ATWT Canceled

[SnCCorinthos4ever]

Wow, this news has also made News on Aussie radio.

[Sylph]

When you look back at this show... At how they've been mismanaging it ever since Marland died... There are no words.

So many things squandered, so much lost. It will never come back.

Horrible. A crime.

They did the same with GL, but in a much, much more gruesome way.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

So, I must wonder which show Goutman, Passanante, Laiman, Wheeler, and the others will be recycled to soon?

You know it's going to happen, people...

Goutman should go back to directing, where his strengths clearly are...

[Sylph]

Imagine if in the end over a row with Frons Lorraine Broderick steps down and Passanante helms AMC again!

[All My Shadows]

This is what it all boils down to, as far as I'm concerned. People can go on and on about storylines, characters, production values, etc, and to an extent, they would be true, but come on...you can't fight common sense. There are less people home during the day now than there were 35 years ago, and those people at home have an outrageous amount of choices in TV viewing today, if they even decide to watch TV. It's not the only cause for soaps dying out, but we all have to realize, it's the #1. Of course, when the shows give you little to want to tune in for, that hurts, but come on! The days of 10 million people watching the same show at 1 in the afternoon are over. No amount of "back to basis" writing is going to change that, ever. A decreasing daytime audience + an increasing number of viewing options = somebody loses.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

http://www.cbspressexpress.com/div.php/cbs_entertainment/release?id=23539

[juniorz1]

:( The sad thing is, I had an ATWT mini-marathon last night and was so excited to come on here today to post about how good it has gotten. Really, the past 6 months have been pretty solid and it feels like itself again. I watched a little here & there in the mid to late 90s, checked it out again when the AW stars crossed over, and finally got hooked in the summer of 2000. For the better part of this decade, ATWT was my favorite soap on the air, bar none. Only in the past few years did it slip into the realm of awfulness. Had they made any kind of effort a year and a half ago, when their ratings were still middling and not consistently at the bottom, the show could very well have been saved. I blame it on Goutman, JPiss, and their obsession with Paul & Meg. Literally, that couple ate the show for so long and sucked the life out of every episode they appeared together. In fact, ATWT began falling apart shortly after they got together in 2006.

I hope to GOD that Maura doesn't retire from acting to raise her babies. I'm all for stay at home moms, but it would be an absolute travesty to not have Ms. West on our screens regularly, especially when she's still on top of her game. I'd love to see her at Y&R or DAYS (since I, ya know, watch those shows). But please, for the love of GOD, keep her away from GH. It would break my heart to see her over there.

And just think- come September 2010, OLTL will be the sole NYC-based soap. I bet they're worried over there.

This is yet another sad day for daytime. My heart goes out to the cast & crew. Here's hoping that the creative renaissance they're experiencing there continues until they bow out in September 2010.

[AddictedToSoaps]

Ugh how awful. I was kind of glad to see GL go, but I didn't think ATWT was in such poor shape like GL was. I'm sad to see it go.

[Faulkner]

Plus, in those myriad viewing options, soaps require the most work for people to get into. I know it's easy to just go home and veg and watch CNN (Tiger! Obama! Sarah Palin!) or Judge Judy or L&O repeats. Very little catch-up required. Most people don't want to work to be entertained.

[mamasita]

Correct. Fast food...Fast news....Fast action...video games....This is the A.D.D. generation. They want it all...NOW!

[StevieM]

I don't think it's fair to blame Chris Goutman. He was brought in for the final year of AW when it was already dead. And he made MAJOR improvements that were noticeable to the fans, like getting Sandra Ferguson and Matt Crane back as Amanda and Matt Cory. Other producers didn't even understand why that would matter. He might have done better if he had more time....and if he had a HW other then Leah Laiman.

Goutman also made great improvements when he went to ATWT, that were widely talked about at the time--actually raved about--and he even won the respect of the notoriously negative DAYS fans on places like the Coffeerooms, the epicenter of soap negativity back in the day. And he won a slew of emmys too. I'm inclined to give him more credit for the success then I would give Hogan Scheffer, given what we saw of Hogan on DAYS.

Goutman always had a lot of respect in the industry--at least back when I was following it--and I wouldn't be surprised if he got another job. Maybe as EP of AMC, which I seem to remember is where he got started. I also seem to remember that they tried to win him away from ATWT several years ago.

