The Reagans

The Reagans is a 180minute television film about U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his family which CBS had planned to broadcast in November 2003 during fall sweeps, but was ultimately broadcast on Novemberof that year on cable channel Showtime due to controversy over its portrayal of Reagan.

About a month before it was scheduled to air, portions of the script were leaked. As a result of these stories, the miniseries began to be widely criticized by conservatives as an unbalanced and inaccurate depiction of Reagan. CBS reportedly had ordered a love story about Ronald and Nancy Reagan with politics as a backdrop, but instead received what they later claimed was an overtly political film. Supporters of the film claimed that these criticisms were simply partisan bias, and were an attempt to censor a film because it did not always portray the former president in a positive light.Conservatives began criticizing it before it was broadcast and claimed that it put words in Reagans mouth and condemned it as leftist historical revisionism. Some of the criticism was based upon early drafts of the script and featured scenes that were not shot or were dropped from the final version. Eventually, after several weeks of outspoken criticism by conservatives, on November 4, 2003, CBS withdrew the broadcast saying that it did not present a balanced portrayal of the Reagans. The network chose instead to broadcast the miniseries on the cable channel Showtime, which along with CBS was owned by Viacom. In a statement on its web site, CBS said ........

Source: Wikipedia