DID KENNEDYS KILL JFK MINISERIES?

Members of the Kennedy family including Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of former President John F. Kennedy, and Maria Shriver, niece of JFK, put pressure on the History Channel to kill an expensive eight-part miniseries that it planned to air in the spring, the Hollywood Reporter said Saturday. According to the Reporter, which first reported History Channel’s decision to remove the show from its schedule, Caroline Kennedy and Shriver had lobbied Anne Sweeney, who heads Disney/ABC Television Group, while Shriver, a former NBC News anchor, had also argued against it with NBC Universal executives Jeff Zucker and Jeff Gaspin. Disney and NBCU are, along with Hearst Corp., co-owners of the History Channel. When the script for the miniseries was originally leaked a year ago, it was denounced by former Kennedy aide Theodore Sorensen, who said of it, “Every single conversation with the president in the Oval Office or elsewhere in which I, according to the script, participated, never happened.” History Channel executives insisted at the time that the leaked script was only in the formative stage and that it would be vetted for historical accuracy. In its statement on Saturday, the channel called the miniseries a “dramatic interpretation [that] is not fit for the History brand.” It declined to discuss its decision any further.