CBS Has Its Eye on TV Veterans

CBS’ prime-time schedule for next season will look a lot like NBC’s in the 1980s, including new comedies starring Bill Cosby, Ted Danson and Rhea Perlman.

The third-place network, which will officially unveil its first lineup under new management and ownership today in New York, will schedule 10 new shows in the fall, split evenly between comedies and one-hour dramas.

“Cosby,” reuniting the actor and Phylicia Rashad in a show based on a British series, is expected to lead off a revised Monday night comedy block, hoping Cosby can do for CBS what he did for NBC a decade ago.

“The Nanny” and “Dave’s World” are expected to move to a new night while “Touched by an Angel” flies over to 8 p.m. Sunday in place of “Murder, She Wrote,” which just ended its 12-year run. “Early Edition,” a new show starring Kyle Chandler as a man who can see tomorrow’s headlines and then act to help people, would then bridge the gap Saturday between “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” and “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

CBS’ other new sitcoms are “Ink,” the new Danson series, which pairs him with real-life wife Mary Steenburgen as a divorced couple running a newspaper; “Pearl,” starring Rhea Perlman as a middle-class woman who goes to Harvard; “Public Morals,” producer Steven Bochco’s latest, about New York vice cops; and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” starring comic Ray Romano as a family man in a show produced by David Letterman.

The dramas include “Home of the Brave,” a “Touched by an Angel” spinoff starring Gerald McRaney; “Moloney,” with Peter Strauss as a police psychologist; “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” starring Scott Bakula as part of a husband-and-wife detective team; and “EZ Streets,” with Ken Olin as a cop pursuing a crime boss.

Meanwhile, Fox Broadcasting confirmed Tuesday a fall lineup that gambles by moving “Married . . . With Children” from Sunday to Saturday and “The X-Files” from Friday to Sunday, opposite movies on the other networks.

Fox Entertainment President John Matoian noted that viewing levels are 20% higher on Sunday than Friday, creating “upside potential” for “The X-Files” despite airing in a more competitive slot. Fox hopes “X-Files” fans will follow the show to Sunday and tune in a new series from “X-Files” creator Chris Carter, “Millennium,” which will fill the program’s vacated Friday slot.

Similarly, Fox has shelved the long-running reality program “America’s Most Wanted” to make room for “Married” and a new comedy on Saturday, though Matoian left the door open for the concept to continue as specials or a backup series. Although both “Cops” and “Most Wanted” get respectable ratings, the reality format is less desirable to advertisers than sitcoms or dramas.

Other Fox shows getting the hook include “Partners,” “Space: Above and Beyond,” “Kindred: The Embraced,” “Strange Luck,” “Profit,” “Too Something” and “The Show.”

By ordering only five new shows, Fox is seeking to offer more stability in its scheduling than the other networks--as Matoian put it, to be “aggressive without being completely disruptive.”

Set at the end of the century, “Millennium” is a dark hour starring Lance Henriksen as a hard-boiled ex-FBI investigator with a gift for profiling killers. The other new drama, “L.A. Firefighters,” features an ensemble cast and will premiere June 3.

New Fox comedies are “Party Girl,” based on an independent movie and starring Christine Taylor, who played Marcia in “The Brady Bunch Movie”; “Lush Life,” with Lori Petty and Karyn Parsons as friends living in Venice, Calif.; and “Come Fly With Me,” about a family struggling to make ends meet, starring Patricia Healy and Tony Denison.

Fox’s fall schedule:

Monday: “Melrose Place,” “Party Girl,” “Lush Life.”

Tuesday: “The Fox Tuesday Night Movie.”

Wednesday: “Beverly Hills, 90210,” “Party of Five.”

Thursday: “Martin,” “Living Single,” “New York Undercover.”

Friday: “Sliders,” “Millennium.”

Saturday: “Cops,” “Married . . . With Children,” “Come Fly With Me.”

Sunday: “L.A. Firefighters,” “The Simpsons,” “Ned & Stacey,” “The X-Files.”