Pact, Amerika implied that American apathy and an unwillingness to defend freedom on the part of many citizens made the Soviet takeover rather easy. This depiction was objected to by those who saw it as needlessly provoking "overt jingoism," while labeling the miniseries as "a fourteen-hour public apology to the White House from ABC executives for provoking public concern with The Day After." The miniseries' depiction of the takeover of the USA by a communist authority mirrored occurrences in Nicaragua, helping to spur organizations such as the Freedom Federation into launching its own media campaignalong with William F. Buckley of the National Review and the Wall Street Journalwhich used the film "as a pretext to persuade the public that the United States needed to continue its support of right-wing governments in Central America by aiding the Contras." Ratings The first two nights of Amerika garnered big ratings, but audience numbers dropped thereafter, and the overall miniseries averaged a 19 rating and a 29 share of American television households, compared to a 46 rating/62 share for The Day After. "It wasn't as big a hit as its supporters had hoped", said Ted Koppel, "but it wasn't a disaster, either." Amerika was the second-highest rated miniseries of the 1986–87 U.S. television season. Although a 35 share reportedly had been promised to advertisers, Stoddard was happy with the performance of Amerika, claiming that all or part of the miniseries had been watched by 100 million people – a ratings bonanza for ABC, then in third place among the three major networks. Availability Amerika has not been shown on U.S. television since its original telecast on ABC. A VHS box set of the miniseries was released by Anchor Bay Entertainment in 1995, but no official DVD release is available. Portions of the soundtrack by Basil Poledouris were released on CD by Prometheus Records in 2004 (in a limited edition of 3,000 copies). The novelization is widely available from used-book sellers and online auction sites. The miniseries itself can be found pirated on YouTube. Parodies In February 1987, the miniseries was parodied on the NBC show Saturday Night Live as "Amerida", in which a debt-ridden United States is mortgaged to Canada and subsequently repossessed. It posited Wayne Gretzky as the prime minister of Amerida. The U.S. protagonist (played by Canadian actor Phil Hartman) longs for a country "where you don't have money that's all the