‘Kennedys’ series nixed: Who says Kennedy family doesn’t have as much clout as ever?

LOS ANGELES
— We don’t like to think of America being run by an oligarchy of
well-connected, super-rich insiders. It’s hard to imagine that if the History Channel were airing a miniseries about Jimmy Hoffa or Barry Bonds that it would have suddenly killed the project after being lobbied by
Hoffa’s kids or Bonds’ lawyers. But when it comes to a miniseries about
the political ascent of John F. Kennedy, the History Channel’s
parent company, A&E Television Networks (AETN), has pulled the
plug, saying the project’s “dramatic interpretation is not a fit for
the History brand.”

That’s the sacred brand that has offered such
weighty fare as “Sex in the Ancient World,” “The Bible Code: Predicting
Armageddon” and “Pawn Stars.”

Of course, if you’ve been reading the news coverage
in this paper (“History Network pulls plug on Kennedy miniseries”) and
the Hollywood Reporter, which broke the story, you know that AETN isn’t
telling it like it is. After all, the History Channel’s
programmers knew exactly where the project was going when they read and
approved the scripts last year, which were produced by “24’s” Joel Surnow,
a prominent political conservative. So it was hardly a surprise that
the miniseries took some narrative liberties with the historical
record, like about a thousand other miniseries that have been aired
over the years. I read the scripts myself, and though they didn’t
always paint a handsome portrait of the Kennedy family’s political
maneuvering, I could find little evidence of any conservative
score-settling.

It looks like the real reason AETN got cold feet was lobbying from Caroline Kennedy, who has a big book deal with Hyperion, a division of Disney, which is a co-owner of AETN. Not to mention another Kennedy family member, Maria Shriver,
who has worked for years for NBC News, whose parent company, NBC
Universal, is another AETN co-owner. Shriver is also friends with
Disney-ABC TV chief Anne Sweeney, who serves on the AETN board. Both Shriver and Caroline Kennedy voiced their displeasure with the project early on.

Though no one has produced a smoking gun, it seems
clear that the Kennedy family’s influence had a big impact, just as the
Reagan family’s unhappiness over a TV movie about Ronald Reagan played a significant role in its being yanked from the CBS schedule. It eventually aired on Showtime,
which might be a likely stop for the rejected Kennedy miniseries as
well. But considering the exceedingly low intellectual IQ of most of
the offerings on the History Channel, it’s hard not to come
to the conclusion that the decision to ax the Kennedy miniseries had a
lot more to do with insider clout than good programming judgment.

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(c) 2011, Los Angeles Times.

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