TVSquad

There's good news and bad news on the CBS soap opera front. The good news is that The Young & the Restless has been renewed for two years. The bad news is that As the World Turns could be axed just like Guiding Light.

The Young & the Restless is CBS daytime's top rated soap. It's been number one in the Nielsens for nearly 20 years running. So the renewal wasn't a big surprise. However, the pick-up came with a warning to cut costs, tighten the budget and, basically, don't expect the stars to get big raises anytime soon. In the past year alone, two of the veterans -- Melody Thomas Scott and Jess Walton -- opted to take less money when the show threatened to write them out or recast. Welcome to the brave new world of daytime!

Amid the CBS Summer Press Tour this week, the subject came up about why the network had cancelled Without A Trace. It wasn't ratings, which is clearly the truth because just this past weekend, Without A Trace was pulling over six million viewers for a rerun, doubling the number of people who tuned in for the brand new ABC series, Defying Gravity. Therefore, if Without A Trace was still capable of besting the fodder produced by the competition, why on earth would CBS dump it?

"Every show has its own life cycle," said CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler, who went on to explain that the shows the network had in development were just too good to wait. In other words, The Good Wife, Three Rivers and NCIS: Los Angeles, none of which are proven hits, were more important than an established success.

CBS programming chief Nina Tassler held court this morning in the CBS executive session. Her network is in an extremely strong position, so there wasn't much in the way of controversy to report, but here are some interesting tidbits from the session:

• Laurence Fishburne's character of Dr. Langston on CSI will assume a more take-charge position this year, he'll also be given a "wardrobe makeover" so he seems, as Tassler put it "more comfortable in his own clothes."
• Jorja Fox will be back for the first five episodes. And one of the main characters will get promoted. I won't spoil it for you, but you can probably figure out who it might be.
• A new Let's Make A Deal with Wayne Brady as host, will be taking the place of Guiding Light. Tassler wouldn't go so far as saying this is a trend towards the return of daytime network game shows, but she did say she wanted to get a new LMAD on the air for a while.
• No plans to bring back Flashpoint right now, though they can. More Canadian cross-production deals on the way, including The Bridge.
• On NBC's late-night / Leno strategies: "Whatever numbers they get, they'll declare victory anyway, so it doesn't matter."
• On the departure of Ben Silverman of NBC: "I'm really just a D-girl, so I wouldn't comment."

This is what I call thinking out of the box. Instead of simply replicating NCIS, the producers seem to be envisioning a completely different show. Reports claim that the CBS spinoff of NCIS may star Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J.

Could you find two more different actors to pair in a procedural? (Okay, Ice-T and Richard Belzer on Law & Order: SVU aren't a typical teaming either, but at that's supposedly a New York police squad.)

Anyway, it's still in the talking stages, but it's exciting nonetheless. O'Donnell, best known for playing Robin in two Batman movies, being Al Pacino's young charge in Scent of a Woman, and more recently hunked it up as Dr. Finn Dandridge on Grey's Anatomy, would be playing an investigator for the Navy who's a master of disguise. Apparently, he can fake out everyone around him.

Remember last summer, that CBS drama about life in 1976, the music, the fashions, the wife-swapping and key parties? Yes, Swingtown, the daring drama that flirted with controversial subjects, but was essentially a well-produced soap opera in the tradition of Knots Landing?

Well, after months of no news about the show, we learn today that no news is bad news. Swingtown has been cancelled.

CBS president Nina Tassler championed the show, but apparently she couldn't save it. At the press tour presentation she talked lovingly about the drama, even patting the network on the back to taking a risk by broadcasting it. But in the end, the good performances, excellent writing, critical approval and cult following it garnered didn't matter.

This Friday CBS will air the last episode of Swingtown, but the question of the future for the show still remains unanswered. Is this the series finale or just the season finale? Fans are concerned and I've been contacted by one who has started a petition online to present to CBS, beseeching the network to give Swingtown a second season. If you want to sign up, click here.

I've been reviewing Swingtown since it premiered earlier this summer and I've liked the show. In fact, it's grown on me and if I were in a position to make the call, I'd give Swingtown an order for 13 more episodes. Yes, the series has not been a ratings hit, I'll give you that. However, it has created a lot of buzz and media coverage.

All right, let me say this up front and without equivocation: if CBS picks up Flashpoint and cancels Swingtown, I'm going to be ticked off. I'm not down on Flashpoint. As Jane wrote, Flashpoint is a good show. No 24, but solid procedural entertainment. However, when I read that Canada's CTV has renewed up north and sources say that CBS is close to doing the same, I immediately got my back up.

Why should Flashpoint get a break while an interesting, quirky and outside-the-box drama like Swingtown may not? It's disheartening to me that CBS is searching for a cable network to take Swingtown, while a "safe" crime show like Flashpoint doesn't have that concern.

I can't decide if this is good news or bad news. Moonlight star Alex O'Loughlin is staying at CBS.

Unless you've been in another galaxy for the past year, you know that the Aussie actor cultivated an enormous fan base with his role as vampire P.I. Mick St. John on CBS' Moonlight. The uproar caused by the cancellation of the show in May can still be heard, well, in another galaxy.

