Another Vegas-based series makes fall TV schedule

NEW YORK -- Las Vegas in now the setting for two new fall series.

"C.S.I.," a drama about a team of forensic investigators in Las Vegas, is one of several new shows CBS will add to its fall schedule. Earlier this week the WB network announced its fall schedule, which includes the sitcom "Nikki," about a Las Vegas showgirl.

CBS is retooling its Friday and Saturday night schedules this fall to add four new dramas and is sending in Bette Midler to compete against "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

Midler will star in "The Bette Show" on Wednesday nights, a situation comedy in which she plays a character suspiciously like herself.

CBS is canceling its long-running medical drama "Chicago Hope," "Martial Law," "Early Edition," "Now and Again" and "Ladies Man." Bill Cosby is also off CBS's schedule: His "Cosby" has retired and CBS hasn't picked up "Kids Say the Darndest Things."

On Fridays CBS will air "C.S.I.," as well as an update of the classic series "The Fugitive."

With ABC and NBC both scheduling movies on Saturdays, CBS will try three dramas. It will bring back "Walker, Texas Ranger" and start two new series: "That's Life," about a New Jersey girl who ditches her blue-collar fiance and goes back to college, and "The District," about a police commissioner who tries to shake up Washington, D.C.

CBS is also shifting the newsmagazine "48 Hours" to Thursdays at 8 p.m. and moving "Diagnosis Murder" to Thursdays at 10 p.m. The medical drama "City of Angels" will stay on the schedule in part because of concerns about the lack of minorities in major TV roles, CBS President Leslie Moonves said after the fall lineup was announced Wednesday.

Fox and UPN are scheduled to announce their fall schedules Thursday.

Midler leads a pack of three new CBS comedies. She has the unenviable task of competing against "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," the ABC game show that Moonves admits "drives me crazy."

"I lie awake at night thinking of how to fight this thing and I don't have the answer yet," he said.

A day earlier ABC announced it would add a fourth night of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" in the fall.

With four prime-time hours of the hit show with Regis Philbin, ABC is adding only four new series in the fall. The network canceled the critically acclaimed "Sports Night" and trimmed its newsmagazine schedule from four nights to three.

Meanwhile the youth-oriented WB network hopes to recover some of its sizzle with a fall schedule that includes two nights of comedies, including a parody of the teen angst dramas it has lived on the last few years.

"Millionaire" has been a ratings juggernaut since its premiere last August, and industry analysts have estimated that it will earn between $400 million to $600 million in profits next year.

ABC is adding Geena Davis to its lineup in "Geena," a comedy about a career woman thrust into the role of mom by marrying a widower. It also is adding a medical drama with former "Homicide" star Andre Braugher, and a comedy with Gabriel Byrne.

The WB's young comedies on Friday include the new "Grosse Pointe," a spoof of the behind-the-scenes lives of actors starring in a teen drama.

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