CBS Aims to Divide, Conquer : Television: ‘Designing Women,’ ‘Major Dad’ move to Friday in fall. Five comedies, four dramas will be introduced.

CBS on Thursday announced an aggressive prime-time fall schedule in which it is switching two of its top hits, “Designing Women” and “Major Dad,” from Monday to Friday in an attempt to rebuild its weakest night.

The No. 1 ratings network thus broke up its powerful Monday lineup, but remaining on that night will be “Evening Shade,” “Northern Exposure” and “Murphy Brown,” the series that drew Vice President Dan Quayle’s ire this week because the central character (Candice Bergen) had a baby out of wedlock.

Joining “Designing Women” and “Major Dad” on Fridays will be “Bob,” a new sitcom with Bob Newhart as a comic-book artist; “The Golden Palace,” with Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty, formerly of “The Golden Girls,” as owners of a Miami Beach hotel; and “Picket Fences,” about the residents of a small Wisconsin town.

Jeff Sagansky, president of CBS Entertainment, saying that “there’s no question” his network will repeat as the ratings winner in the 1992-93 season, added that “Picket Fences” will be the best new drama--”a poignant, thoughtful, quirky hour (that) is poised to become Friday night’s ‘Northern Exposure.’ ”

The show comes from David Kelley, former executive producer of “L.A. Law.”

Peter Tortorici, executive vice president of CBS Entertainment, said that the network’s four Friday comedies “can match any on television, including our own on Monday.” Sagansky said that Friday’s “high-quality entertainment (will) mirror Monday.”

CBS will introduce nine new series--five comedies and four dramas--in the fall. And two of the comedies will be moved into the network’s pivotal Monday lineup. They are:

* “Love Is Hell” (working title), from “Murphy Brown” creator Diane English, starring Susan Dey as an “upscale divorcee” who buys a bar and gets involved with a newspaper columnist (Jay Thomas).

“Hearts Afire,” from Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, creator of “Designing Women” and “Evening Shade.” It stars John Ritter and Markie Post in a “romantic, politically topical” comedy about two people who work for a conservative Southern senator and share a home, but clash “in just about every way.”

English and Bloodworth-Thomason now will each have two shows on CBS’ Monday schedule. In addition, the network plans to rerun episodes concerning the pregnancy on “Murphy Brown” starting June 1 and ending with the much-talked-about birth on Sept. 7, Labor Day.

“It’s great to have a show that’s at the center of national dialogue,” said Tortorici. “Television works best when it stimulates people to talk and engages them.”

CBS also plans another feisty new sitcom about a provocative female character, “The Little Woman,” starring British actress Miriam Margolyes as “a working mother in her late 40s who is tired of serving the men in her life.” The series comes from Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, whose company has produced “Roseanne” and “The Cosby Show.”

In “The Little Woman,” said Tortorici, the working mother at the center of the show “is a person with no perks who says, ‘Now, what about me?’ But rather than leaving the family, she tells them: ‘I’m changing and we’re changing together.’ ”

Tortorici said that CBS was interested in doing “an intelligent blue-collar show” like “The Little Woman” after the network got surprisingly good ratings with reruns of the 1970s working-class comedy “All in the Family.”

“The Little Woman” will open CBS’ Saturday night lineup, and it will be followed by “Brooklyn Bridge,” the low-rated but much-praised series about a Jewish family in 1950s Brooklyn.

Tortorici acknowledged CBS discussion of grass-roots reaction to the ethnic appeal of “Brooklyn Bridge.”

“Sure, it’s a definite risk,” he said. “We talked about it before we ever did the show. And we talked about it when Marion Ross (the grandmother) was reading for the Sophie Berger part: Should she have an accent? Should she not? Gary (creator Gary David Goldberg) said, ‘Listen, this is the way it really happened (in his family), and this is the way we should do the show.’ And we said, ‘Yeah. OK. Do it.’ ”

Said Sagansky: “God knows, it’s no secret how much we love the show here. We’re proud of it. So far, the ratings haven’t been there, but I think these things take time. When I was at NBC, we were struggling along with ‘Cheers’ for a couple of years, and everybody used to say, ‘It’s set in a bar. People don’t want bars in their living rooms at night. It’s never going to work.’ ”

CBS’ new lineup will also include:

* “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” (working title), an hour Western drama starring Jane Seymour as a “strong-willed woman who becomes one of the first female doctors to practice medicine on the American frontier.”

* “Polish Hill,” a one-hour drama starring Robin Givens and Pamela Gidley as a pair of women homicide detectives--one black, the other white.

* “The Hat Squad,” an hour drama about “a rainbow coalition of orphaned young men and their foster dad (who) compose a special-crimes police unit.”

In addition, the Carroll O’Connor-Howard Rollins police drama “In the Heat of the Night,” which was dropped by NBC, will join CBS as a Wednesday night entry that will become the lead-in for Dan Rather’s successful news series “48 Hours.”

CBS series from this season that won’t return on the fall schedule include “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill,” “Jake and the Fatman,” “Davis Rules,” “The Royal Family,” “Teech,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” “Tequila and Bonetti,” “P.S.I. Luv U,” “Hearts Are Wild,” “The Boys of Twilight,” “Scorch,” “Fish Police,” “Princesses” and “Palace Guard.”

Tortorici said CBS’ first backup series “off the bench” will be “Good Advice,” starring Shelley Long and Treat Williams, a sitcom about a best-selling woman author and marriage counselor whose own marriage “has just gone on the rocks.”

CBS’ night-by-night lineup:

* Monday: “Evening Shade,” “Hearts Afire,” “Murphy Brown,” “Love Is Hell,” “Northern Exposure.”

* Tuesday: “Rescue 911,” “CBS Tuesday Movie.”

* Wednesday: “The Hat Squad,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “48 Hours.”

* Thursday: “Top Cops,” “Street Stories,” “Knots Landing.”

* Friday: “The Golden Palace,” “Major Dad,” “Designing Women,” “Bob,” “Picket Fence.”

* Saturday: “The Little Woman,” “Brooklyn Bridge,” “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” “Polish Hill.”

* Sunday: “60 Minutes,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “CBS Sunday Movie.”

BABY TALK

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