I don't think another cancellation is coming for awhile. DAYS ratings are up and the stories driving the show (Carly's return and the arrival of the Passions gang for a Louis and E&T redux) are just taking off. It takes up and hour in the middle of the day with something different then the rest of the line-up. With production costs down (since KC accepted an ax to the budget), and the ratings up, it seems unlikely that it is facing cancellation in the next 5 years. Besides, there were 8 years between the demise of AW (and Sunset Beach) and the end of Passions (on NBC). I think DAYS can last that long, maybe making it to their 50th anniversary show. Of course, given enough time, it's hard to see Dena not tanking the show. I still think her 2003 run was the worst material I ever saw on television.

ABC seems to like its 3-hour soap line-up. Also if you cancel OLTL that leads to a time change for AMC....no small deal. And you don't want a gap in your soap line-up. So I suspect that AMC would be canceled first, even if it is the "iconic" soap. The big question is whether OLTL will try to get Roger Howarth back and if they do would they attempt "a tale of two Romans" type story.

CBS loves Y&R being #1, even though HH doesn't matter in terms of profitability. And I'm starting to think that B&B may be the most profitable soap around, by virtue of its foreign viewership. I doubt they will mess with it by changing it to one hour.

My gut says that DAYS and AMC last until 2015, OLTL and Y&R will go around 2020 and GH and B&B will last the longest, maybe until 2025. The fact that GL and AWTW lasted so long speaks to how hard it is to just let go of a soap opera and find a way to replace it in the line-up. And each cancellation makes it that much harder to fill the time slot of the next cancellation.

Then again, the one thing I've learned for sure over the years is that us posters have a lot of info wrong. There is a lot about the industry that we don't understand....and yet act like we do. So there are probably a bunch of factors at play that we just aren't aware of.

Steve

[Actor87]

I'm in complete shock. I just....I have no clue what to say. This is all so surreal.

I'm sick. I'm devastated. I'm pissed the hell off. I'm annoyed. I'm sad. All the above.

:( :( :(

This is a day I never thought would come.....

[ivanmmd]

"All My Shadows" - you really hit the problem. "Days" competition is not really "AMC" or YR/BB. It is "Damages", Or "Glee", or "Mad Men" or "Monk", or any of the countless choices one has to tape on DVR. There is only so much time you have to watch TV when you get home from work. Even if "Days" has been very good, I might choose to watch a can't miss episode of "Glee" - if I only have one hour to watch TV on a given night. It really is very difficult for a show to hit it out of the ballpark everyday, five days a week, 52 weeks a year. The competion has to produce only 22 episodes of new material. Then another production will have 22 episodes of new material. I might love "True Blood" when it airs, then "Damages" when it airs. The point being there is always something good on one of the cable stations of primetime TV. So "Days" climaxes a great Baby switch story. Ratings go up. The audience says, "What's next?" The format of soaps is not strong in competion with multiple choices on TV - even the internet is competion. A little while ago everyone was praising Y&R. Now a lot of people say the show stinks. A show can be on fire today, and that is no guarantee it will be on fire in two months. Can the format survive? I don't know.

BTW, "All My Shadows"- I am trying to place your avatar. Who is it? Seems familiar.

[Ann_SS]

I suspect that CBS has been pleased with Let's Make a Deal's ratings so they have another game show replacement lined up for the 2:00 p.m. time slot.

[All My Shadows]

For real. If I didn't have built-in knowledge of most of the soaps' storylines already, when I get home from class and lie down for a while, it'd be much easier for me to tune in to a courtroom show or something on Food Network that I know I don't *have* to tune in tomorrow for and don't have to try to connect the dots to figure out what's going on.

There's a reason people will have the "That show was still on?" and "People still watch soaps?" reaction over the next few months. They don't not watch soaps because "Oh, As the World Turns does not focus on the Hughes family much anymore, and I don't like that" or "Oh, I'm not a fan of the misogynistic writing on One Life to Live." Those are our reasons for not watching at a given time, but to the Average Tim and the Average Tanya, they're not watching soaps because "Uh...I work in the daytime...and when I'm off, I'm sleeping...or taking care of errands...or watching Law & Order...don't really have time to get into soaps. These days, how many people do?" And that's when the content of the soaps comes into play: "I could tape them or DVR them and watch them at night, but that's when I watch *insert any random primetime or cable show here*, and I'm not giving that up for some crazy soap."

Even if soaps were at the top of their game, it's still a conundrum. They're still the old dusty country roads in a world full of interstates and freeways. Sure, you can take the country roads and get to the city at the end of the day or in the morning, but you can get to the same city on the interstate in about two hours and have time to do other things. CBS is basically taking down the country road signs. It sucks, and I hate it just as much as anyone else, but I think it's ridiculous to act as if the majority of the blame goes on TPTB. A lot of it is just circumstances.

Bobby Farrell of Boney M.