Editorial»
CBS caves to Reagan's cronies
NOV 08 - And now, on the evenings of Nov. 16 and 18, viewers at Paley’s old network won’t be told anything at all about Ronald Reagan, the president or the man.
The propagandists win again.
Tuesday, CBS bowed to political pressure from a zealous band of conservative enforcers, deep-sixing a four-hour miniseries about the former first family.
The critics had claimed that “The Reagans” was inadequately flattering to the 40th president. Nowhere in the miniseries, it seems, was Reagan shown walking on water. The dialogue apparently included a curse word or two and a passage where Reagan seemed to lack sympathy for the victims of AIDS. So now the whole two-night program is being shunted off to a small pay-cable service owned by the network’s parent, Viacom. CBS won’t air a single word.
Too bad old man Paley isn’t still around to witness this. He knew from hard experience how a television network must protect its independence and integrity. Rule No. 1: Don’t let the partisan interest groups control what you air.
Oh, President Les Moonves and the current crew at CBS denied Tuesday that they were crumbling to outside pressure. “This decision is based solely on our reaction to seeing the final film, not the controversy that erupted around a draft of the script,” the network bosses harrumphed.
If so, what an amazing coincidence it was!
Just as the national Republican chairman and some old Reagan cronies raised their complaints — and a “boycott CBS” campaign was launched — Moonves and Viacom chiefs Sumner Redstone and Mel Karmazin arrived at an independent, journalistic epiphany: The miniseries wasn’t sufficiently balanced, they decided. And that led the execs to trash the work of an experienced producing team, toss a $9 million investment and shoot a giant hole into the network’s November sweeps lineup.
As Gomer Pyle liked to say on the old CBS: “Goll-lee!”
It was just Sunday night that CBS threw itself a lavish 75th-anniversary bash. Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom was packed with CBS luminaries. The air was thick with self-congratulation. How CBS set the highest standards. How CBS was Tiffany TV. How CBS always knew where to draw the lines.
Only Dick and Tommy Smothers reminded the crowd that night how conservative pressure once led the network to ditch their edgy variety show. It seemed like a funny, ancient story Sunday, an embarrassing exception to the general CBS rule.
By Tuesday, it was 1969 all over again. A politically charged entertainment program was being sacrificed at CBS to satisfy conservative complainers. This time, the Ronald Reagan fan club didn’t like that actor James Brolin, Barbra Streisand’s husband, was cast as the Gipper. And they didn’t like a few leaked snatches of dialogue.
But wait!
‘‘The Reagans” miniseries never pretended to be journalism. It’s not an encyclopedia entry or a document ~ ~ ry film, any more than the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” was. It’s a silly four-hour movie made for television. Since when are TV movies held to standards such as this?
“Roots”? “The Thorn Birds”? The new one about kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart? Which of those is drawn entirely from tape-recorded, on-the-record dialogue?
So why the sudden rigidity over Ronald Reagan?
I’ll tell you why.Posted on: 2003-11-08 12:30
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