It's a bit early to say whether ABC's huge corporate mistake, "Path to 9/11", was a success or failure in the ratings, although overnight Nielsen results seem to indicate it was, at best,
a tepid ratings success:
ABC's Path to 9/11 got a lot of pre-broadcast buzz for its controversial treatment of the Clinton administration, but it managed only a third-place finish for the night.
But that's not what I want to focus on in this post mortem - I want to talk about the Democratic Party players who didn't come to the table when they were needed...
Most advance reviews of the miniseries panned both the technical aspects and content of the docudrama, and they weren't wrong. More important than any immediate ratings success, though, was the mistrust in Disney/ABC that the production generated. While the impact to the mouse's bottom line might not be immediately discernable, believe me, there will be an economic blowback to Disney/ABC.
No one who's been following the controversy over the past week can deny that many of us on the progressive side of the ledger will hold back our business and sponsor support. The tricky part is making sure that Disney knows why we've chosen to book a trip to Universal rather than Disney World. Or why we choose to turn off the TV rather than watch the season opener of "Desperate Housewives". There has to be followup, or all the noise that's been made over the past week is for naught.
Speaking of followup, I'm still not quite sure where to fall when it comes to Scholastic Books' support of ABC's crock-u-mentary. There is no question that netroots pressure caused Scholastic to pull their original material, and forced them into a last minute total rewrite. That's a good thing, particularly with the shift in focus of the material from the miniseries to a critical analysis of the media. The shift in focus could end up being a double-edged sword, but the point is, Scholastic listened (at least partially) and made changes to their material. At the end of the day, I'm more or less neutral on any followup response to Scholastic, because they do provide a valuable service to schools, are generally recognized as a "blue" company, and did respond (in a manner) to our concerns.
My biggest disappointment is that many progressive players didn't bother to come to the table. While Bill Clinton was in constant communication with Disney/ABC, there are people inside of the Democratic Party establishment who could have had more of an impact. For example, DNC Director of Communications Karen Finney was previously the Director of Business Development for Scholastic Books. I've kept this information to myself for the past few days, hoping that Ms. Finney was quietly exercising her rolodex.
However, despite repeated phone calls from myself and a few other people behind the scenes, neither Ms. Finney nor anyone from her staff even saw fit to return our phone calls. Yes, the DNC did roundly criticize the miniseries, but in my mind, the residual impact of Scholastic Books' partnership with ABC in the "Path to 9/11" travesty would ultimately be the most damaging aspect of the miniseries. There is semi-permanence to the misinformation provided to impressionable school students being fed propaganda. Now, perhaps Ms. Finney did work her industry contacts, and preferred to remain in the background. However, an acknowledgement of a simple phone call from her to Dick Robinson (CEO of Scholastic) might have made a world of difference.
With the exception of a few Democratic Party congresscritters (the usual activist suspects), elected representatives remained largely silent on the obvious problems with "Path to 9/11". Other than a tepid letter or two, Democratic Party senators and congressmen chose not to get mired in the controversy. They couldn't (apparently) see past their own narrow interests.
And since I'm throwing personal stones, I've saved the last and largest brick in my arsenal for Tom Kean. Recently, Kean went out on the stump with his co-chair on the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton. Kean was exceptionally critical of the Bush administration's implementation of commission recommendations (or more exactly, almost complete lack of implementation). Fine, Tom - then why did you enable the Bush administration in selling their version of fakery to a holder of the public trust (ABC)? Money? Your son's campaign? Or were you snookered like the rest of us? I really want to hear a credible explanation from Kean. He is one of the few Republicans of national stature that I felt I could actually trust - and that trust in him has been completely betrayed.
In the final analysis, I don't think that "Path to 9/11" will have much more than a minor lasting impact (if any) on the coming midterm elections. There was never a question about that on my part; you can go back to one of my earlier posts last week to confirm that I'm not Monday morning quarterbacking my viewpoint. If BushCo gets any poll bounce at all in the coming week, it will be from the entire package of bullshit that was being peddled for two weeks prior to the 9/11 Republican Holiday. The GOP has co-opted the day as their own, and have had five years to hone the message, so I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see a significant bounce. However, I do believe that any bounce, if one occurs, will be of the dead cat variety, and two to three weeks down the road it'll all smooth out.
So, was all of the bruhaha about "Path to 9/11" a worthwhile expenditure of effort? You bet. The blogosphere significantly raised mainstream media awareness of the faults in the miniseries. Were it not for the blogosphere, Scholastic Books' participation probably would have flown completely under the radar, and the propaganda reinforcement tools would be in the school systems right now. ABC was forced on the defensive from the git-go, and most certainly expended many millions of dollars in both last minute rewrites and customer service support, not to mention loss of prestige in their overall corporate product.
Let's not forget, though, that we've just started down a long road. Democrats need to remember and learn from this episode. We can't play nice. Nice gets you nothing in politics anymore. Nothing. One of the first pieces of legislation that the Democrats need to push should they regain Senate and/or congressional majorities in the fall, even before articles of impeachment, is reimplementation of the broadcast Fairness Doctrine.
I'm cautiously optimistic that the best upside to this whole thing was how our own progressive "base" was energized to action. Now that summer is over, and focus returns more to national politics, we needed an issue to engage those on the fringes of activism. "Path to 9/11" was the perfect vehicle for that engagement.
I want to give a personal thanks to all of the Kossacks and Zonebots who were moved to some action last week, whether it was a letter, email, phone call, or simply a conversation with a coworker. We made a difference.
Now, on to November...
(Originally posted at All Spin Zone...)