ABC May Be Ready To Trim Its Daytime Drama Lineup: Will 'All My Children' Go?

AMS and Kylie, AMC is masterful at sentimentality. The show can be crap all year long and then somebody up and dies or a big anniversary rolls around and they make a raped lesbian in a coma wake up and read a letter from her dead grandmother and it's like:

AMC has a huge nostalgia factor built upon a solid history of vivid stories and characters. The show's roots run deep in many loyal fans who have stuck with the show through thick and a lot of thin, holding on to hope that their story will be the REAL All My Children once again.

Clearly, the move didn't succeed in cutting production cots, but ABC did try to save AMC so all the hysterical claims otherwise are ridiculous. As for "improving the show," I am never going to agree with you and others that quality or story writing has anything to do with the soap ratings. Our society has changed. For some unfathomable reason, people who watch tv are obsessed with reality dramas, reality competitive shows, etc. Reality shows are even pushing many prime time scripted shows off the air. The soap genre is dying this format and nothing can save it.

I'm a relatively new poster (nothing like jumping on a sinking ship!) but I definitely agree with this statement. Shakespeare and Ernest Hemingway could come back as a writing team and the ratings aren't going to improve enough to make a difference. In my opinion, the business model is simply outdated. There isn't a way to churn more than 200 original episodes a year, pay actors, writers, producers, directors, and all the other behind-the-scenes personnel, and still make a profit. The audience simply isn't there anymore. By the mid 1990s or so, the soaps couldn't attract enough new viewers to replace the housewives of the 1950s-70s, or the college kids of the late 70s through early 90s. Mass media had changed and the younger viewers developed different TV habits. I might agree that many "older" viewers left the audience because none of the shows gave them anything they hadn't seen before, but I don't think the writing is what kept new viewers away.

...holding on to hope that their story will be the REAL All My Children once again.

The thing is, before a few months ago, I wanted it canceled. I made no secret of that. The time last year, I would have been happily leading the funeral precession. In fact, if this were last September (10) I would have been almost giddy (I know that makes me horrible) that AMC finally get what had been deserving for years. I honestly thought the REAL AMC was dead. It was missing for so long. And then it started to show itself here and there, and while my emotional attachment to anyone but Erica is virtually non-existent a part of me started to hope again.

Damn them for always being able to draw me back in.

The show's roots run deep in many loyal fans who have stuck with the show through thick and a lot of thin, holding on to hope that their story will be the REAL All My Children once again.

And that's exactly why even though the show has sooooo many problems now, it's still gonna hurt whenever the big announcement comes. There's always gonna be that feeling of, "Well, if the right head writer showed up or stuck around, the show could go out swinging. Even if the ratings still suck and the show still gets canceled, it'll be a good show getting canceled, not a crappy one." I mean, the simple fact that people would be fine with Rylee dominating the penultimate episode as long as LB or even Agnes wrote the final episode proves that we're at the point where taking scraps and crumbs is more than enough.

Hell, I've only been acquainted with these characters and stories for ten years (come June!), but even I feel a strong connection to what AMC was and could be. Thank god for the tons of episodes, clips, and summaries online because I doubt I would have ever gotten this into a show whose, by the time I started watching, greatest days were far behind it.

Edited March 23, 201114 yr by All My Shadows

I think that even with media changes there is a way for soaps to survive. The current media/celebrity culture we live in is one that would be an ideal for soaps if soaps were able to have the casting and writing they used to have.

Soaps will never be what they used to be in terms of ratings but I do think that they would have at least a few million more viewers still around, and yes, even some in the younger demos, if they had not become so retrograde, derivative, and just plain bad. By the mid-90s, just as the US was becoming more and more full of a melting pot, the soaps were starting to paint women as worthless, starting to have even more stories about rape and dead babies, starting to phase out the workplace, starting to phase out minorities. The younger characters they tried to bring in were usually unwatchable and not surprisingly did little to help with young demos. Older characters who were popular with all ages were marginalized.

Soaps have been so poorly written for so many years that I don't think I will ever be able to say quality doesn't matter. The quality was not there when viewers started seriously leaving soaps and it's gotten even worse since then.

There are so many different genres that have been pronounced dead but still stay around if they know how to survive. I will always feel like soaps jumped before they were pushed. Either that or the network suits gave them a great big push.

Edited March 23, 201114 yr by CarlD2

Crap, I wanted to come back from eating dinner to have this all settled. LOL Guess Frons was to busy drooling over GH to get to it today. Or maybe not. What's to late for something like this on the West Coast?

He's probably locked in his office watching today's GH and crying in his wheaties at how great SBu was today

What a waste of time moving this show was. To only last 18 months? Those poor actors who uprooted their lives for it....

I know, they should have just cancelled the show then and to the poster who said they should have kept Pratt, nope they shouldn't have, the show truly would have been gone sooner. He made every single character unlikeable, even the Hubbards. Someone who says "forget what you know about your character" never should have never been hired in the first place

Edited March 23, 201114 yr by dragonflies

It makes me sad to think we might have lost a year or two of AMC because someone forgot to rent a storage locker. It seems so ridiculous.

Can we please stop putting credence in this? I'm not denying that this happened. But it is possible that this was rectified a long time ago.

Can we please stop putting credence in this? I'm not denying that this happened. But it is possible that this was rectified a long time ago.

Of course not. AMC is vastly over budget, OLTL is vastly under budget, and it all goes back to them forgetting to rent storage (and somehow that not being rectified for over a year).

To be fair, I have no doubt that these rumours all are based in fact, but the way they're trundled out endlessly as facts and are really just based on hearsay... UGH Then again I get it--all we know really now are half truths and gossip, so it makes sense to bas our opinions on them.

