'Shark' extinction

When CBS presents its new fall lineup Wednesday, it will be missing the James Woods vehicle Shark. The show's move to Sunday night last fall gave it an uncertain airtime -- whenever CBS' NFL telecasts ran long, which is to say practically every week, Shark could be delayed by as much as 90 minutes -- and just as the Sunday night schedule stabilized at the end of football season, the writers' strike knocked the show off the air. Even more fundamentally, the producers' decision to cut into Woods' screen time in order to build up co-star Jeri Ryan's character revealed Shark for what it was: a typically mediocre CBS police procedural that was being carried by a single remarkable actor. The less viewers saw of him, the less Shark saw of viewers. Now CBS has pulled the plug.