25 mistakes soaps made.

[Daniel Avery]

...and Ronn Moss sure didn't mind hanging around when the entire cast was talking about which girl Ridge chooses. Once it became clear that he had outgrown the role of "young, wishy-washy Romeo" he didn't seem interested in sticking around.

 

[cijimccashin]

I’m sorry OLTL and AMC did not deserve to be cancelled because some thought they were horrible. How about we Hire better writers and EP’s? Why should viewers suffer because they keep hiring hacks who don’t understand the shows they work for. That’s all subjective at the end of the day anyway. What I remember at that time was One Life getting all kinds of praised from the soap press as the best soap on the air. If we’re canceling shows because they’re not good no more, all of them would have been gone. They all had their highs and lows at one period or another. The crime is I’m not enjoying none of the last four and they’re pulling in worst ratings than AMC and One Life when they went off.

 

[AndyB2008]

I’m sorry OLTL and AMC did not deserve to be cancelled because some thought they were horrible. How about we Hire better writers and EP’s? Why should viewers suffer because they keep hiring hacks who don’t understand the shows they work for. That’s all subjective at the end of the day anyway. What I remember at that time was One Life getting all kinds of praised from the soap press as the best soap on the air. If we’re canceling shows because they’re not good no more, all of them would have been gone. They all had their highs and lows at one period or another. The crime is I’m not enjoying none of the last four and they’re pulling in worst ratings than AMC and One Life when they went off.

I guess ABC cancelled two in one because they probably saw the NBC silly games with Sunset Beach and Another World which got them backlash.

To the point it destroyed Passions before it was established.

 

[Daniel Avery]

Another possibility is that Brian Frons (who was dismantling ABC daytime, whether by design or through ineptitude), believed that cancelling two of the three soaps at the same time would in a way cut down on viewer backlash, since they would be dealing with two cancellations at once rather than two cancellations spaced a year or two apart. Rather than have his name dragged through the mud for six months, then dragged again a year later, he'd just consolidate the vitriol.

Frons's overall plan was to cancel all three of their soaps, but could not get the higher-ups to agree to get rid of them all at once. There was still some life left in them all, but GH had more residual clout since it had been so popular for so long in the 1980s-1990s. When the OLTL and AMC non-soap replacements did not catch on, ABC took a step back and realized they should hang onto at least one soap....and just get rid of Frons. Which can be filed under "barring the barn door after the horses have run away".

None of the replacements for cancelled soaps have really caught on (that is, scoring higher ratings than their predecessors). The only one that came close was The Talk on CBS that replaced As The World Turns, but their ratings went down after a season or so and never recovered. Passions, despite unprecedented publicity around its premiere and network money and patience as it floundered for years, never scored higher ratings than Another World did.

 

[AndyB2008]

Another possibility is that Brian Frons (who was dismantling ABC daytime, whether by design or through ineptitude), believed that cancelling two of the three soaps at the same time would in a way cut down on viewer backlash, since they would be dealing with two cancellations at once rather than two cancellations spaced a year or two apart. Rather than have his name dragged through the mud for six months, then dragged again a year later, he'd just consolidate the vitriol.

Frons's overall plan was to cancel all three of their soaps, but could not get the higher-ups to agree to get rid of them all at once. There was still some life left in them all, but GH had more residual clout since it had been so popular for so long in the 1980s-1990s. When the OLTL and AMC non-soap replacements did not catch on, ABC took a step back and realized they should hang onto at least one soap....and just get rid of Frons. Which can be filed under "barring the barn door after the horses have run away".

None of the replacements for cancelled soaps have really caught on (that is, scoring higher ratings than their predecessors). The only one that came close was The Talk on CBS that replaced As The World Turns, but their ratings went down after a season or so and never recovered. Passions, despite unprecedented publicity around its premiere and network money and patience as it floundered for years, never scored higher ratings than Another World did.

Another possibility is that Brian Frons (who was dismantling ABC daytime, whether by design or through ineptitude), believed that cancelling two of the three soaps at the same time would in a way cut down on viewer backlash, since they would be dealing with two cancellations at once rather than two cancellations spaced a year or two apart. Rather than have his name dragged through the mud for six months, then dragged again a year later, he'd just consolidate the vitriol.