I still think that it's deeply stupid that AMC didn't get rid of JHC when they moved and seemed to be making a last big attempt. Of course I think Frons sees himself as the real EP of these shows (and in some ways he seems to be), but...

Of course not. AMC is vastly over budget, OLTL is vastly under budget, and it all goes back to them forgetting to rent storage (and somehow that not being rectified for over a year).

To be fair, I have no doubt that these rumours all are based in fact, but the way they're trundled out endlessly as facts and are really just based on hearsay... UGH Then again I get it--all we know really now are half truths and gossip, so it makes sense to bas our opinions on them.

I still think that it's deeply stupid that AMC didn't get rid of JHC when they moved and seemed to be making a last big attempt. Of course I think Frons sees himself as the real EP of these shows (and in some ways he seems to be), but...

Yeah, I love how everyone trots out the rumors of OLTL always been under budget and AMC always exploding its budget. I get a kick out of it when posters actually cite this as fact. Kind of hard to believe, since OLTL still tapes in NYC, which is very expensive, and still has a lot of costly vets, while AMC's move to LA, a streamlined cast, and a bunch of newbies are probably saving some $$$. And if JHC is terrible at managing the financial end of things, why hasn't she been canned ages ago? That's why I think a lot of all the economical stuff is just hearsay and-or wishful thinking on the part of some. I'm not saying she's some great producer, but if she was mishandling monetary issues, she'd have been outta there ages ago.

I think that even with media changes there is a way for soaps to survive. The current media/celebrity culture we live in is one that would be an ideal for soaps if soaps were able to have the casting and writing they used to have.

Soaps will never be what they used to be in terms of ratings but I do think that they would have at least a few million more viewers still around, and yes, even some in the younger demos, if they had not become so retrograde, derivative, and just plain bad. By the mid-90s, just as the US was becoming more and more full of a melting pot, the soaps were starting to paint women as worthless, starting to have even more stories about rape and dead babies, starting to phase out the workplace, starting to phase out minorities. The younger characters they tried to bring in were usually unwatchable and not surprisingly did little to help with young demos. Older characters who were popular with all ages were marginalized.

Soaps have been so poorly written for so many years that I don't think I will ever be able to say quality doesn't matter. The quality was not there when viewers started seriously leaving soaps and it's gotten even worse since then.

There are so many different genres that have been pronounced dead but still stay around if they know how to survive. I will always feel like soaps jumped before they were pushed. Either that or the network suits gave them a great big push.

There's a lot of truth here--and it is ironic that just as audiences got more sophisticated (and I say that with some irony as I don't buy that old time soap audiences were really all that less sophisticated, though they prob were less savvy about some things we now all know--like the way a hospital actually works etc, or at the least more willing to suspend disbelief), soaps got scared of ratings dropping and started to play it safer, which I do think just eroded the ratings more. They were less willing to tackle controversial subjects, more willing to pander, less willing to hire different types of actors (by which I mean race, age, as well as not hiring only models for your young characters--didn't even Frons claim he was tired of how people on soaps all looked so perfect and similar?). So all their attempts to hang on to slipping ratings if anything IMHO just caused them to fall quicker and lose what many liked about their shows.

That said, I kinda do think daytime, network scripted drama is DOA. I don't believe the genre is dead, and I don't mean that soaps won't make a comeback, but I don't think they will on network daytime tv. The media is just too scattered now. And I do agree that it no longer even really directly reflects the quality--ratings might go back up a bit, but not to any huge degree. But yeah, I don't think the actual genre is dead. I also think there is desire for daily scripted entertainment to tap into, though I don't know how--I don't remain very much convinced by any of the online soap attempts, although with the sudden popularity of things like Netflix Streaming that all could change.

Like another great American culture, back in the 70s there were ENDLESS articles about the death of Broadway (both theatre and musicals) which wasn't helped by the resentment to the British invasion of megamusicals from there in the 80s. But the genre has survived and even thrived as of late, albeit in a different way than it once did. Sure some might complain that the shows aren't as good, but I think in time people will see the ratio of good to crap shows is basically the same as it ever was in the "golden era".

I think that even with media changes there is a way for soaps to survive. The current media/celebrity culture we live in is one that would be an ideal for soaps if soaps were able to have the casting and writing they used to have.

Soaps will never be what they used to be in terms of ratings but I do think that they would have at least a few million more viewers still around, and yes, even some in the younger demos, if they had not become so retrograde, derivative, and just plain bad. By the mid-90s, just as the US was becoming more and more full of a melting pot, the soaps were starting to paint women as worthless, starting to have even more stories about rape and dead babies, starting to phase out the workplace, starting to phase out minorities. The younger characters they tried to bring in were usually unwatchable and not surprisingly did little to help with young demos. Older characters who were popular with all ages were marginalized.

Soaps have been so poorly written for so many years that I don't think I will ever be able to say quality doesn't matter. The quality was not there when viewers started seriously leaving soaps and it's gotten even worse since then.

There are so many different genres that have been pronounced dead but still stay around if they know how to survive. I will always feel like soaps jumped before they were pushed. Either that or the network suits gave them a great big push.

+1.

Jordi had this to say

Nothing but rumors:)RT @KendallAMC @JordiVilasuso so what do you think about the rumors that #AllMyChildren might be getting cancelled? :'(

Oh pls, he prbly signed short term.

WTF does that newbie know!?

j/k

But I'd sooner believe that he's blissfully ignorant than bald face lying to a Tweeter he isn't obligated to Tweet back to (don't even bring Brandon Buddy into this). And even if it's true and the actors do know, they can always play the, "Guys, seriously, I had no idea, I'm just as devastated as you are. You know how much my fans mean to me, I'm here because of you. :,("

Latino no-heat prbly still thinks he can act.