AMC: Daytime’s Brigadoon (But What Happens Next?)

[YRBB]

I believe there was a small dip after the expansion to an hour, but soon stabilized. Not sure how the restructiring affected the show--but didn't it happen over months and months, so one would expect ratings not to go up immediately.

[Paul Raven]

Fair point...I was talking about turnarounds in the quality and critical/audience response as much as ratings.

I guess we could include Lemay at AW.Although the ratings were good when he took over,it is pretty much agreed that the direction/quality of the show improved when he arrived and he kept the numbers up.

[DRW50]

What about Soderberg and Purser (was that their names) who took over ATWT after Irna Phillips was fired?

Peggy O'Shea at OLTL. Malone/Griffith/Gottlieb at OLTL.

I thought Richard Culliton did a hell of a lot to improve AW in early 1998, although sadly that didn't get to last.

[R Sinclair]

Yes, but I don't think she knew most of these people personally... or have been to their really big houses!

[You're Soaking in it]

[Adam]

Haha! In response toy uor earlier post, I totally agree! She should make it known that this is a heavy handed attempt at agenda pushing rather than pass it off as great journalism...

[DeeeDee]

[MichaelGL]

What about Pam Long and Richard Culliton at GL in the 80s? The show was an meandering ship with declining ratings when Marland left, and within a year and a half the show was holding steady onto it's audience and even managed to be number one.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I'll cut Marlena some slack here - the rest of daytime is so bleak right now, and from what I understand AMC was such a disaster only a few months ago. I've checked out AMC a few times in the past few months and I think it really does look so much better by comparison. At very least, however long AMC stays on the air and whatever happens post-Broderick, I don't think it can be said that the show was already dead when it left NY, and last summer I thought that was a foregone conclusion. That's an accomplishment, in and of itself. I'm not as enthused as Marlena or even inclined to watch regularly - especially when I know that whatever influence Broderick may have, she's only there for a few months - but then again, I've never been a regular viewer and I know Marlena's been a fan from the beginning. Some might say that should have no bearing on her reporting, but this was an opinion piece and frankly I applaud her for loving the genre enough, even when it's fallen on very hard times, to try to find glimmers of hope in her favorite show.

That said, I think Marlena should have verified the specifics of who was writing AMC at the time of Erica kidnapping Maria's baby when she called that out as an example of what went wrong after Broderick left. As mentioned above, that was in fact Broderick. It was surely an honest mistake on Marlena's part, and I'm not disputing all of the praise Marlena heaped on Broderick, but the fact that something like that could have happened when as lovely a writer and (apparently) a person as Broderick had her name in the credits is significant, IMO. Marlena rightly took AMC to task at the time for that story, despite her friend/colleague LB being the head writer, but what did AMC end up doing about it? Broderick was replaced with McTavish. At the time, the spin that the network got much of the soap press to go along with (probably not Marlena, who had already gone on record as not a McTavish fan during her GL stint) was that the ratings had dropped under Broderick and that McTavish - who had been writing when the ratings were so high in the early 90s - was going to get AMC back to where it had been. That sounds a lot like what people are now saying about Broderick after the show got so bad (and almost reached last place in the ratings) under McTavish and others. I must have been a teenager when that last changing of the guard took place, and I was reading Soap Opera Weekly when I could and just discovering online soap message boards, and I remember being very confused. I knew of McTavish's work at GL and to hear that she had apparently done so much for AMC and was about to do it again was a little too "we've always been at war with East Asia" for my tastes. Well, we all know that McTavish didn't live up to that hype at the time, and while I am much more of a fan of Broderick than of McTavish, I question how much of an impact she could have had now if she were even staying longterm.

If the point is let's just enjoy what Broderick can do at AMC for what it is, while we have the chance, then fine, but I'd rather be clear that that's what we're talking about. I actually have a newfound soft spot for Wendy Riche and her role in my favorite soap era ever (GH from 1994-95 when Claire Labine was head writer), but I don't think she's going to do what no regime has been able to do at AMC or just about any soap in 15 years. GH had more than its share of problems toward the end of Riche's run, and that was when Pat Fili Krushel and Angela Shapiro were in charge at ABC. I have trouble expecting Riche or anyone else to accomplish more under the current management...

