Entertainment

CBS Exec: Reagan Series Biased

November 25, 2003 / 9:19 AM EST / AP

In his first public comments since CBS canceled "The Reagans" miniseries, network Chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves said the film was too biased for broadcast television, the New Haven Register reported in Thursday's editions.

After taking "The Reagans" off its schedule in the face of political pressure, CBS said Tuesday it would license the film to Showtime, a corporate cousin and pay cable network with about one-fifth of CBS' audience.

"We had promised the public that we would do a fair version of the Reagans' life," Moonves said Wednesday during a speech at Yale University. "We would show the warts, but we would show the good stuff, too."

"Upon seeing the finished product, I felt the movie was quite biased against the Reagans," he said. "And it wasn't the movie I promised the public."

Moonves said "The Reagans" did not belong on a broadcast network.

"We have a news division," he said. "We do have to be fair in what we show, and a pay-cable network can be a little bit more biased in what they show. It can be an opinion piece. We can't do that."

Speaking to a group of more than 60 students and faculty in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Moonves limited his comments on the miniseries and used most of the time to discuss movies. CBS is the only one of the six commercial networks to show movies on Sunday nights.

"Obviously there was a lot of pressure from the right before they had even seen the movie," he said. "After we made the decision, the creative community is saying we buckled under to the right. So it was one of those decisions where, no matter which way we turned, it was the wrong decision."

Moonves said CBS will continue to make movies. The network took similar heat last year for a miniseries about Hitler.

"We took a lot of grief for that,'' he said. ``I was very proud of the movie. I thought the movie was provocative. At no point did it glorify Hitler."

Moonves, whose appearance at Yale had been planned before "The Reagans" controversy, acknowledged that advertiser concerns sometimes cause programming to be changed.

He mentioned a cannibalism scene in C.S.I. that was cut after a sponsor objected. But he said sponsors had nothing to do with the miniseries decision.