November 4, 2003
TIFFANY CRACKS:
GOP Outcry Makes CBS Rethink Airing 'Reagans': Critics say docudrama taints president's legacy. Network may shelve show or play it on cable.(Greg Braxton and Bob Baker, November 4 2003, LA Times)
Responding to an outcry over how the legacy of Ronald Reagan may play out in a television miniseries, CBS is considering moving its two-night dramatized biography of the former president and his wife to its pay-cable sister network Showtime, or even scrapping the project, sources familiar with the production said Monday.
It would have been better had they had sense enough not to try to drag a hero through the gutter in the first place--but this'll do.
MORE:
Reagan and the Liberal Arts: the execution of a propaganda film (Oregon Magazine)
Chevrolet and Hallmark (if the latter’s involvement was finally confirmed by the internet sleuths at forums like Free Republic) apparently got ... the ... message. They contacted executives at CBS, it seems, and pointed out that their commercial support of liberalism in America stops at the point where fifty million people announce that if they see those commercials they are going to cease buying their cars and their cards. There is these days, I am happy to report, a certain risk when a corporation decides to finance a “literary” version of a DNC campaign attack commercial.Posted by Orrin Judd at November 4, 2003 12:48 PMAs storm winds blow towards the low with angry purpose, radio and the internet made a connection between the national high pressure of stored conservative frustration and the intellectual and artistic vacuum – the region inhabited by Barbra Streisand, Tim Robbins and the CBS programming department’s proposed airing of a film that trashes the Reagans.
The angry winds did blow with a wondrous force. Arrogant liberal eyes narrowed, and arrogant liberal heads swung to the right and saw with growing apprehension the thunderclouds of a titanic storm racing towards them. CBS, which unlike PBS does not survive on tax-deductible citizen handouts (yet), headed for the nearest safe harbor, and rightly so. Or, perhaps a more apt simile would be that CBS was sailing the world’s largest luxury liner on a perfectly calm sea, but paid attention to ice flow warnings clattering in on their wireless in time to alter their course. (CBS doesn’t have enough lifeboats for everybody on board, either.).
CBS has announced they are sending the miniseries over to Showtime. Interestingly, they admit it was an unbalanced view of Reagan. Drudge has the full statement.
This is hardly censorship. Anybody who wants to watch the miniseries can, although it will cost a few pennies on the pay cabler.
Posted by: Casey Abell at November 4, 2003 1:13 PMWhat is most interesting is that CBS did not proudly air it anyway, citing all its history and 'journalistic integrity & independence'. Even they must know how botched up and biased it is. Wonder if Dan Rather will have anything to say about it?
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 4, 2003 1:23 PMWe're talking about the Cronkite network here.
A hatchet job on Reagan when he can't defend himself is par.
Posted by: John J. Coupal at November 4, 2003 1:31 PMOh, rats. Now we'll have to sign up for Showtime in order to see this insightful look at President Reagan.
Posted by: old maltese at November 4, 2003 2:25 PMThe tought that the Republicans might run the FCC for the next few years sobered them no doubt.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at November 4, 2003 2:28 PMIt will be interesting to see all the squealing about censorship. CBS probably got the same percentage of audience anger response that Clear Channel got with the Dixie Chicks. That CC took them off their country stations for one month was deemed "censorship." Will CBS be called the censors or will the viewers who decided to make their feelings known?
Posted by: NKR at November 4, 2003 3:48 PMThe tide turns, ebb becomes flow. Who notes the moment?
Posted by: RDB at November 4, 2003 7:23 PMTheir Hitler miniseries is an example of the genre, In it they tried to shoe horn some kind
of an oil plot against Hitler (when the reality
was the reverse; see Standard Oil and IG Farben)
They credit the adoption of the swastika to a
marketing gimmick by Hanfstangl, not the influence
of the Thule society. Even when dealing with true
evil, they can't make it interesting