Daytime Disaster! Did ABC Have to Kill "All My Children" and "One Life to Live"? - Ed Martin

I don39t know what bothers me more about ABC39s announcement last week that it had cancelled All My Children and One Life to Live two of its three longrunning soap operas The arrogance inherent in the action of announcing both cancellations at once the apparent failure of a major global entertainment content company to explore innovative alternatives to those cancellations the decision to terminate two established franchises at the same time that ABC39s affiliates and audience must also process the departures of daytime icons Oprah Winfrey and Regis Philbin the fact that hundreds of people many of whom were encouraged just a year and a half ago to uproot their lives in New York City and relocate to Los Angeles when ABC moved AMC from coast to coast are losing their jobs as our economy further deteriorates or the grim realization that once One Life to Live ceases production there will be no soap operas produced in New York City What a staggering blow to the acting community in that great city Imagine the outsize publicity a basic cable network would enjoy next year if one were to take advantage of this latest broadcast bungle and begin producing a daily soap opera or two in ManhattanAdding salt to all of those wounds ABC is going to replace AMC and OLTL with a cooking show and a weightloss show I won39t pass judgment on those programs until I see them but the concepts to put it mildly suggest a creative bankruptcy on the part of the network in that television is already overflowing with variations on both on broadcast and cable in daytime and primetime and in countless segments on local and national news and entertainment programsI39m the first to acknowledge that the daytime drama writing pool has been allowed to stagnate in recent years But that didn39t mean ABC or any network had to cancel its shows It simply meant that new writers had to be found and that ABC which owns its soaps had to take better care of the characters on its shows as different writers and producers came and went along the wayAs for the all too convenient excuse of low ratings I39m not buying it Ratings for daytime and primetime programming are at best inaccurate Further there are many other compelling reasons to keep programs alive beyond numbers accurate or otherwise If there weren39t most of NBC39s primetime shows would have been cancelled years ago most basic cable networks would run only movies around the clock and The CW would likely have been terminated during its infancyThe recent cancellations over at CBS of Guiding Light and As the World Turns were similarly depressing to anyone who ever enjoyed watching daytime drama or in the case of GL listening to it on the radio way back when The difference however is that GL and ATWT were often described as shows belonging to older generations It was common to hear them described as quotmy grandmother39s soapsquot or quotthe soaps my mother used to watch when she did her ironingquot Not so AMC and OLTL They came into being during the youthquake of the Seventies and in tandem with General Hospital brought millions of teenagers college students and young adults of both sexes to daytime At the time some 25 percent of the GH audience was comprised of men Women continued to dominate daytime but young people made all three of these shows cultural phenomena never before experienced in the daypartGiven their rich recent histories and with talented producers and writers at their helms the proven popularity of these shows with audiences of all ages it is truly startling that ABC decided to dump them let alone within a few months of each other Daily soap operas are the only form of television entertainment exclusive to broadcast networks and thus of particular interest to advertisers so I can39t help but wonder why ABC didn39t do what it did with GH back in 1977 when that series was lowrated and marked for cancellation ABC executives at the time acknowledged that they had nothing to lose and turned GH over to the legendary executive producer Gloria Monty She was free to do within reason whatever she wanted with it for six months If she pumped new life into it and began to grow its audience the show wouldn39t be cancelled If not it would end Monty breathtakingly transformed GH into a sleek contemporary serial unlike anything else on daytime television The recordbreaking Luke and Laura story grew out of that The rest is historyIf they were so close to death didn39t AMC and OLTL deserve the same chance the same dynamic innovative approach to their possible salvationThere must have been other things ABC could have tried Perhaps it could have cut each show to 30 minutes like CBS39 The Bold and the Beautiful in the process reducing the casts and crews of both but not eliminating everyone39s jobs What a great fastpaced hour of daytime television that would have made Or each show could have remained one hour long and run in weekly cycles in the same time period One week of AMC followed by one week of OLTL then another week of AMC etc Digitally empowered viewers would have no trouble keeping up Onscreen explanations and promos would take care of everybody elseAnother thought if a cancellation simply had to occur Why not first kill AMC in recent years the least compelling of ABC39s three soaps and see if its disenfranchised viewers migrated to OLTL This could have been further encouraged by guest or recurring appearances on OLTL by certain performerscharacters from AMC Susan Lucci of AMC is arguably the most popular actress in the history of daytime drama She even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Don39t tell me that the opportunity to see La Lucci as Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Roy Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick Montgomery mixing it up with Erika Slezak as Victoria Lord Gordon Riley Burke Riley Buchanan Buchanan Carpenter Davidson Banks and Robin Strasser as Dorian Cramer Lord Callison Santi Vickers Hayes Laurence Vickers on OLTL wouldn39t be welcomed by the daytime audienceFinally if I may be permitted to think way out of the box why couldn39t ABC have tried turning these beloved franchises both household names into a onceaweek primetime shows Imagine a twohour soap block on Friday nights replacing whatever it is ABC runs on Friday nights Next month ABC and the other broadcast networks will unveil to advertisers and journalists dozens of costly new primetime shows for next season As always most of them will fail I think it39s safe to say that primetime versions of AMC and OLTL would fare better in the ratings than many of the season39s inevitable froshbombs

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Daytime Disaster! Did ABC Have to Kill "All My Children" and "One Life to Live"? - Ed Martin

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