After the Holidays, It’ll Be Back to Business

Once the holiday music stops, it’s time for the television networks to start their annual game of midseason musical chairs.

Programmers’ resolutions tend to revolve around getting more people to watch, and with a horde of holiday specials winging your way through December (when shopping, parties and travel generally depress viewing levels), the networks are already focusing on what can be done to improve ratings beginning in January.

For that reason, the new year will be greeted by a number of new series as the networks seek to plug holes left by canceled programs--after filling some scheduling gaps for weeks with specials or second and third repeats of existing shows.

The stakes remain high, because the networks are desperately seeking new hits, with few members of this year’s rookie class establishing themselves as favorites.

Moreover, January and March often provide a less cluttered environment for launching programs, given that the six networks rolled out three dozen new contenders in the fall. Long-running shows introduced during January in the past include CBS’ “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” and NBC’s “3rd Rock From the Sun.”

Overall, however, the networks seem to be approaching lineup changes conservatively, not wanting to squander new series--each representing a risk entailing millions of dollars--by throwing them to the wolves in struggling time periods.

Comedy-variety programs--once given up for dead--have thus become a renewed genre, offering a relatively low-cost means of competing for viewers.

Along those lines, CBS will lead off its Friday lineup in January with “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” hosted by Bill Cosby, which has enjoyed popularity with periodic specials. ABC will also bring back “America’s Funniest Home Videos” on Mondays at 8 p.m.

In similar fashion, NBC has ordered its blooper specials as a series, and CBS’ reserves include a “Candid Camera” revival and “Unsolved Mysteries,” which the network acquired after a nine-year run on NBC.

“You probably will see more of [them] from everybody,” CBS Television President Leslie Moonves said. “Anybody who follows television closely knows it’s very cyclical.”

Fox will schedule “Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction?”--which received a trial run last summer chronicling incredible stories and leaving viewers to guess which are true--on Fridays in place of its canceled sci-fi drama “The Visitor.” ABC also plans to add yet another prime-time news program (10 are currently on the air), seeking to bolster its struggling Saturday lineup.

Despite that reliance on news and so-called reality fare, the networks haven’t given up on conventional comedies and dramas.

CBS probably has the best opportunity to score with its midseason moves, largely because the network will broadcast the Winter Olympics for 16 days in February. With the Games’ proven ability to keep even infrequent viewers glued in front of their sets, CBS will use the event as a springboard for promoting new series, including a much-anticipated comeback sitcom starring Tom Selleck as a hotshot advertising executive.

Shows coming to CBS next year include “Homestead,” a drama starring Ann-Margret and Sonia Braga about a ranching family in New Mexico, and a series based on “The Magnificent Seven,” featuring a cast that includes Michael Biehn and Ron Perlman.

Other CBS comedies are “Style and Substance,” with “Designing Women’s” Jean Smart as a Martha Stewart-type character who “thinks every crisis can be solved with a decorative centerpiece” (a series ABC tried developing previously for Kathleen Turner); and “The Simple Life,” with Judith Light moving from the big city to sample farm-style country living.

ABC, most in need of help from reinforcements, is hoping to receive some from another NBC castaway, “Something So Right,” the sitcom starring Mel Harris and Jere Burns. The network has also ordered two dramas: “Prey,” a sci-fi project about genetically engineered humans bent on destroying mankind, and “Push,” which deals with young athletes training for the Olympics.

At NBC, the midseason arsenal includes “House Rules,” which finds a beautiful young attorney sharing a home with two lifelong male friends; a sitcom from “Living Single” producer Yvette Lee Bowser about three couples in various stages of romance; and “Lateline,” a comedy produced by and starring “Saturday Night Live’s” Al Franken that--like HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show”--goes behind the scenes of a fictional TV news program and features real-life newsmakers as guests.

The network is also expected to order “Nearly Yours,” its first series from DreamWorks, about a brash young woman reinvigorating the life of her newly fired, middle-aged boss.

Without revealing specifics, NBC has acknowledged plans to overhaul its Sunday lineup early next year, after getting hammered in the ratings that night by ABC’s “Wonderful World of Disney,” CBS’ “Touched by an Angel” and Fox’s “King of the Hill” and “The X-Files.”

Both ABC and NBC, in fact, have consistently struck out with movies this season at 9 p.m. Sundays, which NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield attributed to the success there of “X-Files,” which he called “a game-changer on the night.”

Though Fox has performed solidly with that series and other dramatic fare, such as “Party of Five” and newcomer “Ally McBeal,” the network remains determined to schedule more comedies.

Fox’s backup roster thus features “Ask Harriet,” in which a ladies’ man is forced to dress in drag to become a women’s advice columnist; the self-explanatory “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place,” from “Mad About You” co-creator Danny Jacobson; and a comedy that reunites Damon Wayans with fellow “In Living Color” alumnus David Alan Grier, who’ll play his brother.

The WB network, meanwhile, will expand to a fourth night of programming in January by introducing two dramas: “Dawson’s Creek,” from “Scream” screenwriter Kevin Williamson, is a coming-of-age saga about a group of precocious teenagers in a small town; and “Three” is a “Mission: Impossible”-like premise focusing on a team of government operatives.

To help launch those shows, WB will break up its Monday tandem “7th Heaven” and “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer,” pairing them with the new series Mondays and Tuesdays, respectively.

The network will also bring “Cheers” alumna Shelley Long back in a sitcom titled “You’re the One” and is planning an animated prime-time series, “Invasion America,” whose producers include Steven Spielberg.

* IN THE RATINGS GAME: With the Winter Olympics, CBS hopes to continue its success. F2