The NEW YORK TIMES reported Saturday in a copyright article that the ABC reality series, WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD, which heavily promoted last summer was canceled ten days before the first episode was to be shown because possibly accordingly to the report - the winners were a "Gay Couple".
Producers of this reality series also indicating that undue influence by religious groups also prompted the cancellation.
The article indicated that "ABC executives canceled WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD, saying that they were concerned that viewers who might have been appalled at some early statements made in the show - including homophobic barbs - might not hang in for the sixth episode, when several of those same neighbors pronounced themselves newly open-minded about gays and other groups."
And the article continued to say "But two producers of the show, speaking publicly about the cancellation for the first time... said that the protests might have been most significant as a diversion that allowed the Walt Disney Company, ABC´s owner, to pre-empt a show that could have interfered with a much bigger enterprise: the courting of evangelical Christian audiences for THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. Disney hoped that the film, widely viewed as a parable of the Resurrection, would be the first in a profitable movie franchise.
In the months and weeks before WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD was to have its premiere, as Disney sought to build church support for NARNIA, four religious groups lifted longtime boycotts of the company that had been largely prompted by Disney´s tolerance of periodic gatherings by gay tourists at its theme parks. Representatives for two of those groups now say that broadcasting NEIGHBORHOOD could have complicated their support for NARNIA. One, the Southern Baptist Convention, with more than 16 million members, lifted the last of the boycotts against Disney on June 22, a week before ABC announced it was pulling the series."
A press release from ABC last summer stated... "The stakes are high, the families are real and the neighborhood will never be the same, as neighbors decide which family will move into a dream home, on the series premiere of ABC´s WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD. When the neighbors living in a quiet, picturesque suburban community get to choose the family who´ll move in next door to them, their belief systems gets rocked as they try to get past their own pre-conceived notions and prejudices, and the idea that a neighbor should look and think just like them. Their choice doesn´t get any easier when they meet the seven very diverse families, including a family covered in tattoos, a homosexual couple with an adopted child and a family who practice Wiccan, a pagan religion. Will the resident neighbors be able to see past their own ideals and accept all of the families as people instead of stereotypes?
WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD was to premiere on July 20, 2005, in a six part series. ABC, which owns the rights to the series, says that it has no plans either to broadcast the series ever or allow it to be sold to another outlet.
