NBC plans Hillary Clinton miniseries

LOS ANGELES: NBC plans to air a four-hour miniseries starring Diane Lane as former US Secretary of State and first lady Hillary Clinton, part of the broadcast TV network’s strategy to improve its ratings by luring viewers to one-time event programming.
The part of Bill Clinton has not been cast, NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt said on Saturday at a meeting of the Television Critics Association.
The miniseries about the once, and possibly future, presidential candidate will “recount Clinton’s life as a wife, mother, politician and cabinet member” from 1998 to the present, an NBC statement said.
Titled “Hillary,” it will start with Clinton living in the White House while her husband is serving his second term.
The series will likely air before candidates start jumping into the next US presidential race in the spring or summer of 2015, Greenblatt said, responding to a question about whether the network would face demands for equal time from opponents.
Hillary Clinton is not involved in the series, he said, and the script has yet to be written.
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, declined to comment.
The Clinton project and other minizeries are part of Comcast-owned NBC’s effort to lift its prime-time ratings and draw live audiences to one-time events, a defense against later viewing on digital video recorders that makes programs less valuable to advertisers.