At the Television Critics Association press tour in July, CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler said the popularity of Moonlight was due in large part to O'Loughlin's fan base. So I can appreciate the fact that CBS wants to keep him around. But it's what they'll do with him that has me worried.

After I posted about what CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler said about Moonlight the other day -- namely that the campaign to save it was "actor-driven" instead of show-driven -- angry comments came in from all the "loyal" fans of the show out there (I put the word "loyal" in quotes because Moonlight fans make the Jericho fans look cool and collected). Most of those fans said that Tassler was a liar. One even went so far to attach the b-word to his invective. You'd have thought that Tassler drained these people's 401(k)'s and skipped off to Central America.

Anyway, I caught up with Tassler at the CBS party that night, and I told her about the comments I was getting. When I speculated that I didn't even think the Jericho fans were that passionate, she retorted, "I think they were. The Jericho fans ... I spent a lot of time looking the blogs and the website. Look, I don't want to say Moonlight fans weren't fans of the show. They were. But in sort of sifting through all of it (the e-mails, etc.) it was very much about 'our vampire, Alex (O'Laughlin).'" When I mentioned that some of the comments were pretty ugly, she just looked at me and said, "It's not a pretty business."

When Drew Carey takes the stage later today to begin taping the 37th season of The Price is Right, he'll be seeing whatever changes they have in store for the first time. Why? Because he's just as much in the dark about it as everyone else is. "They don't tell me anything," he told me on Friday night at the CBS all-star party at the Boulevard3 club in Hollywood. When I asked him if he prefers it that way, he told me "No. It's disheartening. They don't tell me what they're thinking about doing or changing."

Drew also told me that he found out about longtime producer Roger Dobkowitz' dismissal the night before it happened. Executives at Fremantle told him about the change at a dinner near the Price studios. He felt bad for Dobkowitz, especially because of how well he got along with him. When asked if that put a damper on a fairly successful first season, he at first said it didn't, then he reconsidered. "Well, yeah it did, actually, because I really thought the world of him and I was sad that he let go. But like I said, I'm like an employee. They don't discuss their personnel changes with me."

The entire interview, including a response from CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler, is after the jump.

The first day of the combined CBS / CW / Showtime part of the tour kicked off with the executive session from CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler. Before she got on stage, the network showed a montage of their shows. It was then I realized, "Boy, I really don't watch anything on this network, do I?" I mean, outside of the Monday comedies and The Price is Right, there isn't one show on the Eye net that I tune in on a regular basis.

Anyway, she addressed the departure of William Peterson from CSI, just about right off the bat, giving the gathered writers a clue as to the nature of the character who will be coming in to fill his void. Oh, and Tassler is studying to become a cantor. For some reason, a reporter asked her about that.

Frasier has left the building, but Kelsey Grammer hasn't. Or maybe he just doesn't want to. The actor, whose Fox situation comedy, Back to You, was canceled after just one season, doesn't want to call it quits. He wants the show to continue and he's so determined, he's even lobbied for the show personally. The Emmy award winning star phoned CBS executives -- including CBS CEO Les Moonves -- to plead the case for Back to You.

When Kelsey phoned, Les took the call, and he even told Grammer that he'd "think about it," that is, moving Back to You to CBS. However, when Kelsey followed up with a call to Nina Tassler, CBS Entertainment prez, she dismissed it. There really was no room on the CBS schedule for another sitcom; even Rules of Engagement (which CBS has a vested interest in bringing back) won't be broadcast till mid-season next year. There's no mention of Kelsey calling ABC or NBC; perhaps they didn't take his call?

CBS announced its plans for the 2008-2009 season today. For the most part, things are staying the same, but there are two new sitcoms and four hour dramas planned. Here are the highlights:

Returning: The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Rules of Engagement, The Unit, Cold Case, Numb3rs, Criminal Minds, The Ghost Whisperer, CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, NCIS, 60 Minutes, Without A Trace, Survivor, The Amazing Race

Out: Shark, Moonlight, Cane, Kid Nation, Power of 10, Secret Talents of the Stars, Viva Laughlin, Welcome to the Captain

New: The Worst Week, Project Gary, The Ex List, Eleventh Hour, The Mentalist

Mid-season: Harper's Island, Rules of Engagement

Schedule and detailed descriptions of the new shows coming soon, after the jump.

She's trying one more time. That'll make it three attempts, but who's counting. Three attempts since the new century, that is. Anyway, the point is that Geena Davis's new police drama, Exit 19, has been greenlighted by CBS. The Oscar-winning actress (for The Accidental Tourist), is going from playing the first female president on Commander in Chief, to an eccentric New York homicide detective who's also raising two kids -- sans spouse -- in suburban Long Island.

Full disclosure: as a former CBS page, I always have a soft spot for the Eye network's TCA day.

Whenever I see the CBS pages at the press tour in their bright red sports coats, I always think -- why couldn't we have had sharp navy blue ones like the NBC ushers?

Today's lineup includes an executive session with CBS president Nina Tassler. While she may not have to answer the question about the finale of The Sopranos (that round-up inquiry has faded from sessions) she won't likely get off the hook completely. Usually, one journalist asks her about bringing back Joan of Arcadia.