October 6-10, 2008

[Rocket Man]

I agree about the ratings growth comment but that goes for the same for all the other soaps. None of them are growing in the ratings except that "Days of Our Lives" have managed to remain the same or small increase from the previous year. GL seems to be the only soap to keep their budget intact while the other soaps are spending huge amounts of money (i.e. GH, AMC, OLTL) and yet their ratings are declining.

I agree that GL & ATWT is the package deal and if one of them goes...both will go strictly on how P&G operates.

[Rocket Man]

When I mean internet, I mean strictly airing internet only and it doesn't mean it would be five days a week. I can see it with new episodes weekly and not five episodes a week. I watch a lot GL on the Innertube and they have exclusive advertising on their shows which are pretty big names so somewhere they are making profits because the big companies would not continue supporting it.

All TV shows after the writer's strike earlier this year have dramatically declined and yet the network(s) both broadcast and cable have yet to recover for their Fall season. AMC is pulling a 1.7-1.9, OLTL is pulling a 1.8-1.9, DAYS is pulling a 1.7-1.9, ATWT is pulling a 1.8-1.9, so on, and so on, yet these shows are spending money left from right. GL has been on a 1-year contract for the past few years and they've been a subject of cancellation since the mid-80s. It's not about "if" they will be cancelled, it's about "when." We the GL fans are used to this rumor for years and I mean years.

[Rocket Man]

I agree and GL gets pre-empted a lot in many earlier time slots in the big markets such as Houston, NYC, Chicago, Philly, Detroit, etc, etc....let me say this again A LOT! So the Innertube helps the viewers find GL with the mediocre of the network airings and I am extremely grateful for the internet giving us GL.

[SOAPSFOREVER]

HERE ARE THE RATINGS FOR 10/6-10/10:

HH

Y&R -- 3.6 -- 13 (SAME)

B&B -- 2.6 -- 9 (SAME)

GH -- 2.2 -- 7 (-1)

AMC -- 1.9 -- 6 (+1)

ATWT -- 1.9 -- 7 (-1)

DAYS -- 1.9 -- 6 (SAME)

OLTL -- 1.9 -- 7 (SAME)

GL -- 1.5 -- 5 -- (SAME)

18-24

DAYS -- .7 -- (SAME)

Y&R -- .6 -- (SAME)

GH -- .6 -- +1

B&B -- .5 -- +1

AMC -- .4 -- +1

OLTL -- .4 -- SAME

ATWT -- .3 -- (SAME)

GL -- .3 -- (SAME)

[Rocket Man]

Interesting post but rumor is still a rumor. Bottom line is if CBS wanted to cancel GL, they would've done it long time ago and with the new format CBS wouldn't allow them to go through it instead they would end GL. Why did CBS give them a contract earlier this year? Somewhere along the line, GL is making profit and maintaining it's budget in a very unsoap-like way regardless of what ratings are because there are other soaps getting close to the 1.5-1.7 ratings range like AMC, OLTL, DAYS, and ATWT, they have yet to change. It will be their time soon but the real question is, will they change like GL or just be cancelled upfront? There is support from CBS to GL as much as people do not like to admit.

[Supersage]

GL lost a ton of money earlier this year with the "new production model," and many industry insiders have no idea how that happened. Still, they did. This past August/September, CBS lowered their fees paid to Telenext/PGP again. GL's budget has decreased every year for four years.

The reason CBS kept GL was to experiment with the show. They wanted to see how "far" they could take soap operas outside the box. The production model GL initiated has worked surprisingly well. Other soaps are now incorporating this model into their shows, albeit, not as much as Wheeler's Guiding Light. GL would have been canceled before 2008 if Bloom didn't need to see what shape the future of soaps would take. Unfortunately for GL, it was all gloss and no substance. Now that the experiment has been successfully completed, GL doesn't serve a long term purpose.

CBS still controls most of daytime (with affiliates swapping time slots with alternative programming such as Dr. Phil or Rachael Ray). Make no mistake that Bloom doesn't want to relinquish control of any daytime slots to local programming.

[ljacks13]

Why is it when I see people post about GL and how it survived this long, it sounds like the same argument when Another World was still on the air?

[NYC123]

Yeah to AMC rising!!

[Supersage]

Well, because CBS is doing the same thing that NBC did about 10 years ago. Bloom is constantly trying to lower the demographic for GL and restricting storylines, just as NBC's then VP of Daytime (name escapes me).

It is so similar, its scary.

[sonyab1974]

Yeah it's about time!!!!!

[BlueLick]

I'm just not sure about the GL rumors. I've been hearing also that CBS plans on giving GL their renewal in 2009. ATWT and GL are packaged together so if that's the case of the show being canceled then both shows will have to be canceled and that's just simply not going to happen. That's a sign that CBS wants to get out of the soap business and Leslie Moonves does not have plans on getting out of the soap business as they make money from a rare amount of advertisers that they can't get from their prime time shows or other properties.

