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Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray Column: Just 4 New Offerings in CBS' Fall Lineup

Posted on: Thursday, 18 May 2006, 09:10 CDT

By Ellen Gray, Philadelphia Daily News

May 18--NEW YORK - It's good to be king.

Or that's the feeling you get from Les Moonves, whose latest title - CBS Corp. CEO - is just another way of saying that Moonves is the guy on top of the most-watched TV network, the one he helped drag up from the bottom.

On the 19th floor of CBS' midtown Manhattan headquarters yesterday morning, the best view was of the fall schedule board that the network unveiled, old-school style, during a breakfast meeting with reporters here covering the fall-schedule announcements.

Three days into the broadcast "upfronts" - so called because this is where the networks try to get advertisers to give them the money up front - NBC and ABC had already announced more than two dozen new shows between them and shuffled a bunch of others.

CBS announced just four (with three more waiting in the wings).

Three new dramas and just one new sitcom - "The Class," from Bala Cynwyd's David Crane, who co-created "Friends" - will join CBS' lineup this fall, while six shows launched this season will return, the most survivors of any network so far.

Nothing on CBS this season has broken out the way ABC's "Desperate Housewives,""Lost" and "Grey's Anatomy" did two seasons ago. But in a climate where only about 15 percent of new shows traditionally make it to a second year, the relatively quiet success of shows like "Criminal Minds,""Close to Home,""Ghost Whisperer,""How I Met Your Mother,""The New Adventures of Old Christine" and, lately, "The Unit," put the network in a strong position going into the fall, if only because it can focus its marketing on a handful of new shows.

The schedule, Moonves noted, also puts each new series "within a block of strong other shows," a luxury that ABC and NBC, with holes to fill all over the board, don't have.

The biggest scheduling move probably involves Sunday night, which, after "60 Minutes," will be all-Bruckheimer, all the time.

That would be "CSI" producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the guy who's lately put the B in CBS and whose series "The Amazing Race" and "Without a Trace" are joining "Cold Case" on Sundays as CBS finally ditches its weekly movie.

With "Race" at 8, "Cold Case" will face "Desperate Housewives" at 9, while "Trace," the show that toppled "ER" on Thursdays, faces ABC's new Calista Flockhart series, "Brothers & Sisters."

And, of course, football on NBC.

The new fall shows are:

"The Class" (8:30 p.m. Mondays, after "How I Met Your Mother"), a comedy from Crane and partner Jeffrey Klarik ("Mad About You") about a group of people who were classmates in the third grade and reconnect at a reunion;

"Smith" (10 p.m. Tuesdays), a drama starring Ray Liotta ("Goodfellas") as the leader of a gang of professional thieves (Moonves, ignoring FX's "Thief" and NBC's short-lived "Heist," described it as "'Usual Suspects' meets 'Ocean's Eleven'");

"Jericho" (8 p.m. Wednesdays), a show about a small town in Kansas - "Kansas?" asked Moonves, "one of those states" - whose inhabitants think they may be the only survivors of a nuclear holocaust (and yes, he'd be fine if we want to liken it to "Lost"); and

"Shark" (10 p.m. Thursdays), which stars James Woods as a prominent defense lawyer who, after what the synopsis calls "a personal ephiphany," moves over to the prosecutor's office.

Other nuggets from CBS' announcement:

-- "King of Queens," while not on the fall schedule, will return at some point, Moonves said, adding, "We're going to send it off properly."

-- Though the weekly Sunday-night movie is dead, the network will continue to do occasional movies and miniseries, including three Hallmark Hall of Fame productions.

ABC's female-skewing "Desperate Housewives""absolutely hurt the movie," Moonves said.

-- Also missing and presumed dead: "Out of Practice,""Courting Alex,""Threshold,""Love Monkey,""Still Standing" and (maybe for real this time) "Yes, Dear."

-- Spike Lee directed the pilot for "Shark."

-- Using a line he'd no doubt be recycling all day, Moonves, noting the addition of Katie Couric, Anderson Cooper and Lara Logan to "60 Minutes," quipped, "It's not your mother's '60 Minutes'... we've reduced the age from 85 to 82."

-- Couric, still at work at NBC, was reportedly not going to be among the CBS notables meeting advertisers yesterday, though Moonves said "we're working on it" with NBC. He joked that he'd offered the network "Early Show" co-anchor Julie Chen (who just happens to be his wife) for its Monday upfront presentation, but they didn't bite.

Whatever it took, Couric made it to the afternoon dog and pony show at Carnegie Hall, where she joked, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate."

Couric may have been the afternoon's biggest "get," but the biggest hit was the surprise performance by Mariah Carey, who's doing a CBS special next season.

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, Philadelphia Daily News

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Source: The Philadelphia Daily News

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