Chris Goutman directing Y&R?

[DRW50]

Not to mention that "dead weight" characters helped ATWT regain ratings over their last year while GH has lost ground or barely maintained themselves in spite of bleeding money to pay for VMG and an endless array of former "stars."

[Mitch]

Yea, makes you think what we could have done if they were featured before the cancellation and if we had that Marland family feeling connected to the community feel that I feel Gautman and Passante restored starting with with Bob and Kim's anniversary on to the end.

And talk about dead weight....that Janet chick and her daughter and I think she had a sister, and the midget gangster, and the father.....

[Khan]

I'm so stunned from reading this...I don't even know how to respond.

Thank you.

[Darlotto99]

lol all you ATWT bitter fans make me laugh. Y&R at it's worse is still better then ATWT best years. Y&R has an all star cast and yes the writting can be better but guess what it's still on. fans time to move on and let your resentment go. ps MAB is going no where they might be rid of Rauch and bring back Ed Scott but a Bell will run this show till the end they learened from the disaster that was LML. a team of Scott/MAB is the way to go

[Saving ATWT]

Bob and Kim would have been great provided that their children and families remained in Oakdale: Had Frannie, Andy, Chris, and Sabrina been retained, Bob and Kim would have had purpose and not been stuck on an island for ten years do nothing: Heart attacks are not story. TPTB decided to basically elimate the Hughes family in favor of a disorganzied commune of serial marriages and lost children. Watching Gotman drag out the oldsters for holidays was degrading to the characters and just plain pathetic. For these reasons, I consider Bob, Kim and Nancy dead weight. I loved the characters, wish the Hughes, as well as Stuart, families had been maintained. ATWT might still be on air if Frannie, as opposed to Janet, had been a key player.

ATWT gave up on core families shortly before the arrival of Goutman. Goutman loved to complain about budget but had Eillen Fulton on contrct for two shows per week yet she was seen, at most, two times per month. Paying actors who are never used is insane. My dead weight comment has nothing to do with the actual characters but, instead, the direction of the shows and the limits of budget. By 2009, it would have been impossible to restore any of the original families, and TPTB needed some viable plan. Also, demos killed ATWT and, for the most part, vets did nothing to fix that problem. Goutman felt more free to use vets in the final months because demos no longer mattered. Also, I do wonder if Bob and Kim were ATWT for younger viewers below, say, 30. I'm 34, remember Marland's Oakdale, but anyone younger than me is far more prone to see Lilly and Holden as the core ATWT couple--my friend is 28 and had no idea who Frannie was. My comment was not motivated by personal likes/dislikes but, instead, were all about the math that keeps a show like ATWT on air. Old ATWT had three generations of the Hughes family under one roof but, at the end, aside from interactions with Cosgrove's Chris, there was no family. Also, there does come a time when any long running soap needs to flip to the next generation but ATWT never did well with this. It was the Carly show--pathetic--but they should have, at the least, casted Brenda Dixon as her mother.

[Saving ATWT]

ATWT did NOT gain viewers. HH went up but demos actually dropped and demos are all that matter. Also, the previous year was so bad that just a return to stable writing is really what aided those household gains. ATWT had a great 2007-8, ranked number three, and this was due to the development of new, younger characters and stunt stories. My dead weight comment has nothing to do with likes/dislikes but, instead, pertains to budget and ratings. Soaps are aimed at 18-49 and, sadly, anyone older doesn't count in the eyes of a network. Goutman's job was to keep ATWT on air and he failed. The idea of ATWT looking/feeling like GH sucks but the show would still, maybe, be on air.

[DRW50]

I doubt it. If ABC did not own GH I don't think it would be on the air now. The show has bled money for years and has continued to fall in the ratings in spite of all the attention lavished on it. If anything, ATWT overdoing it with ABC names and poor imitations of ABC stories helped kill it.

[Saving ATWT]

Yeah but the demos were almost double those over at ATWT. CBS would have kept ATWT if it had maintained a 2.1 (1.2 demo) because, from what I understand, that is the profit line for a non-network show. Regardless of Goutman's efforts, such a rating would have been almost impossible considering the B&B numbers. For many years, ATWT benefited from having a strong lead in the East.

