Nation" is, but that NBC put it on in the first place. This is seditious stuff, what used to be anathema to corporations like General Electric, corporate masters of NBC.

      One theory is they didn't know the show was on last summer, and they certainly didn't watch it. Or it can be that yes, Virginia, GE has a sense of humor. The future state of "TV Nation?" True to it's word, "TV Nation" has come back from hiatus. This latest edition is even better than the summer show. It's enriched by the addition of new crack correspondent Steven Wright, who does a report on predictions for 1995 that leaves Wright absolutely ecstatic.

      But it should be returned to the schedule. We need Moore's humor in 1995 and lots of it. Putting "TV Nation" back on the schedule would be the most socially useful thing GE has done since the invention of the glass door refrigerator and ending the dumping of PCP's in the Hudson.