CBS plays it pretty safe

America's most-watched network (as they just love to call it at CBS) isn't making a lot of changes this fall. What with so many hits returning, including — phew! — another (somewhat abbreviated) season of "Everybody Loves Raymond," it didn't have to.

But the network is making one decidedly bold move that will mark the first matchup between the two most dominant franchises on TV.

CBS president Leslie Moonves unveiled a fall schedule that places "CSI: New York" on Wednesdays at 9 p.m., where it will do battle with the original "Law & Order." Whether the young "CSI" whippersnapper can make inroads against the granddaddy of procedural crime dramas as it enters its 15th season will be one of the major scheduling showdowns of the coming season.

That "Raymond" is returning is the biggest non-news from CBS this week. It's certainly big for the network and the show's fans, but the fact that there had been no announcement that the series would be ending next week was an all-but-certain indication that it would be back in the fall.

There will be only 16 episodes, however, six fewer than what generally constitutes a full season. That's two fewer than "Friends" produced for its final season, and fans of that show had to wait more than a month between new episodes this spring.

Other than the scheduling of "CSI: New York," CBS played it rather conservatively for the fall — no surprise, given that it is already trumpeting that it will beat second-place NBC by an average of more than 2 million viewers a week for the 2003-2004 season. The network has left its Sunday and Thursday schedules untouched and added only one show per night on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

CBS's two new sitcoms are:

Listen Up (Mondays, 7:30 p.m.) stars Jason Alexander (uh-oh, the "Seinfeld Curse") as Tony, a sports talk show host and newspaper columnist who has trouble balancing his job and home life — he's got a wife and two kids. Based on the life of real-life sports talk show host and newspaper columnist Tony Kornheiser, the show features Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Tony's sidekick.