Posted on 11/05/2003 6:00:20 AM PST by OESY
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:50:17 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Only two days after CBS celebrated its 75th anniversary last Sunday with a slick retrospective, the Tiffany Network had to beat a humiliating retreat. Yesterday it announced that it would move a four-hour biographical movie on Ronald and Nancy Reagan that it had planned to air on Nov. 16 to Showtime, its pay-cable sister network. Advertisers had fled the project as evidence mounted that its politicized producers had done a historical hit-and-run.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
RATHERBIASED.COM: OK. Let's talk a bit about your former boss, Andrew Heyward. He's lasted quite a bit longer than his predecessors, despite the fact that the ratings have been declining across the board and the flagship Evening News has been mired in dead-last for more than a decade. How can he survive still?
GOLDBERG: The honest answer is that I don't know. But I will tell you that Andrew Heyward is the brightest person that I've met in broadcasting, in terms of--in terms of--raw intellect. Not in terms of, necessarily, courage, you know, journalistic courage, but in terms of raw intellect. Your premise is correct, I think. The morning news has just been a bad joke.
RATHERBIASED.COM: And they've had to re-launch it twice, I think.
GOLDBERG: It's just ridiculous.
RATHERBIASED.COM: Do you think that has anything to do with Rather? I mean a lot of people inside CBS think he has too much power.
GOLDBERG: I think--Dan, rightly, I want to emphasize this, rightly had a lot of power at CBS News as the anchorman and managing editor of the flagship broadcast, the CBS Evening News. Rightly. Power comes from numbers in broadcasting. Since his numbers have gone down, I know for a fact that they've showed him what might be considered disrespect. There are certain things that are on the news that Dan doesn't want on, certain features, that they ram down his throat. And I know for a fact that he's not happy about that. And frankly, I don't blame him. It's his broadcast with his name on it and his face on it and if he doesn't want a certain feature on the show, it shouldn't be on the show. And I'm not talking about for ideological reasons. I'm talking about he doesn't like a certain kind of thing.
RATHERBIASED.COM: But what about his survival, though? His ratings have been really bad for about ten years [sic], and yet he's still around. A lot of our readers have wondered why he's still around. Is it because of ad money?
GOLDBERG: Look, I think Dan is a first-rate journalist. He has tremendous physical courage.
RATHERBIASED.COM: Well, definitely. He can be a good journalist when he wants to, I'd say.
GOLDBERG: And he's got tremendous physical courage. I do think that doesn't mean a whole bunch to the people in charge compared to ratings. And if they had someone to substitute for Dan, he'd be out before the news tonight.
RATHERBIASED.COM: But doesn't he help their ad rates? He has a fairly good reputation among a lot of older Americans.
GOLDBERG: Yeah, but the ratings are not good and the audience is slowly dying off.
RATHERBIASED.COM: But I'm talking about before that. The ad rates for now. The ad rates for CBS Evening News are higher than for Peter Jennings.
GOLDBERG: Oh is that right? That's interesting. What about for NBC? Are they higher for them, too?
RATHERBIASED.COM: They're higher at NBC.
GOLDBERG: NBC's higher because of the ratings. OK. Well, these guys are going to make their decision based on money. That's how they make all of their decisions. The fact that Dan is a first-rate newsman isn't going to matter to them if it's time for them to replace Dan. If they found somebody this afternoon who they thought would bring the ratings up significantly, Dan would be gone. But that's not a reflection on Dan. It's a reflection on that ratings are paramount to everything.
I hadn't heard of her before this, but I suspect this whole "Reagan" fiasco may have shot her career (at least here in the states). Looks to me like she tried to ingratiate herself with the Hollywood leftists by grunting all the correct anti-Americanisms, only to find those utterings amplified and condemned when she got caught up in the "Reagan" debacle. The silence coming from those involved in producing "Reagan" is very telling, i.e. the unmarketability of "Reagan" may splash over to those involved--producers and actors/actresses alike.
President Reagan is played by James Brolin, the husband of liberal activist Barbra Streisand. He has told reporters he believes Nancy Reagan "took over" the White House as her husband's health allegedly failed.
This is called projection, from a limp wimp who sees every aspect of his life controlled by an obnoxiously shrill, shrieking, power-freak bitch.
Ta add fuel to this fire, I checked the Director's bio-sheet and he directed -- guess what -- The Judy Garland Story.!!
Well isn't that (gay) special?
This whole notion of "balance" bugs me. What is balance in telling the truth? Do you provide an 50/50 ratio of lies to facts?
Geeze, Eric they aren't 'leftists' or 'liberals' or 'progressives' or any other such newspeak bullsh*t.
They are hardcore, unrepentant 'neo-Stalinists' and nothing but.
Dude, I could really use some help down here in the language war...
With Dems it's always "right church, wrong pew". Yes, America has had a female president, the second Mrs. Wilson.
And guess what -- Barbara Streisand's son has AIDS! That would be, I think, Elliot Gould's son with Barbara.
Does anyone remember that it was CBS I believe that was pitching a show about 9/11 victims trying to put their lives back together...as a sitcom!
Its beyond the time for Moonves to step down.
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