JOE SCARBOROUGH: Welcome back to the show. I'm Joe Scarborough. A news flash: Matt Drudge in the "Drudge Report" is reporting tonight that CBS is going to be pulling "The Reagans." They will yank it, not show it and are going to be giving it to Showtime to show. With us right now, the man who broke the story … Matt, you have done it again. What do you know about this story on "The Reagans"?
MATT DRUDGE, "DRUDGE REPORT": … It's the beginning of a second media century, Joe, where it's much more of a people-driven media. And I say that not lightly. It was the Internet, it was talk radio, it was cable that put pressure on CBS, and heretofore, there's never been this kind of pressure applied to one of the big titans, one of the big three. … So the word is that CBS will pass on it. It will not air on free television, but the full glory of "The Reagans" will air on Showtime. … Now, over the summer, I warned my radio audience over the Premier Radio Networks, "Watch out. This is coming. It's nasty, it's vicious. They're filming it now." They wouldn't even film this in the United States. That's how hot this thing was. They had to go up to Canada. Or maybe it was the cost cutting for production value.
In related news, Les Moonves is now for sale in the exercise yard, currently priced at a carton of Marlboros. Nonetheless, a CBS spokesman denied that the venerable network had caved to a right-wing pressure campaign. "We did what we thought was best," said Pariah Heep of CBS. "And it turned out that what was best was kowtowing to these rednecks as fast and as hard as we could."
Washington Post Media Critic Tom Shales agreed. "Massa's Drudge, O'Reilly and Murdock done said that they don't be likin' no uppity networks getting ahead of theyselves and showing history to the the field hands, and we don' wanna rile them up so's they get angrified."
Asked if this "new media century" was not in effect a high-tech version of the even more venerable tradition of lynching newspaper editors who printed unpopular stories, Drudge replied "Interesting that you should bring that up. I believe in freedom of the Press as much as the next man - heck, I wear a reporter's hat, don't I? But there are some things that are just so shocking, so indecent, that the mind of civilized man rebels against putting them on the air. Slandering a great man like Ronald Reagan. Mocking our National Missile Defense Boondoggle. Stabbing our brave troops in the back by running ads against George Bush. Flag-Burning. Sodomy. Miscegenation. We can't let them get away with that kind of elitist disdain for wholesome American views, not in this media century." Asked how specifically pressure would be brought to bear on future offenders, Drudge grinned and said "Me and the boys still have plenty of rope left."
Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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