Ellen Wheeler hopes to save the daytime soap....

[Contessa Donatella]

Crack me up!! I value being so calm & cool, thinking things through & then certain people on my short list of soap people make me go GRRRRRRRR!!! Yes, JFP is one of them. But, hey I loved AW soooo much, and I love GL, and I loved Santa Barbara. Heck, I loved GH under Riche & Labine ... and JFP drove me crazy when she was at OLTL, even though I was watching every day.

[Contessa Donatella]

I just don't see new soaps being made, being considered, etc. and haven't for a long time. The failure rate of new soaps has been perceived as being even worse than the existing ones.

There's nothing wrong per se with the telenovela format which is largely about have a popular cast, of veterans & newbies they hope will become popular, and the shorter timeframe, from 6 months to 5 years or so, but daily.

There would be nothing wrong to me with having new kinds of soaps leave the daytime noon to 4 & move to the gap that is suppertime for some, between 6 and 8, or to late night, immediately after the primetime lineup is done, which means eleven for most nets, but 10 for others. Half hour soaps could be re-explored, too.

But, when I speak of the daytime US soap opera genre as needing to reinvent itself again, as it has many times before, I speak of what many have said is why we have had soaps go on & on & on. Because they have reinvented themselves, stayed within their purposes but not allowed themselves to stagnate. I see Jerry ver Dorn being quoted often - love him - and he was an actor who has spoken about that process of reinventing themselves being necessary for survival.

[Vee]

There's nothing at GL that is about reinvention: It's merely recycling for the sake of economics.

I loved Ellen Wheeler when she was an actress playing Marley, but Marley is not real, AW was cancelled and here and now, in 2008, Ellen Wheeler can't executive produce. I didn't think it was possible but judging by GL alone she is now up there with John Conboy and JFP. And frankly she's destroying all the goodwill she built up with me when she worked on NBC. I mean, you can't ignore the stories the unhappy actors are telling off the record, even if they are to shrews like Hinsey. If even half of what's being said about their conditions (changing in the car, no rehearsal time, forced to hold the lights themselves) and their output is true, including the constant word that the show is somehow overbudget even when it looks like snuff porn (why exactly do Bill and Lizzie do it in a hotel room with the front door to the hallway open? Why did Gus and Natalia live in what looked like a train sleeping car?), it's just inexcusable. And that's not even getting to what's put onscreen. Why does GL need a "house band" a la SNL, especially a "house band" as terrible as that muzak schlock that does all their music now? Why on Earth was Harley's last scene on the show her crying outside a Howard Johnson's over Cyrus? Why is there no more long-term story breakdowns or planning, leaving every characterization, every storyline, every motivation ready to turn on a dime? Why was Olivia obsessed with first a romantic reunion with her rapist, then with a man who she barely knew and who didn't really want her (Gus), with no transition shown onscreen? What happened to Alan's obsession with Natalia? Who gives a [!@#$%^&*] about G or Cyrus? Really, who? Why can't they use real sets if it comes down to using and reusing the same staff offices and pretending they look even remotely realistic or at all like the long-standing homes or workplaces of the characters they are writing for? Why can I tell that the existing Company set now looks plastic and fake and has no open sky, and why would you film it if it looked like that on these cameras? How many times can Beth do the Alan/Rick merry go round? How many times can you do a "OMG Is Phillip Back?" tease in a year when we all know damn well Grant Aleksander is not coming back? How many times can you drop everything to focus all your energy on Jonathan? How many members of the audience can you drive away with a wide roster of incredibly unpopular couples?

The problem is, Ellen Wheeler and her people have confused style with substance, and they have gone way out of their station thinking they can do so. They believe that by substituting careful, well-written storylines that have solid basis in characterization and history with "atmospheric" music and silent shots of people looking pensive on the side of the road (why are they there?!), in the middle of a field (why are they there?!), or in a parking lot (why?!), they can somehow adapt "cinematic language" for daytime purposes and make the medium the message, using the image to compartmentalize the story. Yeah, other EPs, much better EPs already did that, but they had content to back it up. Without content you have nothing - just three montages per episode to tacky music, with tacky people wandering around a tacky town, trying to work up emotion about something that won't matter next week, if not tomorrow, trying to assign a massive character and narrative significance to it to give the impression that something big is happening on GL, when really nothing happens at all. In that sense, yes, GL is like The Hills - Ellen Wheeler has succeeded in gutting Guiding Light, ripping out its internal organs, and replacing it with the equivalent of funny money, or maybe plastic guts.

