AMC and OLTL Canceled!

[DRW50]

I always thought she was a boring actress and her film career went nowhere fast, so if she has transitioned from that, good for her.

[Jonathan]

Did Kelly Ripa mention anything this morning?

[Vizion]

I like her, and I think she's been fantastic and is one of the few that never goes OTT or resorts to hysterics (and was really great in 'Two Lovers' and 'Royal Tenenbaums')...but Gwyneth also told Access Hollywood she was going to start working on an album (who knows if it will ever come out) so she seems to be doing a lot of other things.

KLG & Hoda? The Today Show has been the highest rated morning show for longer than I can remember. They've always done very well. Also, honestly, anything that CBS Television Distribution has done has been moderately-pretty successful, particuarly in syndication (maybe not the new Nancy Grace thing), with Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, Entertainment Tonight, Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, The Doctors, Inside Edition, and so on. Like 75% of the top shows in syndication are CBS Television Distribution lifestyle/reality/entertainment news-type shows. ABC has not had nearly as much success but I can see them trying to copy that now.

[DRW50]

I don't mind subtle acting but I thought she had little screen presence, especially compared to her mother.

that's a nice banner.

[Ann_SS]

Gwyneth obviously isn't half the actress that Blythe Danner is, but I think she is okay. I think of Gwyneth, Cameron Diaz, and Uma Thurmann as the similar type of mediocre actresses. I think it is good that Gwyneth is trying other things. She is getting to the age where fewer roles will be available to her.

[DRW50]

I meant the Later Today. They have tinkered with that and I didn't think it had ever really been a hit (at one point Florence Henderson was the host).

I know court shows are popular, and a handful of talk shows, but I didn't think most of these condescending "lifestyle" shows ever had much success in recent years.

I will say that I thought Carla Hall was great fun on Top Chef and I liked Clinton Kelly when I used to watch How Not to Wear, so, if they can transition to live TV and being a presenter/panelist, they might take off. I don't know anything about the other people mentioned.

[Ann_SS]

Dr. Oz is popular and it is a med/-lifestyle show. I have no idea if The Chew and/or The Revolution will be successes, but the daytime audience does watch a variety of programs, many of which are shockingly not soap operas. And if there were more of these shows in the 80s and 90s, the soaps might have gone off the air sooner.

[KMan101]

I've yet to post my thoughts but it's a terrible time for soaps. I'm very sad over this. My mom and late grandma have watched the ABC soaps for as long as I can remember. My mom and I spent three years going to Super Soap Weekends in Orlando (and once they stopped, I had a bad feeling, to be quite honest). Her reaction to them being cancelled? Same as us here, she dislikes GH now, thinks OLTL is better on a regular basis and AMC is getting better. It's such a shame and I feel for everyone who will be jobless as a result.

Will soaps make a comeback? I'm sure someday they will. It just needs to stop being looked down upon in the industry. Overseas, the soaps air in the evening and get great ratings and when things don't work, they get fixed. They're just as much a part of the lineup as original programming is. I do think now that each network has one or two soaps, they're content with that.

I think broadcast networks are confused about their identities. What works for cable isn't going to work for broadcast. Do I think the networks are wrong in trying to offer different shows other than soaps? Nope. And I adore adore adore soaps. LOVE them and I LOVE the form.

They'll come back someday. I guarantee you that the two talk shows that will replace the soaps will get just the same amount of viewers.

If networks really cared, they would try bold efforts to save the soaps. Cutting them to a half hour, moving them to evenings (do we really need two hours of local news repeated over and over again??), embracing the telenovela format ... it seems hopeless now, but it's almost like we are coming full circle with the soap genre, you know? We started off with radio soaps, that transitioned into 15 minute television soaps, and then it transitioned into 30 minute soaps and a TON of them. We're kinda back to that. I betcha anything more web soaps will pop up as a result.

[DRW50]

I'm not sure if you thought I meant that there are few shows on daytime that aren't soaps? If you did, then my apologies.

I realize there are many shows that aren't soaps. What I meant is that most of these shows, outside of a few talk shows and a few court shows, don't seem to have a following. Dr. Oz and The Doctors are the only two I can think of, and those have catchy titles and a lineup of people who are fairly known from elsewhere (the Bachelor, Oprah, etc).

It also seems like the networks expect few viewers for these shows. That was the line used to justify poor ratings for the CBS shows - that they were fine doing the same or slightly worse than soaps, because of lower costs. So that means, with a few exceptions, most of these aren't really attracting that many viewers, so I'm not sure if the daytime audience is watching much at all these days. It's why I think any original daytime programming is likely to end in the next decade.

I've seen so many of these "let us tell you about how bad your life is" type of shows fail, even when I enjoyed them (like Starting Over), and between ABC's poor track record, and those godawful titles, I'm not sure this will be any different.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't ABC try these shows again and again in the 80s and 90s? They never seemed to take off. The Home Show, Mike and Maty, The Mommies, etc.

[OLTL_fan]

Yes she did. They even showed a clip of her and Matteo from the 90s.

[sjbeutel]

I found it funny that Brian Frons does not remember how soaps he cancelled at his time at ABC. He told Entertainment Weekly in an interview yesterday that he only had to cancel two. All My Children and One Life to Live. He cancelled Port Charles after it did not win the emmy for Best Daytime Drama. He said in the interview he did not want to cancel any show but he has manage to cancel three. But his favorite is still on the air, General Hospital.

[Ann_SS]

No apology necessary, it was definitely me getting confused as the conversation jumped around. I think that I was responding to a number of comments and yours just fell in there.

[Vizion]

But they do, that's the thing. I think the worst thing to happen to soaps was for some of these shows, particularly the CBS Television Distribution shows, to have as much success as they have had in syndication. When you consider Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, The Doctors, Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown, the ratings they get and how much cheaper they are to produce, it makes sense that others would try to emulate.

The issue with ABC, and why I don't think they will be successful, is that they don't really understand the formula. Oprah is a CBS Television Distribution show, and they were able to use her success to launch other successful personalities and turn them into brands. That's the whole reason they chose Phil, Rachael and why Sony chose Oz. Did anyone notice that about a year or so before The Doctors premiered that they, particularly Travis, became regular experts and special guests on Dr. Phil and were on the show at least once a week? It was again that same process of using one of their already established brands to launch another one.

I honestly don't know who any of these people are from The Chew. ABC doesn't have a successful brand in daytime (certainly not like Oprah) to use to launch anything and without that, I don't seem them seeing any substantial success with these projects at all.

[marceline]

It's ironic because (Iron Chef) Michael Symon is a FB friend and a much beloved force here in the city of Cleveland. He's like the LeBron James of the food scene. (Except, you know, not a self serving douche.) It's been really intriguing to watch the AMC fans on his page acknowledge the loss of the show they love yet give him props for the fact this is good for him and good for the city. I have a serious case of split loyalty here.

[Ann_SS]

ABC does have The View. They have months until AMC and OLTL go off the air. ABC can promote the new shows by having Mario, Tim Gunn, etc. appear on The View as well as Good Morning America. I'm a Mario fan, but he and these others are minor cable reality show celebs. I don't know if they can pull off a network daytime show.