Nevertheless, it's cool to see Broderick getting so much love after I had long thought she was gone from the business for good and her last few gigs got some pretty mixed reviews at best. I've been impressed by so much that she's done - including her later stints at ATWT and OLTL, when I really admired the way her shows were structured, despite the significant flaws there may have been in the overall direction of the stories and whatever forces I'm sure she had to contend with. Eileen Fulton once told an anecdote in an interview about when Broderick was head writer at ATWT and she went into the network/P&G to pitch a whole list of stories and they just rejected every last one. That sounds like a thankless job, and a waste of a proven talent like Broderick who surely knew more about what makes a good soap than any of the flunkies sitting around that conference table probably did. This will probably be Broderick's last soap job, and good for her for arranging something short-term. I hope she negotiated a good rate, too. When the market research people pick apart everything she's set in motion, her succecessors can be the ones to figure out how to regroup and try to come up with something the network likes better. Broderick has more than earned the right to retire and go out on a high note, IMO.

[R Sinclair]

You wish, sweetie. It's more like...

[You're Soaking in it]

Oh, I have no doubt - and definitely no wish to label anyone a "dog," either. But you misunderstood... Sorry for not being clear.

That rope is made of a different, two-week old thread - and he wouldn't let it go!

P.S. - For the record, I love dogs... and cats! My partner and I have three "kids" of our own. But that's another show, of course.

[bellcurve]

It's not the dog's fault that she uses the same stupid rope toys.

"Here's another agenda. An agenda! OOOH LOOK. Run to Megan's Huge Connecticut home and back! GO! GO!"

Pretty soon, the dog's just gonna get fed up and do THIS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upC9WRWGXss

[You're Soaking in it]

It's a mistake for anyone to think Marlena / Connie is a fan of McTavish's work. I think she took issue with the characterization of McTavish as a psychopath (and more particularly, James Reilly, since he's deceased). I know the "psychopath" reference was tongue-in-cheek and don't agree with the reaction. But I have disagreed with many colleagues and peers, many times, and don't hate on them... even if they did remind me that they were closer to the circumstances than I was - especially since that was often true. They did know more... Beyond that, soap journalists - I would say the GOOD ones - try to stay very aware of the fact that there's a human being on the other side of the name. Heck, I do the same thing on this message board. Some people, well, don't give a damn - and that's their perogative.

But let's be honest here: This article content really had nothing to do with the subject of the previous thread. It isn't the same rope toy. The observation / metaphor, though meant in jest, was accurate. I'm just not sure why the negativity that happens in one discussion is so worth fixating upon forever, let alone why anyone would draw lines in the sand on a discussion forum. I don't mean to come off as being shocked by it or anything; it's the second time in two months that I've seen someone negatively resurrecting two-week old threads back into current, generally unrelated ones. But that was my point.

About your point, Bellcurve: What exactly IS her agenda? I've seen it mentioned a few times. It sort of reminds me of the I Love Lucy episode, later in the show's run, where Barbara Eden guest stars as a young femme fatale attracting all the husbands' attention. Lucy becomes paranoid and accuses the husbands of creating a scheme with the girl. ("They're cooking up a scheme with that blonde!") After the men get pissed and the girls leave, Ethel & company start to think more rationally about it and ask Lucy what kind of scheme - for which she really isn't sure. So that leads to my question: Someone exercising an agenda has to have something to gain. What is this scheme she's cooking up?

[R Sinclair]

Simply because SHE drew the lines in the sand. She came into a thread that was discussing another soap critic's article... calling his professionalism into question and claiming the article to be slanderous... and then goes ahead and writes an article filled with so much hype and nonsense that you'd think a Lorraine Broderick fan girl wrote it -- not a seasoned, "thinking" and "professional" soap critic.

That's the trouble with riding a high horse. It's a seriously hard fall into the manure it left behind.