It's a shame because I feel GL has some very decent dialogue people on staff, who, between them and the suffering, cold actors, come up with extremely naturalistic scenes and performance from time to time. But every day they are asked to find a context and basis for these scenes where utterly none exists before or beyond the next sixty seconds or minutes. Ellen Wheeler's definitely fulfilled the Hills model. It's really sad. It's a sad, dead-dog ending for GL, and it's a sad end to Wheeler's long career in daytime...and it will be the end. I mean, who would hire on the basis of this?

[Greg's GL]

^^^ Vee - ICAM with everything you said.

Yup.

Yup.

I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, there's no question in my mind that without Ellen Wheeler & the work she's done, especially given the shape she got it in, that GL would already be off the air.

Donna - you have made some good arguments in your posts in this thread. However, I would argue that it would have been BETTER OFF to have GL canceled back in 2004 with some sort of dignity. And I think that Vee said it very succinctly "Ellen Wheeler can't executive produce". And IA. The "Guiding Light" that comes on here at 9am is so far removed from the show I have loved half my life that it's depressing. Is this actually SAVING the show? From what? At the very least, when JFP and Paul Rauch were EPs, the characters behaved (for the most part) in character. They didn't turn on a dime to suit the story (remember, I said for the most part) like they do now. And JFP presided over the last of GL's critically acclaimed years.

I wouldn't mind the new format as much if the sets weren't so horrible. Or for the non-sensical "meetings" between characters that appear to happen in the middle of nowhere. Or for the WRITING. I mean really, who in the HELL walks out of a bunch of bushes and runs into their best friend on a one-lane road in some po-dunk town? The reality has, in a sense, taken more steam out of the story. Before the "location shots", I imagined Springfield as a somewhat mid-size town but now it appears that it's a small town with a population around 100 people. Are we to believe that Spaulding Enterprises is headquartered here? I don't think so.

If EW is to remain, they need to tweak those 3 things and put GL to bed with some respect. Watching this is like shooting a dead dog on the street and then putting a leash around it's neck and dragging it 20 blocks.

[Sylph]

Oh, please - this just makes no sense.

[JONNYSBRO]

Bloom loves Ellen Wheeler bigtime that is why she has been executive producer almost for 5 years. Bloom finds Ellen extremely inspiring and a wonderful person. Ellen IMO's biggest downfall has been keeping David Kriezman who should ahve stayed a script writer/breakdown writer not a head writer. The major thing Bloom feels about Ellen is her creativity with the find your light campaign and then her into the light episodes. CBS/P&G did not create this new production format. This whole idea was Ellen Wheeler's idea. The massive thing is ever sicne Wheeler became executive producer in 2004 she has been plagued by major budget problems. Then in 2005 when GL got renewed the show got a massive paycut which led to many actors getting dismissed or on recurring, that was out of her control. In fact alot of it had to do with GL keeping Kim Zimmer at the time who refused a paycut and cost alot of actors their jobs. Anyways Bloom in about early 2007 and P&G came to Wheeler to make big changes to GL. Simply they could not afford to keep GL on the air anymore. Also Wheeler did win a best show emmy in 2007 and Kriezman won best writing, so Bloom loved that. Bloom gave Ellen the task to make changes and she came up with the new production model and how it would drastically cut costs for the show. the major cost in production had to do with GL having to take down the three wall sets and then redoing them every day. Also with the new production model it would require less of a production staff so she could reduce labor/work force. Then Wheeler went to secure the location shoots for Peapack which did not cost much at all. Bloom/P&G loved her ideas and with the new production model it would cut production costs by 40%. The major thing when production started on the new production model in late October and came on air in February there were alot of kinks. The massive ones where the production kinks because most people were not familar with this new method. So that is why things were shaky, fuzzy, sound was low and alot other bad things. Also the storyline was sacrified as well. So Bloom told Wheeler make changes and iron out kinks. So Wheeler has made changes to production plus she is the one who thought of the writing teams idea not CBS/P&G. The ratings are lower since the production model took place but the show is not as expensive so CBS is alot happier. Pretty the point is without Ellen's idea for a new production model, GL was GOING TO BE CANCELLED. CBS did not want to do that but they just could not afford the cost of show anymore. She has drastically cost production costs. Some shows might start using this model in some of there shows just based on cost alone. The old way of soaps were really expensive to produce. That is why soaps could never go on location, it would take almost 60 people to do a location shoot with the big huge 50 pound cameras and now it only takes about 8. So in Bloom's eyes, Wheeler is a creative innovator and she believes she saved GL. Ellen has worked alot of hours at GL since the new production model took place. She works about 80-85 hours a week on the show, Bloom appreciates her committment. Bloom/Wheeler are also good friends outside of work, she loves Ellen. They constantly are having confrence calls, meetings, lunch meetings to talk everything GL.

