October 1999 Angela Shapiro (ABC Daytime Head) interview

[DRW50]

Not sure if anyone gives a crap about reading this but I thought it might be a look at the last few years of pre-Frons ABC Daytime, and a time when ABC Daytime was seen as relatively stable (although AMC was still having ratings bleeding). Not a big fan of this period, but others may be.

This is from an October 1999 Digest.

[R Sinclair]

Wow! The glory years when ABC had more than ONE soap.

[DRW50]

Good one. At first I even almost put this in the canceled soaps section.

[dragonflies]

Well said!! "I've learned that in order to get teen viewers you don't have to have teens on the air"

That goes for now too!!!

[soapfave06]

She must have been one of the last people to actually care about the soaps. I love that she WANTED Agnes Nixon there and involved with AMC and knew that having teens consume a show doesn't mean that teens will watch. I wish she had stuck around.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I don't know if she cared as much as she wanted us to believe, it seemed her focus was on superfluous stuff most of the time, like the shop soaps debacle.

She did bring Agnes back, but AMC was a rudderless mess for most of her tenure at ABC.

She seemed the opposite of Frons, she seemed neglectful, whereas he was more of a micromananger.

[Cheap21]

None of the soaps now left on the air are heavily about their teen sets. The closest might be B&B with its triangle but 2/3s of it are mid 20s and Hope technically isn't a teen anymore

[juppiter]

There are some corporate BS answers in this, but it's about as honest an interview as I would expect from an exec. Ken Corday would have answered, "You'll have to tune in to find out!" to 90% of those questions.

[Vee]

There was an interview at this time where Shapiro came in and bluntly said that JFP's OLTL was too dark and depressing. I remember Erika Slezak was publicly furious.

[DRW50]

Did Erika really disagree with that view? Maybe she just thought this shouldn't be said out loud by the head of the network.

[Vee]

No, she absolutely did. Erika was one of JFP's biggest boosters, and continued to thank her as recently as her last Emmy win (in 2008?). I just let it go along with her abiding love for Paul Rauch.

[DRW50]

I knew she was a big supporter of JFP, I'm just surprised anyone would not see that era as very dark.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

She probably didn't care as she seemed happy to have a younger love interest.

Erika always seemingly had some self-serving agenda and preferred the eras where she was used most frequently (albeit not always in the best ways).

[DRW50]

I can see why she preferred JFP's run, since Levinson had diminished Viki's role on the canvas. I hated Ben/Viki but then I wasn't playing the role.

[Vee]

I think any actor is naturally self-serving to a certain degree. And like her or not, JFP did use Erika heavily and give her a very active and vital frontburner storyline. My only problem with it was the execution and the writing. So I can understand why Erika loved working for Jill and Rauch, and why she had serious issues with Linda Gottlieb (and was not shy about saying so in some videotaped interviews a few years ago). I don't agree with her take, but I understand it and respect it, and love her regardless.