Just two weeks after first airing and one week after director Stephanie Soechtig and executive producer/narrator Katie Couric were caught in a scandal where Soechtig replaced the answer to a question with footage shot at a different time, the streaming media channel EPIX has pulled their original film.
A Visit to the movie’s page on the EPIX site is met with the warning, “THIS MOVIE IS NOT CURRENTLY PLAYING ON EPIX.”
Soechtig, Couric, EPIX, and Couric’s employer Yahoo! News have been under intense pressure since news of the fraudulent edit was posted just a week ago.
Update: EPIX now says that it was their plan all along to pull Couric’s video from the premium service after two weeks, according to a statement released to Stephen Gutowski of the Free Beacon.
Epix has finally gotten back to me with a statement pic.twitter.com/UNb40LciOI
— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) May 31, 2016
They’re claiming that:
As of today, the doc moves out of the premium window — off of EPIX — and into a transactional VOD and EST window. This is part of the original agreement struck when we acquired the doc coming out of Sundance. The distribution strategy allowed us to premiere the doc on the network and also preserve maximum value for the transactional VOD and EST windows that follow. We did not pull the doc and there is nothing going on other than the distribution plan negotiated in January. The doc is now available in transactional VOD and EST.
Couric must be as bad of a negotiator as she is an ethical journalist to only have a two-week premium run for a high profile 2016 documentary on a topic that defines the single most striking policy difference between Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who is rabidly anti-gun, and presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, who is staking out the position of being a strong supporter of the right to keep and bear arms.
Do you buy EPIX’s claim that they only had this movie about such a timely and important subject scheduled for a two-week run?
Me either.
Documentaries currently featured on EPIX are current events yawners, include 2013’s Who the F**k is Arthur Fogel?, 2014’s Altman, David Ortiz: In the Moment, Doc of the Dead, Dwight Howard: In the Moment, Forgotten Four: The Integration of Pro Football, 2015’s Deep Web, and several other minor documentary films.
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