Run Ronnie Run

Scott Hardie | November 4, 2003
Today CBS finally canceled "The Reagans," as expected. Here's the story. If you haven't been following this: CBS spent about $8-9 million to film a late-November miniseries about the Reagans, mostly positive (the central theme was their love for one another) but with a few intentional blemishes, just to prevent it from being hero worship. At first, conservatives were happy to have it (even with the casting of Mr. Streisand in the lead role), but the tide slowly turned on those "blemishes." There was dislike of the portrayals of the Reagans arguing, of the portrayal of Nancy trying to get Alexander Haig fired, and more. While CBS acknowledged that the actual dialogue was invented out of necessity, it had insisted on cross-checking every single historical fact with multiple credible sources. To no one's surprise, the clamor got louder and louder over the miniseries being an attack on the Reagans, unbalanced and inaccurate. The only surprising element is that CBS didn't even put up a fight before the inevitable cancellation (er, "sale," to Showtime, one of Viacom's other television outlets).

I'm always happy to see the people win one against a big corporation, but this one seems kind of silly. The backlash was almost entirely online, and everyone knows how the Internet has a way of distorting the facts, especially when no one outside of CBS has actually seen the film yet. How does a film praising the Reagans as living national treasures become "unbalanced" against them? How does a film so aggressively checked against many sources become "inaccurate" with its facts? Who decides that it is either without seeing it? (The script was leaked to the Internet, or so it would seem. Me, I've heard of too many "leaked scripts" turning out to be fakes that I doubt every such instance, and besides, the original script often differs from the shooting script or even the final edit.) This smells to me like a few people online read the script and thought it was unfair, and that perception spread around to many people who had no insight into the script at all but believed what they heard, and soon the calls for cancelation became too loud for CBS to ignore. That's not to say that CBS even did ignore them; CBS just buckled outright. I'm disappointed, especially because I was looking forward to seeing the show.

Scott Hardie | November 4, 2003
And I'll add that I found the backlash against Dr. Laura, resulting in the near-instant cancelation of her TV show, to be equally unfair. If you want Dr. Laura off the air because you dislike her or disagree with her, fine, but don't cheat by misquoting and misrepresenting the woman.