Was there any conflict if the His tory channel, one of A&E's affiliates, scheduled its new, eight-hour mini series "The Kennedys" to air in March?
The answer came back: Not March -- not ever.
Why?
Caroline Kennedy had leveled an ultimatum to the companies -- dump the reportedly warts- and-all miniseries or lose her cooperation in the planned fall release of never-before-heard conversations with her mother.
Unless "The Kennedys" was killed, she'd cancel the release of the audiotapes on ABC and refuse to publicize the book of transcripts of the tapes to be released by Hyperion. ABC, A&E and Hyperion are all owned by Disney.
Caroline won.
On the 50th anniversary year of JFK's inauguration, the Kennedy family did not want a barrage of TV promos advertising a series that portrayed the family as "an episode of 'Dallas,' " said a source close to the family.
In December, Kennedy's literary agent, Esther Newberg, a former Bobby Kennedy staffer, called Hyperion and announced that Caroline "is going to pull back" on the book and studio release later this year "if she doesn't get what she wants," said a network source.
She did not want the "Kennedys" series shown -- and ABC was pulling the plug.
"It was that simple," said the source.
The news blindsided the brass at A&E and History.
Two Hollywood stars -- Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes -- had been hired to play Jack and Jackie. And the cable network reportedly spent more than $25 million making the series and had committed another $3 million to $4 million to promote it -- the most it had ever spent on a special.
An anxious Raven scrambled to try to save the project, working "back channels" to arrange a meeting with Caroline Kennedy to straighten things out.
A&E offered to send her the DVDs so she could judge it herself, according to sources.
But Kennedy declined, the sources said.
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