NEW YORK – This was where I was going to review “The Reagans,” CBS’ much-anticipated miniseries airing Sunday and Tuesday. Except it isn’t going to air – not then, not on CBS.

I prefer writing about shows that will actually be broadcast and shows that I’ve screened. But since everyone else has expressed an opinion about this biopic, sight unseen, why shouldn’t I?

Come to think of it, I’d like to salute CBS for giving “The Reagans” the hook (episodes of “CSI,” “CSI: Miami” and “Without a Trace” are now scheduled instead). I think CBS’ turn-tail tactic is a win for all concerned.

It’s certainly a win for everyone who frightened CBS into bailing on the project. As NewsMax, the right-wing Web site, crowed, “CBS’ decision to cancel the Reagan movie is one of the greatest victories – ever – for the conservative movement over the left-wing, so-called mainstream, media.”

It’s also a win for the TV audience.

Viewers alarmed that the film might defame a man they lionize were spared from having their vision of him challenged. Even better, they were handed new evidence to buttress their belief that “the left-wing, so-called mainstream, media” are out to trash everything they hold dear.

As for viewers who aren’t so fond of Reagan, they win, too. They have been spared from watching a film they probably didn’t want to see anyway (what if it went too easy on him?), while they also get to bask in righteous indignation over CBS denying them a look at it.

The New York Times won. Despite being part of the “left-wing, so-called mainstream, media” (or so some insist), it ignited the firestorm against fellow “media elite” CBS in a big story last month that quoted details from the script deemed unflattering to Reagan.

And what of CBS? Yes, it has won, too, exhibiting a newfound, heretofore undemonstrated commitment to program quality.

In its announcement that “The Reagans” had been scrapped, CBS said the decision was “based solely on our reaction to seeing the final film, not the controversy that erupted around a draft of the script.” The film, said CBS, “does not provide a balanced portrayal of the Reagans.”

So last-minute worries about fairness and factuality prompted CBS to yank a four-hour-long extravaganza from its November sweeps lineup just two weeks before airtime! However unlikely, CBS professes to have struck a blow for truth. (It also washed its hands of a sticky problem by dumping “The Reagans” on its pay-cable sister channel, Showtime, where the film will air months from now).

Of course, cynics may counter that CBS simply caved in to the Far Right. Or that, even more dismaying, the network pandered to conservative Washington lawmakers whose votes it needs for high-stakes legislation that, among other things, would allow its parent Viacom to own more local stations.

None of that had anything to do with his decision, Leslie Moonves insists.

“It was a moral decision, not an economic or a political one,” the CBS boss told Variety last week.

CBS’ cancellation of “The Reagans” comes on the heels of the timidity it displayed over its “Hitler” miniseries last spring. The network blasted one of the film’s executive producers after he was quoted in TV Guide comparing the fear among Germans during Hitler’s rise to fear in America as it headed into war with Iraq. Then the producer was fired from the film.

But despite that uproar, “Hitler” aired as scheduled. Now, with the axing of “The Reagans,” CBS has seemingly declared that its future biopics won’t dare to challenge conventional wisdom.

Meanwhile, the network has reminded its viewers that, at crunch time, they don’t count. Special interests do.

After all, none of the thousands who protested “The Reagans,” and prevailed with CBS, had viewed the film.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, who wrote a blistering letter to Moonves, hadn’t. Bill O’Reilly, who joined other on-air pundits in demonizing the film, hadn’t. Michael Paranzino, who launched the “Boycott CBS” Web site, hadn’t.

And now CBS’ viewers never will.

But there’s really no need. These days, passing judgment on a film calls for no more than a few excerpts, a glimpse of its script, and cherished assumptions about the media’s collective depravity.

“We believe this is a solution that benefits everyone involved,” said CBS when it pulled “The Reagans.”

So everyone wins, huh? But what show gets pulled next? How long will CBS surrender to this kind of winning streak?

—

On the Net:

www.cbs.com

—

EDITOR’S NOTE – Frazier Moore can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org

AP-ES-11-13-03 1524EST