[Greg's GL]

Ya know, if EW spends this much time every week on this show and it STILL looks the way it does, my impression of her just hit a new low. If I were her, I wouldn't be braggin about spending this much time on a product that looks like you spent 2 hours on it.

Bloom may love her, but IMO she's incompetent.

[UKBoi]

Wheeler's passion and enthusiasm for keeping the show afloat is seriously impressive, but she needs someone more experienced to work alongside her to guide her along as she makes these changes. Paul Rauch, Ed Scott, heck, even someone from The Hills' production team, just to help Wheeler's vision play out the way she wants it to. It's obvious she doesn't have the knowledge to back up her enthusiasm, and it shows.

While all the cracks in the new production model are slowly being ironed out, unless they get a little extra money from CBS/PGP to build some better sets, then when this winter comes things are going to be a little harder to believe. Will we really buy that two people are sitting on a park bench talking in the middle of a rainstorm or snowfall when they could be in their homes?

[Greg's GL]

I suppose I could agree that EW does have "passion and enthusiasm" for the show, but you're right - she needs help. ALOT of it.

[AbFabGL4ever7]

It is so sad that this is what it has come to for GL.

Its also sad that pretty soon the rest of the soaps (with the exception of Y&R & maybe B& will have this production model replace their old one. I also think that GH would work best with this kind of production model. They already like filming people hiding behind crates and trash cans. Why use a set when u can use the loading dock at an abandoned wherehouse or the local wal-mart down the street for free.

I mean this woman will do anything to cut costs to keep this thing afloat. If she needs to start a fire for storyline purposes why use gasoline when u can have Bradley Cole fart and Kim Zimmer light a match for that added effect.

And as for reality infused, I think she's on to something hiring real homeless people (Grady) as main characters. What's even sadder is that he still looked like he was drippin in street grease when they cleaned him up.

This woman is something else.

[Khan]

You want to save the daytime soap, Ellen? Quit. For God and country, Ellen!

[JONNYSBRO]

What people seem to be missing if GL would be no longer here if this production model was not created by Ellen Wheeler. In 2007 GL could no longer afford to be on the air with the old production model. It's costs far outweighted it's profits. I am not a big Ellen Wheeler, I absolutely loved her as an actress. She was a brilliant actress. The massive thing is when she came to GL she was plagued with budget problems from day one. Every year her budget has evaporated. Everyone wants the GL of years ago that was a different time in soaps when networks had massive budget and money to spend. Those days are long gone and especially with how bad our economy is today. The bottom line it comes down to DOLLARS AND CENTS for a network. I will give the woman some credit for doing everything possible to keep GL on the air. This production model was all her idea. It has drastically cut costs bigtime. No matter if GL gets cancelled, if other soaps adopt the model then Wheeler will be seen as an innovator in taking soaps in a much more cost effective direction. CBS and P&G did not dream up this idea. Basically Ellen had to do this or everything would be cancelled and lots of people out of jobs. This is not the first time has had to deal with bad budget issues. When GL was renewed in 2005, CBS and P&G cut the budget by 33% that led to firings of many actors, producers who had been with GL for a long time, writers, directors and many staff. Put yourself in Wheeler's position being hired with a very small budget that gets reduced every year, having to cut down on the number of sets on the show due to cost of putting them up and taking them down, reduing the number of vets in scenes due to costs, and then being handled an ultimatium last year to come up with a plan to produce the show drastically less or the SHOW IS CANCELLED. Wheeler is producing the show on a cost enough to buy peanuts. While ratings have dipped, the shows costs have drastically reduced by 45%. It costs have gone way way down. It is more affordable to keep it going. It was not that Wheeler wanted to ditch the old production model, she had no choice. People want to despise this woman and hate her for decimating GL. GL started to decimate years ago and the budget problems have gone on since before EW took over. She just walked into a bad mess. Believe me if Y&R had to produce their show under GL's new budget, they could not get 20 minutes of it on the air per show at the budget EW has at GL.

