The Loneliest Night of the Week for CBS : Television: The network's plan to capture an older audience on Fridays with Carol Burnett as the centerpiece quickly crumpled.

By RICK DU BROW

Nov. 30, 1991 12 AM PT

Oh, it was a beautiful plan by CBS.

The network had finally put “Dallas” out to pasture in May, and there were all those middle-aged and older Friday-night viewers just waiting for new programming that also would be tailored to their tastes.

The strategy was simple: Concede the kids in the audience to ABC’s dominant Friday lineup of such shows as “Family Matters” and “Perfect Strangers.” Build up the resurgent CBS network where possible.

By fall, the blocks were in place and looked promising on paper. “Princesses,” a sitcom with Twiggy, Julie Hagerty and Fran Drescher as roommates in a New York apartment, would lead off the night. “Brooklyn Bridge,” a classy comedy about a 1950s Brooklyn family from “Family Ties” creator Gary David Goldberg, would build on the adult audience with its nostalgia.

At the end of prime time, an easy-to-take action show, “Palace Guard,” about a former thief who heads security for a hotel chain, would provide a comfortable, traditional windup for the night. And then, on Nov. 1, the linchpin of the lineup, a one-hour variety series with Carol Burnett, would arrive as a 9 p.m. centerpiece, and CBS would pull off its Friday master stroke.

Dream on.

It is now just two months since the season began, and CBS’ entire Friday lineup is gone.

The network’s night has disappeared--except for such specials as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Circus of the Stars,” which CBS programmed Friday. Network executives are piecing together a substitute schedule of series.

In a ratings race as tight as the one that involves the Big Three networks, CBS now is like a football team that is a man short. What is amazing is that CBS has shown so much ingenuity with special shows--like the “Ed Sullivan Show” and “MASH” retrospectives of recent days--that it is still the network leader in its dramatic bid to go from last place to first in a single season.

CBS has had other troubles as well--retooling the long-dependable “Knots Landing” after the show’s early-season collapse in execution. And its plans to corner the older-viewer market on Fridays now has been torpedoed by NBC’s shrewd move in switching the longtime ratings winner “Matlock,” with Andy Griffith, to that night.

But the big question for CBS is: What happened to its Friday blueprint? Network nights have vanished before, but rarely so suddenly and dramatically.

“Friday was the biggest risk we had coming into the season,” says Peter Tortorici, executive vice president of CBS Entertainment. “You have to be smart and you have to be lucky.”

A dark personal cloud left its mark on CBS earlier in the year when Michael Landon, whose new one-hour drama series was to open the network’s Friday lineup, died of cancer. The show, “Us,” was about a wrongly convicted man who is released from prison after 18 years and tries to reunite with his family.

“Our original strategy was to have Michael and Carol anchor (Fridays) for us,” says Tortorici. It would have been a formidable move because Landon’s series invariably succeeded with those who favor traditional shows, and Burnett, given any kind of a reasonably strong lead-in, is generally a shoo-in for respectable ratings because of her loyal audience, which also tends to be on the traditional side.

In any case, CBS still had reason to be hopeful that it could build a presence for itself on Fridays--to add to its Sunday, Monday and Tuesday success with such hits as “60 Minutes,” “Murphy Brown” and “Rescue 911.”

But trouble quickly arose on “Princesses,” which left the air shortly after it debuted. Hagerty, one of the most delightful actresses in films, departed--”by mutual decision,” Tortorici says. And the show--now in that TV never-never land called “hiatus”--is in “recasting and reconceptualization,” the CBS executive adds.

But is it definitely coming back? “It’s not 100% sure, but it’s a strong possibility in another form,” says Tortorici.

“Palace Guard,” however, is the longest of long shots. Tortorici says “the chances are” that the flashy but empty-headed series is finished.

“No further episodes are being produced,” he says. “We had excellent promotion but unfortunately people didn’t want to come. There are times when, despite your best efforts, the viewer says ‘It’s not for me.’ ”

“Brooklyn Bridge” is a whole different story--a brilliant venture that CBS is behind all the way, with a full-season renewal, and has moved to Wednesdays, where it will help fill the void left by the death of another of the network’s stars, Redd Foxx, who had appeared in the new sitcom “The Royal Family.”

What happened, however, because of the problems of “Princesses” and the move of “Brooklyn Bridge,” is that “The Carol Burnett Show”--instead of becoming a linchpin--arrived on schedule Nov. 1 with no regular, dependable lead-in. It had been dropped into the black hole of CBS’ disappearing night, and thus it was no surprise when Burnett, CBS and the producing studio, Disney Television, decided to pull the plug on the series this week.

Burnett’s final few shows will air in December. But with production problems, concept and the obstacle of selling the virtually defunct TV variety-show form to a contemporary audience, it was a wise and classy decision by all concerned to terminate the series quickly, rather than letting it suffer a lingering decline. Marcia Brandwynne, chief of Burnett’s Kalola Productions, aptly described the situation by saying that fixing the show was “like trying to change a tire at 60 m.p.h.”

Both Tortorici and Burnett say they want her association with the network to continue. Tortorici adds that CBS is thinking of her for both specials and series--although it still appears that the veteran star, who has always rejected the idea of being locked into a single TV role, remains hard to persuade to do a sitcom.

“To this point, she has been resistant to do a character in a half-hour comedy,” says Tortorici. And Brandwynne says the star remains opposed to appearing in such a format at the moment.

As for her show, Tortorici says, “It was the same problem everyone’s been having--what the 1990s version of a variety show is. The only thing we really have to look at is ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and that was not the show that we or Carol wanted to do.”

Tortorici says CBS is ready to resume its relationship with Burnett “when she’s ready. This was a disappointment for both of us. I definitely think that we will do some variety specials. I don’t think the form is undoable. But we don’t want to stumble. She deserves better.”

As for CBS, the spotlight is on the black hole of Friday, where its whole season could come unhinged.