Networks Making Midcourse Corrections For Prime-Time Programs

The end of the calendar year marks the midpoint in the television season, the time when network programmers assess what has gone well, what has gone less than well and what went south.

Among other things, those assessments tell them what holes they need to fill for shows that have been canceled. This year the holes are plentiful and few of the reinforcements are producing high expectations.

NBC will add a comedy about an alien family. ABC has a comedy about a former high school basketball team, the first effort from the Dreamworks Studio. CBS has a high school drama that could be Montel Williams’s vehicle out of daytime talk shows. And Fox has a comedy about a woman trying to make it as an executive among lumberjack-types in Alaska.

The networks badly need a glimmer from these new efforts, or from a couple of the holdovers from fall, because with the exception of two well-positioned new shows on NBC, “Caroline in the City” and “The Single Guy,” almost nothing new from the fall rang any bells in the ratings.

“Caroline” and “Single Guy” have placed among the top six shows on television, but the significance of their ratings are questionable because NBC scheduled them in its powerhouse Thursday-night lineup, which includes “Friends,” “Seinfeld” and “E.R.”

In spite of the doubts, those two comedies have at least held onto the big audiences delivered to them.

ABC, by contrast, has a batch of new shows, including “Hudson Street,” “Naked Truth” and “The Drew Carey Show,” which are steadily losing viewers from the hit shows they follow. The network has renewed them, however, though with no noticeable enthusiasm.

In truth, many of the new shows with mediocre ratings might have been canceled in earlier years but this year have been signed on for the rest of the season.

Some are still breathing because of commitments the networks made to them. That’s true of ABC’s “Murder One,” the highly touted Steven Bochco show that got steamrolled by NBC’s “E.R.” on Thursday nights. It will get a second life on Mondays starting next month.

CBS has promised that its magazine-world soap opera, “Central Park West,” will finish the season, though maybe not on Wednesday nights, where it has been battered.

Among the shows that have been canceled - “cratered,” as the programmers put it - are “New York News,” “If Not for You” and “Dweebs” on CBS, “Misery Loves Company and “Preston Episodes” on Fox, “The Monroes and “Charlie Grace” on ABC and “Minor Adjustments” and “Pursuit of Happiness” on Fox.

A huge group of shows has just barely squeaked through. That’s the case with “The Client” on CBS and two others, “Bless This House” and “Almost Perfect,” that the network is keeping because it thinks they are well made and may catch on later.

Similarly, ABC has ordered “The Jeff Foxworthy Show” for a full season, even though its ratings have dipped disappointingly after a promising start.

“Space: Above and Beyond,” which follows the Sunday football games, has had better results than anything else Fox has put into that slot, but for a longer life the show will have to hold up after the football season.

Despite generally strong critical receptions, Fox’s new Monday comedies “Ned and Stacey” and “Partners” have gotten abysmal ratings. Yet the network, which has a record of growing hits very slowly, is standing by them.

NBC, the only network whose ratings are growing (its Thursday night lineup has become one of the most dominant in television history), has merely tinkered a bit so far, moving shows like “News Radio” and “Hope and Gloria” to new nights and massing most of its promotion effort for “Third Rock From the Sun,” a comedy about aliens taking the shape of a traditional American family. It will start on Jan 9.

NBC is emphasizing just how different this show is, which plays well in a season that has been a circus of “Friends” clones. “Third Rock” has a name star, John Lithgow, and a bit of rivalry attached to it. NBC took it on after ABC rejected it. If it’s a hit, NBC gets rub-it-in rights.

CBS remains the network with the most problems. Its new fall lineup was generally disastrous, and some of its older shows, like “Murphy Brown” and “Murder, She Wrote” show signs of wear. The network has tried to resurrect its schedule with a little grave-robbing, reviving two deceased shows, “Diagnosis: Murder” with Dick Van Dyke as a doctor-sleuth, and “Due South,” about a Canadian Mountie working for the Chicago police. It will also bring Don Johnson back to weekly television in a few months in a police drama called “Bridges,” and it has a new comedy, tentatively called “The Louie Show,” with the comic Louie Anderson, written by Diane English of “Murphy Brown.”

Then there’s “Matt Waters,” with Montel Williams playing a tough teacher in a tough high school, due to appear sometime in January.

On the surface, ABC continues to do well enough, but cracks are starting to show. The network did not generate a hit for the second straight fall, and some standbys, like “Roseanne” and “Home Improvement,” are sliding.