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#Abc soap opera digest magazine free
She was free to do (within reason) whatever she wanted for six months. ABC executives at the time acknowledged that they had nothing to lose and turned GH over to the legendary executive producer Gloria Monty.
#Abc soap opera digest magazine series
So I can't help but wonder why ABC didn't do what it did with GH back in 1977, when that series was low-rated and marked for cancelation. Daily soap operas are the only form of television entertainment exclusive to broadcast networks, and thus of particular interest to advertisers. Given 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. (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 daypart.
#Abc soap opera digest magazine tv
Both created by TV legend Agnes Nixon, they blossomed during the youth-quake of the '70s and, in tandem with General Hospital, brought millions of teenagers, college students and young adults of both sexes to daytime. It was common to hear them described as "my grandmother's soaps" or "the soaps my mother used to watch when she did her ironing." Not so AMC and OLTL. The difference, however, is that GL and ATWT were often described as shows belonging to older generations. The recent CBS cancelations 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). If there weren't, most of NBC's primetime shows would have been canceled years ago, most basic cable networks would run only movies around the clock, and The CW would likely have been terminated during its infancy! Further, there are many other compelling reasons to keep programs alive beyond numbers, accurate or otherwise. Ratings for daytime and primetime programming are, at best, inaccurate. 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.Īs for the all too convenient excuse of low ratings, I'm not buying it. But that didn't mean ABC (or any network) had to cancel its shows. I'm the first to acknowledge that the daytime drama writing pool has been allowed to stagnate in recent years. 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/entertainment programs. I won't pass judgment on those programs until I see them. (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 Manhattan!)Īdding salt to all of those wounds: ABC's cancelation announcement April 14 said it plans to replace AMC and OLTL with a cooking show and a weight-loss show. What a staggering blow to the acting community in that great city. The arrogance inherent in the action of announcing both cancelations at once the apparent failure of a major global entertainment content company to explore innovative alternatives to those cancelations the decision to terminate two established franchises at the same time that ABC's 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 asked just a year and a half ago to uproot their lives in New York City and relocate to Los Angeles when ABC decided to move AMC) 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. I don't know what bothers me more about ABC's announcement that it has canceled All My Children and One Life to Live, two of its three long-running soap operas: