CBS Blocks ‘Angel Street’

The police drama “Angel Street” appears to be the first casualty of the new TV season.

After only one outing in its regular 10 p.m. Saturday time slot, CBS told the producers last week not to make any new episodes, according to John Wells, the show’s creator and executive producer.

CBS executives acknowledged publicly last Tuesday that they were unhappy with the performance of the entire Saturday prime-time lineup and were considering making changes.

Representatives of the comedy series “Frannie’s Turn” reported later in the week that CBS had told them the show was in danger of cancellation if its ratings didn’t improve this past weekend.

At “Angel Street,” however, Wells said the message was even blunter: “At this point they have told us that we’re not going to remain in continuous production.”

And that means, he said, that the show effectively has been canceled, because in order to meet production deadlines for the second half of the season, new programs would have to go into production now.

Produced by Warner Bros. and starring Robin Givens and Pamela Gidley as Chicago police officers, “Angel Street” debuted with a two-hour pilot Sept. 15. In its first appearance in its regular time period Sept. 26, it attracted only 12% of the available viewers and ranked 89th among the 98 network programs that aired in prime time that week.

In addition to the pilot, CBS had ordered six episodes of “Angel Street,” which have been completed. Welles said he didn’t know how many of the four as yet unseen will be broadcast. The series was to have been preempted for the next two or three weeks anyway by baseball playoffs and the World Series.