NEW YORK – CBS Corp unveiled three new dramas and two comedies for its fall prime-time lineup Wednesday, with executives promising more laughs and female faces from a network known for its popular crime dramas.

In rolling out five new shows for the fall, CBS, which often trumpets the stability of its lineup, introduced far more changes than Walt Disney Co's ABC after a development season that created headaches because it was cut short by a 14-week screenwriters' strike.

News Corp's Fox will take the wraps off its 2008-09 schedule on Thursday, while General Electric Co's NBC did so last month, in a departure from the traditional announcement during the so-called “upfront week” in May.

Next, over the coming weeks, the broadcast networks will get down to signing around $9 billion worth of commercial deals with advertisers for the new season.

At CBS, perennially the most watched network but one that often struggles to attract the younger viewers coveted by advertisers, executives added to the schedule dramas “The Mentalist,” “Eleventh Hour,” and “The Ex List,” along with comedies “Worst Week” and “Project Gary.”

“When the strike was done, the day after, we hit the ground running,” Chief Executive Les Moonves said at a news conference. “The compressed development schedule forced people to concentrate more and work harder.”

ROLES FOR WOMEN

Another executive, CBS Entertainment President Niña Tassler, said the network sought to add more and bigger roles for women to its lineup, which is best known for its “CSI” crime series, comedies “Two and a Half Men” and “How I Met Your Mother,” and the long-running reality series “Survivor.”

“Women drive network television – there's no mystery to that,” said Tassler, adding that during development they looked into whether some roles written for men could be “reconceived” for women.

Tassler pointed to “The Ex List” as one hour-long comedic drama with appeal to the female audience, with a plot that centers on a single woman in her 30s who is told by a psychic that she must revisit past men in her life to find her future husband in the next year.

CBS also picked up two new half-hour comedies, “Worst Week,” about a magazine editor finding himself in one mess after another, and “Project Gary,” starring comedian Jay Mohr as a recently divorced father of two who looking for love.

“Project Gary” will be teamed on Wednesday nights with the Julia Louis-Dreyfus comedy “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” an award-winning but modestly rated show.

Within drama, CBS introduced “The Mentalist,” featuring a former celebrity psychic who goes to works as a detective for the California Bureau of Investigation.

Another drama is “Eleventh Hour” from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, a crime procedural about a biophysicist and special adviser to the government.

Tassler said CBS would be producing pilots for new shows year round, and already planned to introduce the murder mystery drama “Harper's Island” at midseason.

(Reporting by Paul Thomasch; Editing by Brian Moss)