Another World

[amybrickwallace]

Didn't it come down to the wire in 1993 between AW and SB?

[FrenchBug82]

It would have been a shame to cancel AW in 1993. It had just come out of a great run of several years and the potential was there. It was still salvageable.
Unfortunately things went irreversibly wrong very fast in the following couple of years and by 1995 it was countdown to death.

[Marissa Gallant]

All right after Frankie. Because no one ever stopped to think, "Hmmm, we lost a lot of viewers because of a brutal murder on screen, so our next step should be let a lot of other favorite characters go unceremoniously. That'll bring people back." Sometimes the money people are SO CLUELESS 

[AbcNbc247]

Yeah.

But SB was lower rated, so that ultimately got the axe. Rightfully so though. AW was still going good at the time. The sabotage hadn't really started yet. 

[Marissa Gallant]

Uhm, no. I think that must have been retcon? Reginald killed his wife in her bedroom. Mary heard it and saw it all. She tried to end it with him on the boat, he shook her and pushed her. She fell overboard and lost her memory. She got it back and he was arrested. He got out on bail and Michael killed him dead. (As opposed to killing someone soap opera dead where they eventually come back.)

However, while Marissa (Mary) was recovering, there was a room in a hospital which closed afterward where Marissa recovered. Then whoosh off to Paraguay 

[DRW50]

Josie  and Matt had some scenes bonding with their kids. I think Gary did leave town for a while and then returned to reunite with  Josie. 

[Marissa Gallant]

Yes, you would think that the entire industry would have figured that out  during the backlash that occurred when Don Craig vanished while mailing his tax forms. 

[DRW50]

There was a big  emphasis on phasing  out older characters, which is what led to Anna Holbrook being fired and David Forsyth, Stephen Schnetzer and Kale Browne being put on recurring. This is also around the time that Malone was asked in a soap magazine if Iris would return, and he said younger characters were meant to be the focus. (I don't believe this was his wish, he likely meant P&G).

Forsyth chose to leave rather than being recurring. Browne stayed until they killed Michael off in January  1998. Schnetzer was fortunate in that Richard Culliton had written heavily  for Cass and immediately put him back on the frontburner. For all the mistakes of those last years, they were at least smart enough to keep this up for the remainder of the show.

[AbcNbc247]

Yeah, he did. It was before the cancellation though, so I'm guessing that Gary would not have come back had the show continued.

Not back then lol just a year after Don on Days, Clarice and Larry disappeared from this show without an explanation either. 

[DRW50]

No, he wouldn't have. 

I'm one of the few who preferred Littlefield. I just don't like Tim Gibbs.

[Marissa Gallant]

There are a lot of not very smart people in charge. I mean every studio in Hollywood turned down Dirty Dancing because they didn't think people would watch.  

This show thought we wanted Lumina instead of John and Sharlene. Yes, they were older. Don't care.

There was no going back from Lumina.

[amybrickwallace]

Most likely not. But I'm not sure how Matt/Josie 2.0 would have worked, either. I'd love to hear from anyone on the show from that time what the planned story was to get Matt and Josie back together.

[DRW50]

The show  was already pretty much done by then anyway. It was in a decent place when it was canceled. That just didn't matter anymore - P&G  wanted through with their soaps and NBC unwisely banked on Passions.

I'd guess the strands seen onscreen are what would have happened and the abrupt return of Gary was the only real change. 

[amybrickwallace]

Bringing it full circle, the saving grace of the Josie/Cameron thing with the unexpected pregnancy and miscarriage was the short-term return of Anna Holbrook as Sharlene. That was irony at its finest.

[watson71]

Things really began to unravel at AW in 1996.  I don't think they thought that JFP would raise AWs ratings demographics- there were weeks where AW was beating both GL and ATWT in the demographics and a few weeks where AW actually passed GL in the weekly ratings.  JFP leaves AW in a huff and is replaced by Charlotte Savitz who was working at NBC at the time.  I think she did the most damage to AW by dismantling the cast- the worst firing being Charles Keating in 1998 after winning an Emmy.  The week Carl "died" in the hospital explosion, was the same week they had Donna run over Jensen Buchanan's Marley and Grant.  Marley is disfigured in the hospital explosion and wakes up a foot taller now being played by Ellen Wheeler again thus ending 13 years of Marley and Vicky being identical twins. Savitz went through eight headwriting teams in two years:

Margaret DePriest- September 1996-January 1997

Elizabeth Page, Tom King, and Craig Carlson, January 1997 - March 1997

Tom King and Craig Carlson, March 1997 - April 1997

Michael Malone, April 1997 - December 1997

Richard Culliton, December 1997 - May 1998

Richard Culliton and Jean Passanante, May 1998 - July 1998

Jean Passanante, July 1998

Leah Laiman and Jean Passanante, July 1998 - November 1998

MADD was made Executive in Charge of Production in 1996 and immediately makes Executive Producer changes at ATWT and GL but suspiciously Savitz remains at AW until November 1998.  I truly believe that P&G knew at that point that AW would be canceled and gave the EP job to Christopher Goutman to "cut his teeth as EP" on AW with the promise to be transferred to either ATWT or GL once AW was off the air.

NBC could not risk to keep AW on the air and cancel Sunset Beach instead.  NBC gave SB a six month extension until December 1999 then canceled it.  Had NBC given AW a six month extension, NBC knew AW probably would have had higher ratings than Passions which probably would have been a flop from its premiere.  It would have been fitting if AW left the air on December 31st- just like Somerset (1976) and Texas (1982) did.

 

 

 

Edited September 18, 2021 by watson71