CBS Readies New Monday Schedule

The new “Uncle Buck”--starring Kevin Meaney as an ill-mannered, irreverent uncle raising his late brother’s children--kicks it off at 8 p.m., followed by the returning “Major Dad,” “Murphy Brown” and “Designing Women.” At 10, it will be “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill,” a new entry starring Sharon Gless as a racy and rich public defender.

CBS also announced that it is jump-starting “Knots Landing,” which will return for its 12th season on Thursday, Sept. 13, at 10 p.m.

Earlier CBS announced that the new Burt Reynolds 8 p.m. Friday entry, “Evening Shade,” will debut with a whole hour Sept. 21.

Meanwhile, Fox Broadcasting is experiencing major production problems with its closely watched entry into the Thursday night fracas--a night that NBC has owned lock, stock and Nielsen for some years now.

At the heart of the strategy was the move of “The Simpsons” from Sunday to 8 p.m. Thursdays, right smack against NBC’s “The Cosby Show.”

Fox’s two other regular Thursday entries will be “Babes” and “Class of Beverly Hills.”

But production problems have pushed the premieres of all three shows to October. Fox is going ahead this Thursday with reruns of “The Simpsons” as well as a rerun of “Married . . . With Children” to fill the time slots.

NBC has taken Fox’s Thursday night move very seriously, moving its premiere week to this week so that “Ferris Bueller,” its upcoming Monday night sitcom, could be slipped into the 8:30 time slot this Thursday, presumably to take the edge off the Thursday night debuts of the Fox shows.

Advertising Age recently noted that “advertisers are getting uneasy” about the production delays at Fox. Although sponsors had been warned that new episodes of “The Simpsons” would be delayed, “Babes” was originally supposed to be ready this week.

With CBS’ baseball playoffs and World Series due in October, as well as the formidable NBC lineup, that early start for Fox was deemed critical. This was especially so for General Motors, which has to worry, as Ad Age put it, “about the possibility of audience under-deliveries in the fall, because of plans for new-model introductions and new campaigns.”

Fox sold $550 million in ad inventory in this year’s upfront sales, almost double last year’s $300 million--in large part because of the nervy move to Thursday against NBC’s powerhouse lineup.