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In the past couple of years, three daytime dramas bit the dust: CBS’ The Guiding Light and As the World Turns and NBC’s Passions. Despite constant rumors, ABC has been the only network not to pare down its daytime soap lineup, currently running 3 series, General Hospital, One Life to Live and All My Children, as many as CBS and NBC combined. It tested the waters a couple of times, including piloting a potential Aisha Tyler daytime talk show 2 years ago.
Now ABC seems ready to join CBS and NBC in cutting the number of its daytime dramas. All My Children appears to be the most vulnerable for cancellation, and there is speculation that it may be replaced by a a talk show in the fall. All My Children, which is in its 41st year on the air, recently posted two weeks of back-to-back all-time lows in the key Women 18-49 demographic, in which it is dead last among the 6 daytime dramas on the air, drawing paltry 463,000 for the week of March 7, down 34% vs. last year. For the same week, All My Children was also last in total viewers, averaging 2.32 million. (ABC’s One Life to Live did only marginally better with 2.36 million.) One reason for ABC to keep its 3 daytime dramas on the air was the fact that they were getting a second window on sibling cable channel SOAPnet. But with SOAPnet changing its format to the preschool-centered Disney Junior next year, Disney-ABC is clearly scaling back on its commitment to soaps, and the daytime lineup on the broadcast network will probably be next. All My Children‘s most recognizable star is Susan Lucci, who has been on the show since the very beginning, playing Erica Kane, dubbed the most famous daytime soap character of all time. After 18 nominations, Lucci finally won a Daytime Emmy for her role in 1999. Notable All My Children alums include Josh Duhamel, Amanda Seyfried, Melissa Leo, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Christian Slater and Kelly Ripa.
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I haven’t watched All my children for all time now they have to do what they have to do.I’m just happy that Gh is still on
Would rather see a new game show instead of another talk show.
Bring back The $25,000 Pyramid!
I have watched AMC for almost 40 years and would be very sad to see it go. I hope this will not happen.
I caught that too!! I loved Passions!
ABC cancels All My Children after we lost As The World Turns and Guiding Light the past 2 years .Will we lose Erica Cane as we did Bob Hughes ,Barbara Ryan and of our all time favorite star Reva Shayne. I would like them to bring back The Edge of Night but P&G might not give up the rights to that great soap
I am a huge all my children fan. For them
To cancel this wonderful show would ruin everything. Why do they need another talk show? Even talking about cancelation is stupid. Why ruin something that has been good for 41 years. It has a lot of life in it still and there are so many fans that would be so upset. Please save AMC!!!!
Get rid of General hospital. It’s a soap opera about cheesy mobsters. It’s terrible and the lead males are so not hot.
Figures. These soaps upgrade to HD and finally don’t look like shit, and they start dropping like flies.
With so few viewers, it would be interesting to see what the per show cost of AMC is. It seems clear that the chances of increasing viewership are limited – even with the highest unemployment in decades they can’t get the ratings up.
I can understand AMC going over budget. They just hired on a whole bunch of new actors/actresses and threw them all on screen at the same time. It didn’t help that three of the new men all look alike. It’s very difficult to warm to new characters when you’re busy being upset that favorite characters are being ignored by the writers. Crystal is a wonderful character (great actress) but she has had absolutely nothing to do for a very long time. Erica and Jack can’t make up their minds – they go back and forth and back and forth about their relationship and all that does is irritate and chase away viewers. I was happily surprised when they brought in a pleasant character in the guise of the young Reverend. Then they made him secretly evil! Horrible. Center more so on the longtime characters and actually allow them some happiness once in awhile.
Spike – I’m sorry, but I think you have it all wrong. Serial storylines have been around since the time of Scherezade. People roll their eyes at “soaps” yet nearly every prime time TV show, even the procedurals, have some sort of serialized element. Perhaps the reason the daytime shows are dying is because serialized stories are EVERYWHERE.
Who’d want to watch a movie franchise about someone’s repetitive perils and tragedies and romantic woes, right? Oh, wait, we do: When it’s told from a male’s point of view, we call it a comic book, and it’s a billion dollar enterprise. When it’s a female POV, it’s a silly little soap. Hmmm. I get a little riled up when people want to dismiss soaps as crap and soap watchers as shut ins and idiots.
This is a business, and these shows are dying for business reasons – the expense in making them, the diminishing audience for network TV – as well as sociological ones – fewer women at home during the day – and simple ones (they all should have shrunk to 30 minutes 15 years ago).
But the biggest reason they continue to shrink is because these shows depended on a generational audience. And when the laserlike focus on W 18-49 (and W 12-18) came, and all the older characters and stories were reduced or axed all together, much of the audience left too. You can throw in all of the explosions, gunfire and misogyny in the world, but the 12-to-18ers aren’t known for being an audience that will stick around once the smoke clears.
It may well be the end of an era, at least for TV. And these shows all had their peaks and valleys. But there were a lot of good professional actors who worked on these shows, and a few good writers, and made them a little piece of repertory theater. Someone just needs to find a way to make these well, make them for less money (perhaps making them outside of, you know, the two most expensive places in the country?) and make them relatable. The audience will follow, whether it’s TV or Web.
