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The Stars Are Back

Roll out the big guns. Sign up the heavy hitters. Bring on the stars.

When you're the entertainment captain of a major broadcast network, and you've seen your audience go south to cable, the Internet or whatever lies south of network television, you bring on the stars.

If you're the CBS honcho and you've had a dozen focus groups say to you about last year's mess of a season, 'What were you thinking?,' you bring on the stars.

Sign up Bill Cosby. Hey, get Phylicia Rashad (See CBS photo above). They had a landmark sitcom not too long ago. And put Madeline Kahn in the new "Cosby" show, too. She may steal the thing from both of them.

What's that bartender from "Cheers" doing these days? Sign up Ted Danson. What? He's married now to that lovely Mary Steenburgen? Ask her to come along as well.

Bring on the stars. Bring them all on.

If you've seen a dozen standup comics fail for every Roseanne and Tim Allen who stick, you look at old "Family Ties" reruns and marvel again at the impeccable timing of Michael J. Fox. Sign him right up. And tell that talented Gary David Goldberg, the "Ties" producer, to come with him to ABC. He can join the All-Star TV Reunion, too.

Leslie Moonves, the president of CBS Entertainment, has the spirit. Addressing television critics in Los Angeles at recent previews of the fall shows, he counted the corpses from last year: 42 new shows on, maybe six still breathing.

CBS will field a flock of new series this fall, but "we're putting them on with major stars that have built-in recognition," Moonves said. "So to introduce a Cosby and a Danson is a lot simpler . . . than a year ago when our biggest name was Nancy McKeon, if you will."

When it came time for Moonves to replace Grant Shaud's wonderful Miles Silverberg character in "Murphy Brown," he didn't dial up just anybody from Central Casting. "FYI's" new executive producer: Lily Tomlin. Bring on a star, even in a supporting role.

CBS isn't the only one to pay attention to casting. A bunch of familiar names and faces, some with TV hits behind them, some who have made their names elsewhere, are on hand for the 1996-97 season.

Molly Ringwald has a series for the first time, and Rhea Perlman from "Cheers" is here. Justine Bateman, Fox's sister from "Family Ties," has a show. So does Annie Potts. And look, everybody, it's Brooke Shields in a series. Peter Strauss and Scott Bakula are back, and star producers such as Steve Bochco and Chris Carter have new shows.

It's not just the casting that's being overhauled.

Some network programmers actually admitted making mistakes last season and are doing an about-face.

Ted Harbert, chairman of ABC Entertainment, acknowledged during his network's season-preview session that maybe it wasn't a great idea to slot "Murder One" opposite "ER" in its debut season. Sorry about that. The show is back this year in revised form -- three murder cases instead of one per season, with a new head of the law firm. But it's opposite "Seinfeld," so maybe ABC is not sorry enough.

CBS pretty much did everything wrong, abandoning its broad-based core audience and bringing on bad shows aimed at the same 18-to-34 crowd that loves stuff like "Friends."

"We did focus groups around the country," said George F. Schweitzer, executive vice president, marketing and communications, for CBS. "The tradition of CBS -- Ed Murrow, Walter Cronkite, 'I Love Lucy' -- was not lost on folks. It gives the network its identity."

The CBS theme this year is "Welcome Home," with stars such as Cosby and Rashad on hand to inspire viewers to drop by. "People say, 'We've missed them,' " said Schweitzer.

Moonves' strength when he ran Warner Bros.'s studio, Schweitzer noted, was his instinct for selecting actors. "He knows how to cast a show, and he's changed the casting department at CBS."

It has to be said that a lot of the shows with the biggest stars were still being retooled at mid-summer, a bad sign. And there is no single show, like last year's "Murder One," to inspire boundless praise.

But if star-power means anything -- and it does -- there will be a lot of good people to watch this season, maybe more good people than shows.