‘Suddenly Susan’ Has A Brand New Career

Brooke Shields’ character has lost her job, and her new show is still two months from debut.

Don’t cry Brooke a river, though. It may be her best career move since “Blue Lagoon.”

In the pilot of her new series, “Suddenly Susan,” Shields played a book editor at a staid publishing house in Pasadena. Come September, she’ll be a writer for a hip magazine in San Francisco.

This little bit of hip replacement surgery for Susan is courtesy of Shields herself, in collaboration with Gary Dontzig and Steven Peterman, two TV veterans who spent six seasons working on “Murphy Brown,” including two as executive producers.

NBC will air “Suddenly Susan” on Thursday nights, sandwiched between “Seinfeld” and “ER.” Boris Yeltsin probably could do well in that time slot with dramatic readings of his EKG results.

But the pilot episode of “Suddenly Susan” flat-lined.

Or, as Warren Littlefield, president of NBC Entertainment, prefers to spin it: “We had a pilot that we thought was good, quite good. … (But) audiences expect a lot from us on Thursday nights. We thought it could be great.”

So Dontzig/Peterman were brought in as executive producers to help resuscitate, and they heeded Shields’ suggestion that a book editor is too passive and reactive. She wanted someone more like the odd, unpredictable character she played in an episode of “Friends” last season.

In “Suddenly Susan,” Shields will play a woman who has long been defined by her relationships - with her parents, her boyfriends, her colleagues. As the season begins, she will be ending a relationship with a man and is suddenly on her own for the first time, uninvolved, unencumbered.

‘Single Guy’ also changing

NBC finished No. 1 this season, boasting the six top-ranked shows among advertisers’ coveted demographic of adults 18 to 49. Yet one of those shows, No. 5 “The Single Guy,” is among the series NBC plans to tweak to keep its streak alive.

Star Jonathan Silverman will lose two married pals, his platonic girl friend and her husband, whom Littlefield called “boring,” and instead cast a new recently divorced female character.

Also, the show will gain a hangout - a bagel shop run by a new black buddy played by comedian Shawn Michael Howard. The latter move also addresses critical concerns about the absence of minority performers on NBC’s urban-set “Must-See” sitcoms.

NBC will also be fixing what was broken on some other networks’ shows. After grabbing “The Jeff Foxworthy Show” from ABC, it plans to recast the wife and other characters on the popular Southern-fried comic’s sitcom. The network also picked up Tea Leoni’s “The Naked Truth” from ABC for midseason, planning to give her character a “promotion” from a trashy tabloid to a People-style magazine. Strengthening the ensembles around the stars in each case is a priority.

NBC wins ratings - again

NBC, with seven of the Top 10 shows, is extending its hammerlock on first place in prime time, with CBS narrowly taking second place for a third straight week, according to Tuesday’s Nielsen ratings.

Overall, however, the four networks’ share of the summer audience was just 53 percent, depressing their season-to-date total to 63 percent.

NBC won the week of July 8-14 with a 9.0 rating and a 17 percent share of that diminished audience. CBS took second place with a 7.2 rating, 14 share, edging out ABC which trailed with a 7.0 rating, 13 share.

The Fox Broadcasting Co., programming 15 of the 22 prime-time hours, earned a 4.7 rating and a 9 share.

Since last Sept. 18, NBC has won the lead in 35 weeks, including the past six. ABC won nine weeks and CBS held the crown only once.

The Top 10 shows, their networks and ratings, were:

“Seinfeld,” NBC, 14.2; “Baseball: The All-Star Game,” NBC, 13.2; “3rd Rock from the Sun,” NBC, 12.6; “ER,” NBC, 11.4; “NBC Monday Night Movie: Robin Cook’s ‘Mortal Fear,”’ NBC, 10.8; “PrimeTime Live,” ABC, 10.8; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 10.8; “Dateline NBC Wednesday,” NBC, 10.7; “Frasier,” NBC, 10.7; “20/20,” ABC, 10.3.