AMC and OLTL Canceled!

[Scotty]

After reading that latest Deadline Hollywood article about SOAPnet I would have to agree.

The House of Mouse looks likes it is being ran worse than the Bush White House.

[difficultdiva]

+1

[Clear Drama]

Sara Saedi, oh lord where do I begin. So they casted Hartley and Valisucio to get Telemundo viewers. Oh god. This is the crack staff that brought down ABC daytime soaps, they had a little focus group that GAVE US THE WORST STORYLINES OF ALL TIME FOR THE SPAN OF 4-5 YEARS!! I'm not going to going to go any further than these two, Rex/Gigi and Ryan/Greenlee! WHO THE F... WANTED THIS! You tried EVERYTHING!?

For ex. So when people wanted Amanda and JR or Annie and JR you gave them that? when people CLEARLY wanted David and Greenlee you gave them that? I don't want go storyline to storyline, but they didn't expand thier product, they didn't showcase or focus on what worked. SoapNet was a nice start and instead of expanding it or creating a platform to get to know these stories they pretty much made it some poor ad TV. What a fu...ing kiss ass that b!tch is.

[Scotty]

All My Children's Denise Vasi reacts to the show being axed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13130545

[Mary Beth]

Shorter Sara Saedi:

"We micromanaged the hell out of the moving of the deck chairs around the sinking ships, what more do you people WANT??"

[DRW50]

Exactly. Nowhere in this was there any talk of any strong, long-term storyline. It was all gimmick.

And may I say that it is condescending as hell to brag about how you hired Latino actors to "appeal to televnovela viewers"? Why are they going to watch your show just because of this when they already have a million other shows? And are you saying the only reason you hired Jordi Vilasuso and Lindsay Hartley is because of their ethnic makeup??

What Saedi is saying is that they assumed viewers were idiots and only gimmicks would bring them in. She is also saying that they ran around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Nowhere on the ABC daytime lineup in the past decade has there ever been any consistency, unless it's consistently bad.

If you put on a quality and entertaining program, you will get some form of viewers. The days of many homes having cable, women being in the workplace and kids having their own TVs started TWENTY OR THIRTY YEARS AGO. Yet ratings for soaps did not crash then. Were teens who got hooked on GH or AMC doing so just because their mother watched the show? I doubt it.

These executives only care about blaming anyone but themselves. They destroyed soaps and the only reason Saedi is not as gleeful about it as Frons is because his smug attitude got the network in hot water.

[Clear Drama]

Not only would I fire Sweeney/Frons, but I'd fire that idiot Saedi too.

[marceline]

The more people try to defend, explain and justify this decision, the more they shed light on their incompetence and mismanagement so by all means keep telling us how you thought stunt casting, tokenism and branded knicknacks would help you keep your jobs.

[All My Shadows]

That is soooo f!cked up. I didn't even think about that part too much, but it's just...ugh. Network television deserves the slow, painful death it's receiving. Technically, I have reasons to be extremely bitter with every network -- without even taking into account the soap situation. Primetime is not much better, IMO, when it comes to a lot of the behind the scenes stuff.

[Clear Drama]

You forgot gimmick casting.

[Mr. Vixen]

AMS, you might wanna change the text under your avatar...Unless Lee Meriwether is black now.

EDIT: Nevermind you fixed it right before I posted that, I think.

[Steve]

This quote makes me laugh: "In the time I was at ABC, we tried EVERYTHING to save the soaps and increase the ratings. We brought back legacy characters, we brought in younger characters in hopes of raising our teen and 18-34 demo, we cut costs, we executed high concept action driven storylines, we executed high romance emotionally driven storylines, we started a cable network so women could watch their soaps at night, we produced webisodes, we used CGI to raise production value, we did endless research to figure out what was working for viewers and what wasn't, we went back to focusing on social issues, we went HD, we traveled all around the country so soap stars could meet their fans, we hired Latino actors to attract the telenovella viewers, we went more salacious in our narratives, we went more true to life in our narratives, we went multi-platform, we did shorter close ended story arcs, we sat in rooms for hours with writers and talked in great depth about every single character on each show and what their objectives were, we took risks, we played it safe, we sold an All My Children perfume in Wal-Mart, we published books "written by" our fictional characters, we killed off beloved characters, we brought back beloved characters from the dead, we even brought a movie star on General Hospital...and the ratings still didn't go up."

It's easy to see why the ratings didn't rise with how poorly executed most of ABC's ideas were. I've watched more AMC than OLTL in the past few years so I'm going to use that show for all my examples here:

1. Legacy characters. They brought back Angie & Jesse to destroy Jesse's character with a plot that gave him a second family and had both of them spend most of their time just bitching about David Hayward.

2. Younger characters? Who, Colby & Asher?

3. Action-driven storylines go against the grain of what soap operas should be all about, imo.

4. High romance for who, Ryan & Greenlee, the one couple 99% of AMC fans despise?

5. Wasting money on CGI instead of high-quality head writers and scriptwriters.

6. Social issues. Like Bianca & Reese's one-day marriage?

7. Listening to focus groups like the one that told Guiding Light the character of Maureen was expendable.

8. How much money was wasted on going HD when they could have done for GH & AMC what they're doing with OLTL to make it widescreen?

Is this for real? Did they really think what they did to our soaps would make the ratings go up?

[Clear Drama]

Steve, you should copy and paste that on her blog. B/c that was straight to the point.

[DRW50]

It's not, but usually in primetime, incompetent is replaced, not rewarded (even Jeff Zucker finally got the boot).

I just can't believe they actually said in print that they hired Latino actors only because of their race. It's so insulting. I'm not a huge fan of Jordi or Lindsey, but they deserve better than that, especially when Lindsey helped carry a soap for almost a decade.

This also explains why minorities have been treated so badly by ABC - they are truly only seen as tokens. Based on the way OLTL treated blacks over the last decade I'm surprised Saedi didn't say they were going after "that BET audience."

[All My Shadows]

I guess they don't want us...probably figures "Y&R is the black soap." I could punch somebody, I really could.

I wish she would have elaborated on the part about social issues. I guess that's supposed to mean the LGBT stories on AMC and OLTL. And I guess the "focus groups" responded negatively to those. ABC Daytime is a joke. I just wish they got all this publicity every time they made a false move over the last ten years.