Big Eye Doings

CBS, having gone through radical programming changes last season, is feeling pretty comfortable going into the 2011-12 fall season. Most of the new shows from last year, including the Tom Selleck cop drama "Blue Bloods" (told ya!) are back, and only four shows are gone. (The one canceled show I previously failed to mention was "Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior," starring Forrest Whittaker.) "How I Met Your Mother" is back, of course, and that's the good news. "Mike and Molly" is returning to follow its fellow Chuck Lorre-created sitcom "Two and a Half Men." Sorry.

New shows include "Unforgettable," a drama starring "Without a Trace"'s Poppy Montgomery, as well as "2 Broke Girls," a sitcom about two diner waitresses just getting by who have a new idea for a business based on cupcakes. Sounds like a comedy variation on Margo Scott's career. It follows "How I Met Your Mother" on Mondays. If it's no better than the Lorre sitcoms cluttering up the 9 PM Eastern hour, "How I Met Your Mother" will be like a jewel in a tin crown.

It's not necessarily the Tiffany network anymore - it's more like the Century21 network these days - but CBS is pretty much in the catbird seat. It's the most-watched network overall in broadcast television, which still means something in this 500-channel cable TV universe - even if it's not first in the coveted 18-49 age group. Ask CBS chief Leslie Moonves, who has much less trouble attracting advertisers than, say, NBC Entertainment president Bob Greenblatt does.

Meanwhile, Katie Couric's departure as weeknight anchor of CBS's storied news division has been a letdown for the people - all three of them - who thought she could revive the fortunes of network news. There's not much you can say about Coruic's short-lived reign; how can you shed tears for a newscaster whose most provocative interview was eye-opening only because Sarah Palin couldn't answer the kind of softball questions Couric could have asked her on "Today?" But maybe Couric's inability to give network news new life isn't her fault. Television news is a 24-hour affair, with three cable news channels - two of them aimed at politically biased audiences - that are in the business to make money and provide a sense of entertainment more than to inform viewers. This became obvious, as Bill Maher noted, when Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC kept paying attention to Palin even after she was no longer a vice presidential candidate . . . or governor of Alaska.

I'm sure Sarah Palin and many others watch all of the cable news channels - ;-) - at one time or another. But back in the 1960s and 1970s, the average TV viewer, given the choice of only a couple of weeknightly network news reports without a video recorder, could watch only one of them. That gave anchors like Walter Cronkite and the team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley a sense of gravitas that no network news anchor, male or female, can aspire to now.

Especially if her name is "Katie."