I'm not bellcurve (although we're lovers in another lifetime ), but since I specifically brought up the "Agenda," I will comment and say that the agenda is trying to get Lorraine Broderick as head writer -- if not, then get her to be co-head writer along with Swajeski and Kreizman.

And that's perfectly fine. But to write a ridiculously BIASED and OBVIOUS double column where you praise a writer for, among other silly crap, changing a character's name from Lil A to AJ as some sort of creative brilliance? C'mon, man!

[You're Soaking in it]

You've referenced the "high horse" thing, because she mentioned her experiences and interactions with people working on the soaps. I honestly don't take it as being arrogant. She possesses knowledge and perspective that most of us don't have. RSinclair, if I laid my cards more on the table here, you'd probably characterize me as being on a high-horse as well. Conveying our experiences can sometimes come off as bragging, and often how that's received depends on the disposition of the recipient.

Speaking a bit more personally: I've never been too smart to learn something new, and that's how I grow. I've learned MUCH from people similar to Connie P. And the things I have learned, and the people I have met, I'm often really excited to talk about them. But I've been measured about saying too much openly - because of the very "high horse" thing you speak of. (Sometimes I wonder if I overdo it, as in being that sensitive to other people's egos.)

As for the lines in the sand thing, I don't think she drew them. I'm speaking of posters drawing lines between themselves and other posters, sometimes in groups. Trust me, I love-love-love The Superfriends. But why would anyone want to experience a discussion forum in the context of "Justice League of America vs. The Legion of Doom?" We're adults here, and I think we should be able to talk to each other as we would if we were looking one another in the face. But I know how idealistic, and perhaps unrealistic, that is.

Really?? That's the big agenda? I will say this much, and you can take it with whatever validity you wish: Practically everyone and their mother knows (but I knew pretty much from the get-go because I asked the right person) that Lorraine Broderick's finite term as the Head Writer on All My Children has been her choice, and it's her choice to remain or leave in the Associate Head Writer role. How long she's going to remain isn't clear. I don't quite see what this article has to do with affecting what has been her decision. But soap fans do the same thing: They praise what they like and encourage it further, and they criticize and discourage what they dislike. How is that as insidious as you seem to be making this "agenda" thing sound?

(By the way, I didn't realize that you brought up "agenda" first...)

The "AJ" thing is a small drop in a rather large bucket. So other than pointing out how refining the small details can be helpful in terms of story (and it can), I don't think it's as monumental to the article as is being described here.

But when you go into writing a critique, where it takes you really depends upon the perspective from which you were approaching. There was no attempt to hide that this was from a perspective of "I'm really thrilled with what's happening on All My Children, and let's talk about that." It was an attempt to bring recognition to what she saw - and let's be honest, many people also see - as a marked improvement and redirection. It was totally about giving a thank you to Lorraine Broderick for stabilizing the show and repositioning the canvas back to what AMC is supposed to be about. (I don't know how long you've been watching AMC, but I realize some fans have been through so much upheaval that not even THEY know what the show is really supposed to be about.) I know you disagree and that you don't think Broderick's writing is all that. I happen to understand and admire her style... But even I know that there was nothing "inappropriate" or insidious about Marlena's write-up. Other than expressing her own impression and perspective, she had nothing to gain and - in case anyone is suggesting "conspiracy theories" - isn't doing it for anyone other than for herself and those interested in what she has to say.

I just think the attacks are a little heavy-handed, and that we're retreading an old exchange - and that's probably because it involves a better known personality in the soap genre. But imagine if we retreaded every negative exchange between posters here.... This board would be like summer reruns on broadcast TV! ..... I'm not saying it was anyone's intention to discourage the linking to her site, but unless it violates a board policy, people should feel okay about linking anyone's articles here if they choose. Hopefully it's the article's subject and content that will be discussed.

ETA:

By the way, I'm really grateful for this discussion. You've given me a new idea to write about. It's actually quite positive. It occurs to me just how diverse people are in their perspectives and attitudes, yet we do share some things in common. So how does one cater a "soap" product to that?

Don't mean to drift off the subject, but just wanted to point out that something good can come out of otherwise tenuous things. So, thanks.