Frons's overall plan was to cancel all three of their soaps, but could not get the higher-ups to agree to get rid of them all at once. There was still some life left in them all, but GH had more residual clout since it had been so popular for so long in the 1980s-1990s. When the OLTL and AMC non-soap replacements did not catch on, ABC took a step back and realized they should hang onto at least one soap....and just get rid of Frons. Which can be filed under "barring the barn door after the horses have run away".

None of the replacements for cancelled soaps have really caught on (that is, scoring higher ratings than their predecessors). The only one that came close was The Talk on CBS that replaced As The World Turns, but their ratings went down after a season or so and never recovered. Passions, despite unprecedented publicity around its premiere and network money and patience as it floundered for years, never scored higher ratings than Another World did.

The Passions situation - correct. It ended too with a 1.5 rating - the sort of rating Sunset Beach got canned for.

 

[AndyB2008]

A rumour I heard was Leslie Moonves (when he was at CBS and being horrid to the likes of Janet Jackson) wanted to can the Bell owned soaps too in favour of giving a chat/talk show to his wife.

That idea was canned quickly.

 

[Daniel Avery]

His wife ended up a co-host on The Talk, the View rip-off which took over the time slot vacated by As the World Turns.

...and Another World had a 2.6 when it was cancelled! Of course a 2.6 today would put it firmly in second place.

 

[AndyB2008]

The AW experiment was a fiasco. The show had been #1 or #2 in the ratings for several years (due mostly to the writing and its theatrical style) but in 1977-78 the new, shiny thing was General Hospital, with its emphasis on youth and energetic style. AW was about to experience a ratings downturn, though they of course did not know it at the time. When NBC decided to expand it to 90 minutes, GH (and to a lesser extent, All My Children) were taking away viewers. The production team and writers had been working on AW for years and were likely overworked--so now they were saddled with producing another 2 1/2 hours of the show per week!

The big stars of the show could not appear every day, nor could they memorize 90 minutes of dialogue on a regular basis. The Mac/Rachel/Iris triangle that had carried the show for so many years had to be back-burnered because they could not get the actors to 'overlap' in their workdays. They could schedule one or perhaps two of them to appear, but rarely could all three appear at the same time. They had to ration out the appearances of those three, and the balance of the time had to be filled up with new character additions. Viewers felt cheated if none of the favorites were appearing that day, and of course no one likes to see a bunch of newbies "taking over their show". Both the Executive Producer (who was responsible for the theatrical style and "look") and the Head Writer departed due mostly to burnout. The second-stringers who took the reins were not up to the challenge, so the stories they came up with were pretty bad. The decision was made to create a spin-off series starring Beverlee McKinsey (who played Iris) and to reduce AW back to 60 minutes. This allowed AW to write out a lot of the characters who were not working out, and focus more on Mac/Rachel once Iris was out of their hair. Texas only lasted two years, and AW fell into a cycle of hiring and firing writers and producers that caused their ratings to go down and never recover. The 90-minute experiment seriously wounded AW, and the obvious problems of trying to put on a 90-minute soap warned everyone else off of trying it.

Another thing to add was the 90 minutes expansion of AW forced the Doctors to 2 Eastern/1 Central.

It had been airing at 2.30pm I believe to begin with.

Then NBC as we see later moved The Doctors to 12.30pm (so a new soap Texas would air - David Letterman also got airtime cut for Texas) where affiliates would preempt it (for either local news or syndie stuff), then to noon to accommodate Search for Tomorrow where again it would be preempted. In markets that did air The Doctors at noon, it faced Y and R or Richard Dawson (yes, the guy from The Running Man) with his game show Family Feud, hence the ratings sliding down badly. Texas, which was struggling badly, was moved to 11am to lead into The Doctors, pushing Wheel of Fortune back.

The Doctors's low rating by the end actually broke a record set by the failed ABC soap The Best of Everything.

 

[cijimccashin]

Yes frons is a piece a work. Bless his heart, he truly loved the genre I been told. He started to mess with the show’s because he thought his direction was better.

You couldn’t pay me to watch passions though. I don’t believe anything would have helped those ratings.