P&G never truly thought much of these shows to begin with, other than the fact that they were "cash cows" in their heydays.
The daytime soap was created specific to "sell soap" literally and it was all about turning a profit, the entertainment was secondary to the $$$.
It was also a genre that was started by a women, Irna Phillips, that largely appealed to women, who made up the bulk of the viewing audience, while the large majority of the executives were men who did not much value "women's work" and any field that was seen to be dominated by women (even though, in reality most of the headwriters tend to be men).
Want to know why teachers have the lowest average salaries of the majority of the industries around? How about nurse's salaries compared to Wall Street? Which of these careers do the most vital work?
Industries that are seen as attracting and/or catering to women usually command the lowest regard. This is a very sad fact. The soap industry is no different.
Production companies like P&G barely valued soaps when they were raking in the money (e.g. 'wiping' of classic episodes, Eileen Fulton also once mentioned P&G's seeming reluctance to market the show even at the height of its popularity), let alone once ratings began to steadily decline in the 90s.
It's about placing value on what you have and doing what you can to preserve it. If P&G never put much value on these shows, why do believe believe that they'd do what they could to preserve them?
One can only hope that somewhere, someday, there will be an employee who rises in the ranks at P&G who grew up watching and valuing these soaps and decides that the company has wasted a big opportunity to connect with fans of these shows and decides to amend this.
Just to add a bit more,
To add to this P&G was different from other producers of soaps, in that they were also a corporation that sold consumer goods and would be listed on the Stock Market, with a board of directors and investors to please and all the restrictions and limitations to go with it.
Unlike the other producers of soap operas, P&G was not specifically an entertainment company either, their bread and butter was consumer goods, so its possible that other entertainment based production companies (e.g. Bill Bell Productions, etc.) had a bit more creativity and flexibility while P&G was a bit more rigid in how they financed their productions.
P&G was the first but you cannot tell me that Bill Bell Sr. and Agnes Nixon, having once worked under P&G, didn't take notes and figure out what they wanted to emulate as well as how they wanted their shows' business to be conducted in a drastically different way than from what P&G did.