[EastMA2]

Johnnysbro - I'd much rather have seen GL go off the air a couple years ago when it had SOME dignity left rather than keep the show going in its current format. I will always blame Wheeler for killing this show. It wasn't perfect when she took it over, and she actually improved it for a short while, but then got arrogant and implemented ideas that have proven to be detrimental to the genre.

Other shows are slowly implementing the same format and look at where the ratings are. Down on just about every show by hundreds of thousands of viewers from a year ago. She has not helped save the genre in the least.

[RoseVioletDaisy]

And what you seem to be missing is that GL would've been a hell of a lot better off if it had gotten cancelled before this atrocious production model and the even more incidious writing that accompanied it out of necessity ever started airing, forever besmirching whatever legacy Guiding Light might have had left by 2007. I have no doubt that people from other soaps are visiting GL simply because they're all being forced to do everything on the cheap, cheap, cheap and it's obvious that no one running a soap today gives a rat's ass about quality in either production or writing, which is the real reason why this genre is dying such a slow miserable death. So, I'm sure that there will be more shows shooting more and more scenes in public parks and in tiny, cramped sets the size of a refrigerator box and the writing will be just as bad or worse. The fans are hanging on as long and tightly as they can, but the garbage that the fans of every single show are being forced to endure is practically inhuman. We can only take so much until even the most loyal of us have to quit to save our own sanity. In true GL fashion, they gave us 3-4 weeks of decent material recently which got everyone's hopes up but, just as quickly, the show has gone right back down the toilet and with ScumbagMurdererGrady and DingBatDaisy getting off the hook for Tammy's murder and being shoved front and center and down our throats as some sort of Romeo & Juliet complete with their impending triangle-from-hell with the soon-to-return Rafe, GL is about to be worse than it has ever been if it isn't already.

When I tune in to GL and see a dark, desolate, and utterly soulless Springfield populated by nothing but sleazy, woman-hating predatory criminals and the spineless, self-loathing excuses for women who actually think they love them who spend everyday walking around aimlessly in empty grass fields, I have Wheeler to thank for that and the fact that she's either too stupid or too self-obsessed to know well enough to be ashamed of what she's done to this show all in the service of her ego, which likes to pretend that she's some groundbreaking visionary, tells me all I need to know. GL is only still on the air because Ellen Wheeler has apparently devised a way to produce a 38 minute daily soap opera for about a $1.99 a pop, at least it looks that cheap even though we all know it isn't. GL might last for at least two more years like this but does it truly deserve to be on major network television? No, it doesn't. It looks and sounds horrible. I've literally seen high school projects that looked better and I'm not just talking about the how the show was back in March. Even recently. What passes for stories, characters, couples, plotting, and pacing are terrible. It's a truly bush league operation all around. It is so embarrassing that it can be no surprise that so many actors seem to be desperately flailing like rats on the Titanic to get out. Even worse is probably the morale of actors who are either locked into longterm contracts or who have no name value to shop to other networks who know they're stuck there until the boom comes down.

Now it's August 2008 and tell me, please, what legacy GL will have left when it, and it's long suffering fans, are finally, mercifully put out of our misery? Other than going from the longest running TV series ever to the laughingstock of not only the soap world but of television in general.

The fact that it was the first soap to ever degenerate into complete and utter nothingness right on the air before our very eyes?

The fact that it was the first soap to ever completely reject the very notion of any kind of logical narrative whatsoever?

The fact that it was the first soap to ever completely reject the very concept of character? GL doesn't even have characters anymore. All we have are an ever shrinking group of poorly treated actors who are being taped as they walk around in empty fields and parks wearing their own clothes, eat their lunches, and regurgitate a few meaningless lines written for them on a piece of paper that in five minutes will mean nothing and they know it and it shows.

In what universe is this anything even remotely resembling progress, innovation, or creativity? It sure as hell ain't saving anything. Cancellation is sad and it does cost people jobs but how many people have already been axed to facilitate the "new production model" and how many more will be axed as the NPM drives even more fans and actors away and the ratings/revenues sink even farther? All of them. That's the answer. They will all lose their jobs anyway. Everyone would've been better off if they'd just gotten it over with 1, 2, 3, 4 or even 5 years ago.

[Jess]

Mark, I agree with everything you said. I want to add a controversial point: part of the reason every new thing has failed is because a lot of soap viewers aren't open to change. I do think the real experiment is to cancel the old chestnut and build another one. When people get tired of that chestnut cancel it. You know, like they do on night time.

I also do not think write better character driven stories is the answer to anything. Five days a week of a character driven story can get old pretty fast.