Every year, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW thrust a few dozen shows our way all at once, coinciding with the “fresh start” of September and the more hearth-bound lifestyles of winter. Every year, they work to sell us a new bill of goods, some of them actually good (this year, the soap opera “Nashville”), most of them not (this year’s worst: the aliens sitcom “The Neighbors”). Every year, they fight to grab our attention, hold onto it, and raise it to unparalleled Nielsen heights, using every muscle at their disposal — publicity, focus groups, programming blocks, viral previews, and hyperbolic ads.

And yet every year, every single executive, producer, writer, and actor knows that the bulk of shows will fail. Only a few lucky people will usher their babies into a second season, regardless of whether they’re Steven Spielberg (“Terra Nova”), J.J. Abrams (“Alcatraz”), or Aaron Sorkin (“Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”). All of them face the near certainty of doom, even Robert De Niro, whose CBS police procedural “NYC 22” was canceled a month after it premiered earlier this year.

Still, like script-carrying minnows against the tide of the public taste, they try, try again, hoping to become the new “Modern Family” or “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Lost.” And they try, try the same material again and again, which is what I find particularly mysterious. While cable channels such as FX, HBO, Showtime, and AMC regularly explore new creative pathways and alternative release schedules, the broadcast networks simply recycle their own previous efforts. They serve up the same formulas annually with almost comic perseveration. The tropes emerge — the middle-aged guys sitcom, the mythology-heavy apocalyptic adventure, the 1960s period drama, the medical or legal or police procedural — and they do not fade away.

To wit: There is always an entirely unnecessary TV remake or two, this fall’s being the CW’s “Beauty and the Beast,” following on the heels of the remakes “Charlie’s Angels,” “Hawaii Five-0,” and “Melrose Place” in recent years. A feeble attempt to keep the CW supernatural fans busy now that “Smallville” is gonesville, “Beauty and the Beast” is a weak product, about a cop and her mutant protector, that appears to have been mindlessly dashed off. There’s nothing genuine or engaging about it. “Arrow,” the CW’s other nod to fanboys and girls as it redoes the story of the DC Comics superhero Green Arrow, is slightly better, but certainly no more original.

Since the popularity of “Lost,” the networks have delivered sci-fi-tinged mythology dramas every year without fail. It’s an automatic tic at this point. And there ought to be a J.J. Abrams joint among them, of course. Despite the failure last season of Abrams’s “Alcatraz,” NBC is releasing “Revolution,” about what happens when our world permanently loses electricity. A serial action drama with unfolding back story not terribly unlike last year’s “Terra Nova,” it feels like a factory-made product. The more interesting mythology choice this fall is ABC’s “The Last Resort” from “The Shield” producer Shawn Ryan, whose “Chicago Code” tanked last season. Of all the new shows, “The Last Resort,” about an American military sub gone rogue, is the most ambitious and among the most original.

The most pointlessly rehashed concept of the past few years has got to be the 30-something-men-acting-like-kids sitcom. Despite the failures of the likes of “Man Up!,” “Work It,” and “Carpoolers,” the network powers continue to throw this formula at the wall and hope it sticks. NBC’s new go at the genre, “Guys With Kids,” which is executive produced by Jimmy Fallon, is as generic as its title. Even the presence of former TV kids Jamie-Lynn Sigler (“The Sopranos”) and Tempestt Blesdoe (“The Cosby Show”) as the wives (and stand-in mothers) to these guys doesn’t give the show a hint of distinction. It’s a rote endeavor.