By Jason Apuzzo. To add to The History Channel’s initial rejection of Joel Surnow’s The Kennedys miniseries, you can now add Showtime’s rejection of the series – and also that of Starz and FX.
According to Showtime, even though the miniseries is “well-produced, well-acted and a quality piece of work,” it still apparently “doesn’t fit the Showtime programming brand.” Let’s remember here that several series that do apparently fit the Showtime brand are: Californication, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Weeds, and Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
I know that everyone is currently consumed with the controversy associated with the Arizona shooting, but this developing story with respect to the Kennedy miniseries is really quite extraordinary – and eerily reminiscent of the situation from several years ago with respect to ABC’s The Path to 9/11, a series that was critical of the Clintons. Whereas the CBS miniseries The Reagans – the series to which The Kennedys has repeatedly been compared in the media – did eventually land on Showtime, no such fate currently seems guaranteed for Surnow’s series, which is extraordinary.
In the years since The Path to 9/11 came out, my colleague Cyrus Nowrasteh has been reduced to handing out bootlegged copies of the film to friends and colleagues, because ABC refuses to release a DVD of the program. The situation is really quite incredible, when you consider that Path was a $40 million network movie that had 28 million viewers the night of its premiere. I’m sure Joel never thought such a situation was possible with respect to The Kennedys, yet here we are all over again.
It’s a shame that the Fox News and talk radio people are so busy right now having to defend their own careers, because at least they still have some measure of free speech in what they do. If you work in the Hollywood system? Forget it.
Posted on January 12th, 2011 at 3:36pm.