The Reagan Movie: I can only tell you one thing about why this movie isn't airing--it probably stinks to high heaven. I mean really, really reeks. Pungent odors and everything. A couple of producers and a writer thought they could string together a bunch of the ancedotes they liked to pass around at parties that made the President look bad without anybody having to actually understand anything about how the world worked, and they ended up making a stinker of a film.

With the ratings potential being as great as they were, with all the controversy surrounding the film already, there's no way CBS pulled out of this out of their own self-interest. Remember, we're talking about television here. They'll try to make Ted Danson sitcoms seem controversial to try and drum up ratings. To have actual, real live, honest-to-goodness controversy is like manna from heaven.

If the show had been at all passable as entertainment, they'd have put it on during a sweeps month and ridden the right wing radio's complaint coaster to ratings heaven. Then they'd have re-aired a "special, uncut" version two weeks later.

Controversy like this usually begin fabricated--when "The Last Temptation of Christ" came out, producers purpousely leaked script segments to religious groups to try to whip up a storm of controversy, and the religious right, like the good little puppets they often allow themselves to be, complied--to drum up free publicity on the news for films or shows with little promotional budget.

"Accidental" leaks of this type are like "accidental broadcasts" of weapons tests. You want the info out there, but you don't want anybody to know you want it out there.

But for them to pull the plug on a show with this much "Buzz"--I'm guessing the film was such a stink bomb that if they found it in Iraq, everybody would have called Bush a hero for stopping Saddam from unleashing it.