I would love to hear Saedi explain why OLTL's ratings dropped further after they pandered to bigots and dropped any gay stories from OLTL. I would also love to know if someone at ABC went to the press and blamed gays for ratings failures and then smeared the actors involved. Is this another example of the hard work they did to save their soaps?

I have no problems with what Sara Saedi said. I do believe that they did tried though I think that they could have done better with diversity and some of the stories were ridiculous. But in the end, the soaps are just dying as a genre and they cost too much for the networks to keep them on the air. Again, no scripted program lasts forever. These soaps did well to keep going as long as they did.

The recycling of soap headwriters has always been a pet peeve of mine so I liked what she said here:

The one place we fell short in my opinion? Not adding new blood to the writing departments and instead recycling the same handful of storytellers--- but that wasn't for lack of trying. For years ABC Daytime had a talent development program that successfully trained a new generation of writers for the soaps. (Getting the head-writers to embrace those people instead of BLOWing them OFF was an entirely different issue.)

Edited April 19, 201114 yr by Ann_SS

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?

The studio that AMC moved into was already HD ready, however I remember reading that it cost ABC more than $3 million to convert GH.

I want to post this on her comments section, but I know I probably shouldn't...

Girl, you crazy.

Was writing out the only two gay characters on the show and blaming them for ratings losses (losses that continued welllll after they were gone and have resulted in the show's cancellation) also part of the EVERYTHING you did to save these shows? I really want to know.

Okay, and how about those Latino actors. You honestly think Spanish-speaking viewers are going to turn off a telenovela (a format that they've probably watched their whole lives) full of all the Latino actors and actresses they could ever want and turn on All My Children to see two tokens? Spanish-speaking viewers deserve more credit and respect than that, and Jordi Vilasuso and Lindsey Hartley deserved more from ABC *period*.

All of those lousy, useless, pointless, unimaginative gimmicks that you all tried obviously failed, but the thing you never tried, obviously, nor ever thought of, presumably, was grounding these shows in what made millions of people tune in to them years ago in the first place. Of course you're not going to get 70s ratings or 80s ratings ever again, but you look at the ratings cable gets during the daytime and tell me soaps could never reach those numbers again. Here's a hint. Selling boring books and stinky perfume wouldn't help. Shuttling cast members across the country is nice, but how was that supposed to help ratings? The money wasted on CGI could have been better served in other areas (all three dollars of it...I mean, please tell me yall didn't pay more for that horrible CGI work). It's nice to know yall discussed every single character and his/her place on the show. Did Kyle and Oliver have a place in Llanview? Or Rachel? Or Roxy? Or Markko? What about in Pine Valley. Where was Brooke English's place? Or Simone's? Or Reggie and Danielle's? Livia's? Her brother Derek's? Stuart Chandler's? Marian Chandler's? Oh, but you're not entirely with these shows, so you don't know, do you?

And where were the people going to bat for these shows, explaining that daytime soaps did not have to be relegated to daytime? Broadcast networks' ratings are going down the tubes in the daytime, so how could anyone expect soaps to prosper there? The Talk's ratings are down from As the World Turns's ratings. That food program's ratings are going to be down compared to All My Children's ratings. That other show's ratings are going to be down compared to One Life to Live's ratings. Whatever the case, though, you make sure you tell your pal Frons that we are not fools. We will not believe him when he tells us that more people are watching Mario Batali discuss food trucks and pesticides than were watching the soap operas. But don't think we're naive. We know the score. The Talk is cheap. That food program is cheap. That other show is cheap. Tell Frons to turn the spin machine off.

Soap operas were not interchangeable, once upon a time, but they've become interchangeable thanks to micromanagement and incompetence, both of which were evidently exhibited at ABC, an opinion that is all but confirmed by your words, Sara girl. So congratulations. Congratulations. Anyone who cares enough about you and what you say now knows that you, too, are a f!cking idiot. Have a nice day, boo.

Not adding new blood to the writing departments and instead recycling the same handful of storytellers--- but that wasn't for lack of trying.

I'd love to know how hard they tried, and what their idea of trying was. If they spent years and years running around throwing things at the wall, then doesn't that mean they never really put any faith in a writer? And considering that Frons always had ideas he pushed, doesn't that mean the writers were treated as an afterthought?

I just wonder what is going on at ABC for Frons' sycophants to repeatedly speak out. I had assumed they would have just stayed quiet and backed in their victory.

THEY TRIED EVERYTHING!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNtIqIzT7HE

Edited April 19, 201114 yr by Clear Drama

Again, no scripted program lasts forever.

Its a bit unnatural to be honest. Many of these soaps should have been spun off and rebranded several times over by now. Instead they were all left to stagnate.

Edited April 19, 201114 yr by trish672

AMS that's great - you said it all. Now that they are so open and honest and on the record, let's hear more answers. It seems like they are only open and honest when they act as martyrs. I would love to hear more about why they see minorities as nothing more than a fad, and who these writers are they tried so hard to fight for while the headwriters refused to let them in. I'd also like to know if they see their audience as bigoted.

I brought up the Latin thing several times in AMC threads and never got any feedback on it, I knew I wasn't imagining things. From Mayor Blanco to ambiguously latino Caleb, Asher, unseen Sonia and Miguel, to Griffin, Cara, Ricky and now Maya... But beige faces who never even speak damn Spanish is not enough. When you don't come close to the passion with which novellas are written and overacted, your so-called "efforts" are futile. Would you really drop your novella to watch mushy mouthed Griffin talk to his sister (in English!) at the nurse's station and stalk a curly-haired gringa who isn't even blonde?

"The one place we fell short in my opinion? Not adding new blood to the writing departments and instead recycling the same handful of storytellers--- but that wasn't for lack of trying. For years ABC Daytime had a talent development program that successfully trained a new generation of writers for the soaps. (Getting the head-writers to embrace those people instead of BLOWing them OFF was an entirely different issue.)"

Well there you have it. I'm cutting Sara some slack for following her "Look what we did!" paragraph with this one. Thing is, if you're the execs, you effing MAKE the head-writers embrace the new blood, get your hands dirty and see to it that that's happening, that the next generation is NOT getting blown off... offer them more opportunities of power to let them show what they've got if even for short stints. If you all are always playing interference reworking the HWs ideas anyway, you mean to tell me that you punked out in this aspect?

I guess I end up wondering whether this "we tried" type of thing just ends up being about something like Pratt going to AMC.

I want to post this on her comments section, but I know I probably shouldn't...

+1.

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.

And again the Black, Brown & Gay People get the blame.

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

She already quit.

"Well, then I'd re-hire her just to fire her dumb ass again!"

:-D

ABC's SoapNet "still goin' strong!" with only ONE ABC soap in the lineup, another borrowed from CBS, another from NBC, and a load of extraneous crap as filler...

AhhhhhhHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oops, my bad, reruns of Ryan's Hope's third year on their 14th repeat cycle shown at the ass crack of dawn, you know, when all the tykes will be up watching Disney Jr. once it finally gets its thumb out of its ass.

Edited April 19, 201114 yr by SFK

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.

This is me, with church fan in hand, going "Say that, pastor, say that!"