`INK' GOES BACK TO DRAWING BOARD : DANSON-STEENBURGEN SITCOM AMONG NEW SHOWS IN TROUBLE.

Byline: Bill Carter The New York Times

One of the most anticipated new series of the fall television season, ``Ink,'' starring Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, announced this week that it was going back for an extensive retooling that will include spiking the first four episodes, which have already been completed. This CBS series, which will miss its scheduled Sept. 16 premiere and now has no projected starting date, thus became the most prominent example of what some network and studio executives describe as crises in the production of weekly prime-time series.

An unusually large number of new shows have gone through some degree of reconstruction, including CBS' ``Cosby,'' Fox's ``L.A. Firefighters'' and especially NBC's ``Suddenly Susan,'' which has been entirely remade since its pilot episode. Only ``Ink'' has been delayed, but network and studio executives say a glut of new production demands, especially for comedy, has put an enormous strain on the limited store of experienced writers and producers.

``I've never seen anything like it,'' said one longtime network programming executive, who spoke on the condition on anonymity. ``Executive producers are being fired; others are walking off shows. The season starts in three weeks. People are getting really nervous. It's all anybody in town is talking about.''

One longtime production executive put the blame for this on the hugely expensive deals - along the lines of the one CBS made with Danson - that networks have made with stars and the writers and producers for shows that have neither concepts nor premises spelled out beforehand. ``This is a very unwieldy time,'' said the executive, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``Everyone is panicking because there is so much money being committed to deals that aren't shows.''

Leslie Moonves, the president of CBS Entertainment, mentioned the expansion in production that has resulted from two networks, UPN and the WB, being added to the broadcast networks and cable networks like HBO and Showtime. ``Everybody's trying to do comedy,'' Moonves said. ``It's like expansion in baseball. People wind up running shows who are just not ready.''

Indeed, the problem most often cited by network and studio executives is the lack of experienced producers to lead a show from its pilot into full-scale weekly production. Changes in pilots that slightly alter a show's cast are common. But this season, cast changes are epidemic, whole scenes are being reshot, and some major alterations are being made in the basic premises of shows.

CBS made news earlier by changing some objectionable language in its new vice cop comedy, ``Public Morals,'' and ``Cosby'' changed two minor characters after the pilot was shot. On Fox, the comedy ``Party Girl'' made a major recasting move by bringing in Swoosie Kurtz; ``Love and Marriage,'' another comedy, replaced one of the children in the show's main family, and in the most radical remake, ``L.A. Firefighters'' is getting a new cast, new title and its entire focus is shifting toward more action and less soapy character interaction.

At NBC, ``Jeff Foxworthy'' will be all but unrecognizable from the show that ran on ABC last season, with only the star and one son remaining and the location moved from Indianapolis to Atlanta.

But no show has undergone a more complete makeover than ``Suddenly Susan,'' the comedy NBC set up as the surest new hit by giving it the 9:30 time slot on Thursday night, between ``Seinfeld'' and ``ER.'' After seeing the pilot, the network scrapped everything, in front of and behind the camera, except for its star, Brooke Shields.

The ``Ink'' situation has received the most attention because CBS has so much riding on the comedy. The network won an intense bidding war for the rights to Danson's first television show since ``Cheers'' and gave ``Ink'' a commitment for 22 episodes at about $1 million each. It was also placed in CBS' most promising slot, 8:30 p.m. Monday, between the ``Cosby'' comedy and the long-running hit ``Murphy Brown.''

But ``Ink'' was troubled almost from the start. A pilot episode, which established the premise of Steenburgen and Danson, who are married in real life, as a divorced couple working for a newspaper with her as his boss, was deemed disappointing, even by the stars.

In a news conference in July, Steenburgen compared the pilot to a batch of pancakes, where the first one is always imperfectly made. Both stars promised that the show would improve as they got a handle on their characters. Indeed, they declared a second script an enormous improvement. But after filming that episode and two more, their studio, Dreamworks, and CBS began negotiations with Diane English, the creator and executive producer of ``Murphy Brown.'' A deal for English to take over the series from Jeffrey Lane, its creator, is expected to be completed this week.

Lane had been a writer on NBC's ``Mad About You'' and had moved up to be the show's executive producer three seasons ago. He then signed a deal for a reported $7.5 million to create new comedies for Dreamworks. He was considered to be amply qualified to be what has come to be known as a ``show runner,'' the executive responsible for putting all the elements of a show together and getting it delivered every week.

But many executives say series are often turned over to a show runner with very little experience. One executive, whose company has many comedies on the air, said: ``It's like a free-for-all. You get to the stage where the show is being shot and you say: `What's happening? These are kids. They can't run shows; they can't even write them.' ''

Don Ohlmeyer, the president of NBC's West Coast division, said, ``For the first time in history, the amount of production is outstripping the available talent pool.''

Another senior network executive put it more harshly. ``People aren't paying their dues anymore,'' he said of young writers whose agents push them to move quickly from staff writer to producer to executive producer, ``because that's the quickest route to the big money.''

This season, several networks made multimillion-dollar deals with stars to sign on for new shows. At least two of those deals, the ``Cosby'' series on CBS and ``Spin City'' with Michael J. Fox on ABC, are expected to produce hit series.

``These deals are so pricey,'' one comedy producer said, ``but they don't usually come with a show attached. The networks make them and then everybody hopes for the best.''

More big-money deals have been made in the last year than at any other time in television. Besides the Cosby, Danson and Foxworthy deals, CBS made a deal with Tom Selleck, and just this week ABC concluded a deal for Arsenio Hall to star in a comedy for a reported $900,000 an episode. That was actually more modest than the deal Fox reportedly offered, which guaranteed him 35 episodes.

``There's a desperation in the business,'' a senior network program executive said. ``We're not paying for anything anymore. People come in and want 13 episodes and don't even have anything written on paper.''

In this atmosphere, it makes sense to many network executives to try what CBS is doing with ``Ink'': get it right before putting it on. Ohlmeyer said a network would be wiser to try to protect its long-term investment by trying to fix the show instead of letting it go on the air in a form that pleased neither its stars nor the network.

But he added that some shows were beyond repair. ``Around NBC we have a saying: If it's really broke, don't fix it,'' he said.

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