CBS Puts ‘Uncle Buck’ on Hold; NBC Cancels ‘Working It Out’

CBS has put “Uncle Buck” on indefinite hiatus and NBC has canceled its comedy “Working It Out,” network and production company spokesmen confirmed Wednesday.

NBC also said that it has ordered additional episodes of its first-season comedy series “The Fanelli Boys” and “American Dreamer,” and that a “Dark Shadows” miniseries will air Jan. 13 and 14 as a precursor to a “Dark Shadows” prime-time series.

Jim Conway, one of the executive producers of the CBS series “Guns of Paradise”--formerly titled simply “Paradise”--also confirmed that CBS will put the series back on the air sometime in January. Conway said that the Western series would return with a new title because “after two years, people still thought ‘Paradise’ was a show starring Richard Chamberlain, set in Hawaii.”

Tim O’Donnell, an executive producer of “Uncle Buck,” said that CBS has ordered a full season of 22 episodes of “Buck,” and predicted that the show would return before February in a different time slot. He said both the producers and CBS agreed that the recent decision to move the show from its former 8 p.m Monday time slot to 8 p.m. Fridays--trading slots with the Burt Reynolds comedy “Evening Shade”--had hurt “Buck’s” ratings, since the Friday slot pits the kid-oriented show against ABC’s popular comedy “Full House.”

CBS did not say what will take “Uncle Buck’s” place on the schedule.

Nor did NBC offer immediate word on what will replace “Working It Out,” a comedy with Jane Curtin that had been airing Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. The show had suffered low ratings; last week it attracted only 13% of the available audience and ranked 71st among the week’s 94 prime-time programs.