I'm a big defender of The City but it's true that when it launched, they didn't really have compelling stories to launch it with, so pretty quickly (I can't remember HOW quickly) they jumped to the Masquerade (I think it was called?) serial storyline which was SOOO misguided on so many levels. Was this the network interfering saying "well we got SOME traction and attention from a serial killer storyline on Loving, so..." Was it just Brown/Esensten scrambling? (I would definitely ask Brown about this if I had the chance.) Because it was doomed to failure. The entire reason the Loving Murders were so unique was that anyone could die and we had some sort of history with these characters. By design, this is lost when you use it to really launch a new show (and did we think they were going to kill off Angie or Ally or someone else they had brought over from Corinth??)
And, like I have said way too often, it actually played better as a late night soap as KOMO in Seattle aired it in the end of its run--and maybe could have captured the new audience they wanted?
Now here's a weird theory I have. Loving was always owned by Agnes Nixon's Dramatic Creations company (her second--I believe OLTL and AMC were owned until 77 or so by Creative Horizons but I may have the company names mixed up.) What if ABC had some weird contract with them that made it make sense for ABC (despite the reported cost of The City) to play out that contract with a show--essentially a rebrand of Loving but maybe under the end of the same or a similar contract?? And then of course they pretty quickly just replaced it with their own show, PC. I have NO idea how any of this stuff works, but is there any chance that could be a factor?
By
EricMontreal22 ·