My theory of why the soap opera has lost ground, is because their target audience is primarily housewives (despite the fact that far more women are working today than there were in the ’50s, when soap first began the jump from radio to television). The problem is that they don’t do enough to target other demographics: in particular, despite the fact that there are a few reasons as to why a soap should appeal to men who are stay-at-home people (either because they are unemployed or choose to raise their kids, while their significant others are at work), such as action-packed sequences like those on “General Hospital” or the bevy of beautiful female cast members/characters, still the networks target the soaps more towards women rather than appealing to a broader audience of both genders. Sure there are some men who watch soaps (though some that do probably don’t want to admit it), but I’m pretty sure the male audience of soaps is paltry compared to the female audience (no matter how much the total audience is). Soaps also court teens, though interestingly the soaps that air in earlier timeslots (save for “The Bold and the Beautiful”, who doesn’t really bother to target a teen audience as they typically age child characters to young adults) air in timeslots where most teens are in school (except for those that are home-schooled), but soaps pay more attention to the adult characters than placing an equal emphasis on teen characters, but most soaps only have 3 or 4 teen characters at a time (that a select storyline involves) to begin with. Soaps need to broaden their audience (in a way that doesn’t chase away existing viewers), agressively advertise to these audiences and put in more compelling storylines in order to survive.
this is rumor, plain and simple. you dont have to be a genius to see the writing on the wall for the soaps. but no decisions have been made and all of the shows are in jeopardy. love your shows now, they wont be around for long. but in my opinion, general hospital is the only one with real quality actors and production value. what they do with the money/budget they have is remarkable. shot on film or aired in primetime, that’s the only show that might fit in.
We do NOT need another talk, reality or news show to replace any of the cancelled soaps. We could use more HISTORY, OUR COUNTRY type shows. Seems most Americans don’t know our history – so why not teach that instead of more of the View, Oprah, Dr. Phil JUNK. Yes – JUNK. That’s all it is. How about teaching things like ‘WHAT IS OPRAH really UP TO? Did you know she has started her own CHURCH and has over a million people? What is being taught in HER CHURCH’S???
She is teaching about following the FAUX MESSIAH – OBAMA. She has been labeled by the Black Churches as the ANTI-CHRIST and OBAMA IS THE FAUX MESSIAH. Check that out !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have known for years, actually, that Oprah is the Anti-Christ!!! LOL
you are ill – please see psycologist!!!!
One Life To Live is more loved by ABC than you think. The network knows that OLTL is its most contemporary soap. This show gets better demos than AMC with NO promotion. While not perfect, OLTL has a style all its own and has somehow maintained an identity in a genre that is all but dead.
1) NYC real estate is more expensive. AMC had to store sets in NJ, costing a bundle.
2) AMC has moved 3 times since the 80′s and this 3rd move was to the studio ABC used for Night Shift. So perhaps they could save $ at this facility. Or they hoped to.
3) I would venture a guess a talk show is cheaper to produce than even the most efficient soap. But I’m in the demographic they desire and I won’t watch talk shows. My mom watches AMC and she spends and shops the way advertisers dream of.
I think the serious issue here is “ratings”. I mean, really, who HAS a Nielson box anyway? Ratings are wholly unnecessary beasts that no one has real, honest to God access to (like American Idol ‘voting’), and I don’t think it samples nearly as many people are actually watching shows. There’s no way ‘Firefly’ was able to get a movie made with its paltry 3 million “viewers”. I think it’s time for the entertainment industry to wake up and see just how many people truly are watching these shows (and others) instead of killing them off unnecessarily!
I love AMC and have been a faithful viewer from the beginning. Please keep it on the air!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So are several of my family in Alabama and California.
There is enough talk shows. We enjoy our soaps, especially All My Children. They have a group of great actors and actresses. Don’t take away their jobs to perform great work.
It is always sad to see a Soap end – but it’s come to the point where networks can really only support one or two soaps each.
it would be ashame to sell all the soaps go. they have a loyal following.
oltl has by far the best writers. GH has become a waste of talent, tony geary has become a bumbling fool for the past few years and the lisa/robin storyline has dragged on and on. they brought back Vanessa Marcil to keep her locked up. AMC is another mess.
I do hope they survive.
The main reason they have budget problems is cause Ms. Luccis contract dollars. If it werent for that theyd b in better shape. I blame Lucci
SoapNet was promoting a bunch of webisodes within the past year that did combine the characters from all three of the ABC soaps–they were on an airplane in distress or something–and I took that to mean at the time that somebody was considering combining the well-known, long-running characters into a single set of storylines. I think this might be an interesting idea–ONTL and AMC used to do occasional crossovers back in the 70s because their two fictional towns were both “located” in Pennsylvania. I’d hate to see characters like Erica Kane and Tad Martin lost to the ages if they pull the plug on AMC. Also think cutting back to half-hours would make a lot of sense if they were presented “with limited commercial interruption.”
Move “The View” to syndication, and bring ($1,000,000) Pyramid back and add another game show to the ABC daytime schedule. Leave AMC, OLTL and GH alone.