
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 30, 1990                   TAG: 9005300237
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

CBS ANNOUNCES COMEDY-HEAVY LINEUP

CBS, trying to battle back from three seasons as third in prime-time TV ratings, said Tuesday it will have nine new series in the fall, including a comic-book hero and an action series whose heroes fight polluters.

"This is a strong first step in the process of rebuilding our prime time lineup," said CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky.

Sagansky's new lineup, his first full one since CBS hired him last year as its programming chief to lead it out of the ratings wilderness, revamps all nights but Tuesday and Sunday.

It also gives CBS four nights of comedies. This season it had only one night.

The goal, he told CBS affiliates in a closed-circuit hookup, is to attract younger viewers and more family viewing in the 8 p.m. time period.

The roster includes five new hour-long series; four new sitcoms and a comedy formerly on NBC, "The Hogan Family." It also has a first-run, pre-cable movie package of such hits as "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Do The Right Thing."

The low-rated "Saturday Night With Connie Chung" will move to Mondays with a different format and name - "Face to Face With Connie Chung." Two test runs of the new version got high ratings during the May sweeps.

But the Vietnam War ended for "Tour of Duty." CBS axed that series, along with the venerable "Falcon Crest," whose demise was announced last week, and such far newer ones as "The Amazing Teddy Z," "City" and "Sydney."

However, Sagansky said "Paradise" may be renewed. "Wiseguy" now is in backup status, he added, with Ken Wahl to return in the first few episodes, then be succeeded by Stephen Bauer, who would play a new undercover agent.

CBS' new sitcoms are the movie spinoff "Uncle Buck," the blue-collar "Lenny," "Four Alarm Fire," about a widowed firefighter with four kids, and "Evening Shade," starring Burt Reynolds as an ex-football star who moves his family back to the small Arkansas town of his boyhood.

Reynolds, whose "B.L. Stryker" series was dropped by ABC last week, won't be the only familiar face on CBS next fall. Edward Woodward of CBS' late "The Equalizer" will return in the hour-long "Over My Dead Boy" as a burnt-out novelist paired with a young obituary writer played by Jessica Lundy.

by CNB