[DRW50]

I honestly don't think that CBS would have kept the show unless it were drastically above where it has been for years and years. Moonves made his apathy (at best) towards the soap genre pretty obvious after ATWT got their cancellation notice, and his wife needed a new show.

[Saving ATWT]

Mooves' apathy was aimed at ratings/profit, not shows or the genre. I don't think he hates soaps, wanted to buy GL and ATWT back in 2001. Mooves is a great CEO and owes max profit to his shareholders. CBS Corp is a tiny company after the break with Viacom so every time slot counts. If you or I had his job, we probably would have done the same thing. PBS has a mission but every other network wants to make money.

[Mitch]

Agree that they should have kept the Hughes families younger generation around (never understood why they didn't recast Frannie and Sabrina...doing so would have put the gun to the head of West and Byrne as they had two actresses in the same age range who could take over, so suck it up and sign the contract or else.) but a big disagree that they were useless without them. They were patriach and matriach of Oakdale...Bob head of the hospital and Kim owning and mangaing the TV station..both vital characters, active in the community despite their age. Hell, Lisa owned every business in town, she should have been all over meddling with the younger people, especially when Luke and his burgeoning homo-ness (Lisa truly had to be the oldest living fag hag in the world..but I still don't know the validity of Fulton having a contract signed for two days a week, there is no way the cheap assess at Televest would go with that.)

It is all about the ratings and the money they can make...they are a business and soaps are a loosing proposition with pain in the ass fans (can you imagine any of the LMAD fans picketing the network or writing campaigns about something...they save money on not having to have interns open and read insane people's emails.) The writing was on the wall for both ATWT and GL when P & G wouldnt sell them the shows in 2001, very true. The shows wouldnt have been any better quality wise...but they would have been more profitable for the nets.)

[Khan]

I hope others are a bit kinder to you when your show ends up canceled too. ;-)

[Khan]

When you put it that way, I agree w/ you. Still, "dead weight" just feels like a harsh way of describing their statuses on the show.

[Saving ATWT]

PGP was insane for not selling the shows and CBS might have done a good job with writing considering the state of the network's current prime time line up. Mooves does care about quality and getting everything right. I think ATWT might have lasted another year or two had CBS not been shrunk down to an 11 Billion dollar company that now really does need to own content and programming. Mooves said in a recent interview that Hawaii-50 should earn over one billion dollars and still generate revenue for the network 50 years from now. If The Talk does well, CBS can sell the show interationally.

I agree the vets like Lisa, Bob and Kim could have played a greater role on ATWT much in the manner Kay has on Y&R. Lisa would have been best situated for this and a character like Carly would have made for a great 'daughter'. Lucinda should have been on air a lot more, too. Susan needed more interaction with her children and this totally ended once Hogan quit. I still find Bob and Kim problematic minus family. I guess the hospital would have worked for Bob but WOAK was lame and Kim as a hard nose TV owner yelling 'Action' didn't work for me. Hays is a great actress; however, Kim's role on the show hasn't worked, for me, all the way back to Marland's time. Every show weeds out aging vets--Y&R cut Liz Foster, Mary Williams, and Mayme Barber years ago) and maybe it would have been smart for a Bob and Susan pairing after the affair years ago. Merging the Hughes/Stuart families would have created a large tribe on par with the Snyder clan. I agree with your point about Maura and Martha sucking up the thirty something role and Kelly would have been an issue, too, if TPTB had tried to bring Frannie back. I still think this could have been done minus characters such as Roseanna and Janet/Julia/Julie--otherwise known as Jack's mistakes.

Y&R, so far, has delt with vets far better than ATWT. I see a lot of people on here complain about characters such as Jill or Kay getting cheated out of story but, in all fairness, the writers have given most key characters a fair amount of airtime. The key to aging vets is keeping the character vital, Lucinda is a great example; however, ATWT handled all other vets like those poor creatures you see in a Life-Alert advert. I'm suprised Goutman didn't try product placements--Kim could have screamed 'I've fallen, and I can't get up' while Nancy went to Metro and dance her booty off while wearing Depends. Maybe bob could have gotten arrested for writing himself scripts for Levita or pitched a tent on air for Cialas. My glib comments sum up Goutman's attitude towards vets.

[Saving ATWT]

The Lisa contract topic came up last year when she begged to get killed off. Pretty sure she said it to Nelson on TV Guide.ca