Realistically guys if CBS wanted to cancel GL that would be alot of pain on their backs to prepare for a big final episode that might be forced to put on prime time. GL has been around for 70 years and that means generations after generations have seen this show or made it apart of their daily lives. That would be the biggest cancellation in television history up to this point because no other show in history has had that kind of impact on people for the last 50 years or even been on the air for over 50 years.

If GL gets canceled then that means the soap genre is over and don't think your soap isn't next. That's how I know CBS isn't going to cancel something with so much history knowing that makes all other soaps venerable for the axe.

The good news is that the BIG 3 of CBS, ABC, and NBC have no plans of canceling any soaps or even getting out of the business. That wasn't the case for NBC about a year or two ago, but things have changed since Ben Silverman and Bruce Evans started running the network and Evans running daytime. NBC is keeping DAYS until March 2010 with an option for 2011. There's even been word of possibly creating a new serial called Fowler to compliment DAYS in fall 2009 possibly.

[Ryan Chamberlain]

AMC went up!!! YAY! Pratt's doing a good job.

[marceline]

I know it doesn't mean much but it's nice to AMC get a bump. They've made some good moves. Unfortunately Frons still has the show in his sextet-obsessed grip.

[JONNYSBRO]

GL even though the numbers are lower then they were before new production model, the show is far cheaper to produce, they actually are breaking even right now. Before the new production model, the show was losing a huge chuck of money bigtime. People do not realize in 2007, Wheeler had two choices figure out a cheaper way to produce the show or it will be CANCELLED. There was no bones about it. The show is about 45% cheaper to produce under the new model then it was under the old production model. They only film 58 pages a day, Wheeler fired alot of the crew and reduced the labor force on the show, they no longer have to take down sets and put them up and store them what cost a fortune, and the cameras used are so much cheaper. All the producers, writers, directors and Ellen Wheeler all took a paycut. This is how serious it was to keep GL on the air. It is not costing them more, it is way less. Even Ron Raines commented without the change the show was down and kaput. Barbara Bloom has said GL will never revert back to the old format. What sad is it is a shadow of GL. The scary part is GL did not have a big budget before they went with the new production model. Their budget was skimpy as is and they still could not afford it. They were in such a deficit and did not even know how they would make payroll. Now they are breaking even and able to produce the show, it is still is not making much of a profit but they are no longer losing money.

[RoseVioletDaisy]

Everybody knows that after three and a half years of horrendously incompetent leadership, Ellen Wheeler had dragged GL so deep into the gutter that the budget had to be cut so drastically that they could no longer afford to produce a real, professional caliber show and had to either go off the air or begin being produced in ridiculously amateurish fashion. This is not news to anyone.

Considering that the show looks like it's about 99% cheaper than it used to be, that doesn't seem like much of a bargain, especially given the large chunk of audience that left specifically because of the "new production model" and will never return. The costs fell but the ratings fell significantly too. How does that help? At the absolute best, GL kept itself on the air in order to break even but at the expense of the show's hard-earned reputation, which is now gone. It's a complete and utter laughingstock and when it is cancelled, most of it's fans will feel relief rather than anger. Is that really a victory worth celebrating? I don't think so. I would've respected Wheeler, PGP, and CBS alot more if they'd simply admitted that GL was no longer viable and let it die with what little grace and dignity she had left, which is now completely gone.

And all of this is why this show is so horrible. Without decent cameras and a competent crew the show has suffered from bad execution of it's "new model" and the "permanent" sets are tiny and almost unshootable. They would've been better off keeping three big, three walled sets and leaving them up permanently.

All of the problems the show had were only made worse by the new model, not better. GL's biggest problem was the writing. It was too shallow, plot-driven, and senseless. So what do they do? They switch to a format that demands far shorter scripts so that everything is now even more shallow, less planned out, and there are holes in every "story" big enough tp drive a semi through.

The things that are happening with every character are random because there's no time for explanation. These writers were never good at planning storylines or explaining character motivations, but the material was never this scattershot and riddled with holes and missing scenes before. Each episode now plays as if every other scene is missing, literally. Like the writers wrote a regular 90 page script for it but 40 pages of it were cut out and replaced with ad-hoc music videos. The next day, they simply move on to the next senselessly butchered script, rather than filling in the gaps left by yesterday's show and with each episode, things make less and less sense because plots are moving forward but in no particular direction and we don't know how or why. The writing has been bad but the new format is making it exponentially worse. That's the biggest problem with it. Not the cheap claustrophobic sets, the annoying generi-crap music in every scene, or the Tinker-toy cameras and the poor quality video they produce.

Well they damn well better have taken a paycut, they're the ones who flushed this show down the toilet in the first place! I mean, the show was in trouble when they came along but it was never anywhere near this bad.

And why not just let it go "kaput"? Why waste a year or two and risk throwing 71 years worth of reputation away just to drag the show down into the gutter and make it a laughingstock when we all know that it's ultimately doomed anyway?

And again, why not just let it go? Why the obsession with holding onto something that has been so decimated that it's no longer viable in any respectable way?