It's interesting that Doug Cramer said they were having story problems during Season 5, despite it being #1 at the time, especially since the actors were told "just look at the ratings" when they complained about the same thing.
I recall TVGuide did a little piece midway through the fifth year questioning Esther Shapiro and DALLAS creator David Jacobs about what they would do were they running each others' shows. Predictably, Shapiro said she'd "make Miss Ellie a much stronger character" (which I guess means Ellie would get raped and have affairs repeatedly) and give the women much greater Texas frontier grit; Jacobs praised DYNASTY's glamour and merchandising, but said the show needed to start concentrating much more on "story" or it could soon slip (which, of course, is what happened -- the slipping, that is).
So perhaps the DYNASTY brass were listening, although they usually seemed immune to criticism in the press, so creatively paralyzed they were.
Funnily, around the same time, Shapiro bashed the terrible plotting of Lorimar's BERRENGERS and then, months later, hired BERRENGERS' producer Diana Gould for DYNASTY's Season 6.
As a side note, during Season7, Jacobs bemoaned the fact that "Joan and Linda don't even seem like the stars of the show anymore" while Karen Cellini admitted that "all anybody wants to see" is Joan and Linda.
