History Channel misses opportunity with ‘Kennedys’
An eight-part miniseries on the Kennedys starring Greg Kinnear as John F. Kennedy, Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy, Barry Pepper as Robert F. Kennedy and Tom Wilkinson as Joe Kennedy sounds pretty interesting, doesn’t it?
Well, that’s certainly what the History Channel thought when they planned to air the series, developed by “24” co-creator Joel Surnow, this spring. That is, until they saw the finished project.
Last Friday a representative for the A&E television networks released a statement announcing they would cancel the miniseries in the U.S. The rep told the Hollywood Reporter, “While the film is produced and acted with the highest quality, after viewing the final product in its totality, we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand.”
Fair enough. The History Channel has certainly defined its brand name on documentaries about everything from Jesus to the end of the world, but the channel has not offered much in the way of definitive, must-see entertainment. To drop the miniseries after it’s been completed and screened seems only detrimental to the overall brand of the company, especially considering “The Kennedys’s” multi-million dollar budget makes it the most expensive program the channel has funded.
Even stranger is that, despite the channel’s claims that the miniseries does not reflect the level of historical accuracy they strive for, the script had been revised and approved by historical experts prior to filming.
Sunday, Hollywood Reporter followed up on their story, asserting that members of the Kennedy family, including JFK’s daughter Caroline Kennedy, voiced displeasure with the series and pressured A&E network to cancel it.
So, to think of this another way: in an era when cable television is becoming an arena for large-scale miniseries, with HBO and other premium channels largely dominating the field, the History Channel could have used “The Kennedys” as a complete game-changer, totally upping the ante on the kind of content they could provide for producers while also drawing massive ratings.
The other kicker? The miniseries is still scheduled to air in Canada on March 6 and will be shown internationally, says the Hollywood Reporter.
So not only does History cancel “The Kennedys,” but they only cancel it in the U.S. In a way this only adds insult to injury, and instead of the channel reaping the ratings of airing it, U.S. viewers will likely turn to Internet streams and torrents to see it anyway.
Instead of taking a progressive step forward, the History Channel is taking several steps back, closeting and protecting their content behind the curtain of “historically accurate programming” without stopping to think about how to engage in a dramatic miniseries and provide different scopes and ranges of content.
While doing so will certainly preserve the kind of audience already watching the History Channel, those content to tune in for hours at a time to suck down an array of documentaries with little sense of meaning or purpose, it will keep the History Channel from expanding its horizons, drawing in demographics and making a stand as one of basic cable’s best networks.
That’s Entertainment.