Did CBS Cancel "GL" and "ATWT" or Was It Procter & Gamble?

[katie_9918]

No offense, but I'm not really interested in what any CBS execs have to say about GL and ATWT, especially GL.

What GL endured during its last two years on the air was inexcusable and if someone who isn't Ellen Wheeler (who merely had to find a way to survive with the slashed budget) wants to explain it, that's fine.

I'm not interested in anyone who's going to lump ATWT in with GL, because ATWT got a hell of a lot more respect from both CBS Daytime and P&G than GL did.

[Soapsuds]

True but CBS let Goutman and Pissy run the show to the ground....Gourman was a mad man needing to be stopped and he wasnt...only cancellation stop his sorry ass killing of the show.

[juppiter]

See I disagree. GL had been teetering on the edge far longer than ATWT -- with far lower ratings and getting moved around by affiliates and such. ATWT's "danger zone" was far shorter than GL's.

That said, Goutman had an interesting idea to save the show. He wanted to do four days a week. And if you looked at the ratings in the last few years, Monday thru Thursday was usually OK and then there was a big drop on Friday.

I'm all about soaps finding a way to adapt and to me that was a better idea than Peapack.

[Soapsuds]

If Goutman really cared about ATWT he would have stopped shoving useless newbies down our throats with boring meaningless storylines. Firing vet actors left and right too...wasnt very good either

[katie_9918]

My point is, while both were set up to fail, GL was the one that went down shamefully, in Peapack, with no sets, no hair and make-up, no wardrobe, editing that couldn't edit Cinderella in a paper bag, and I'm sick of people acting like ATWT (and even AMC and OLTL) got the same treatment.

ATWT got more time and more respect at the end, when it came to what counted (production values) than GL did.

[All My Shadows]

I think GL got more respect and attention from the mainstream media because it was such a momentous occasion for this legendary 72-year-old program to end its run. When it was time for ATWT to get the love and attention, there was a sense of "Been there, done that" from the mainstream outlets.

[jfung79]

By the time P&G wanted out of the soap biz (which I think was the mid-2000s, not the 90s), no one else would have purchased ATWT or GL. The conventional wisdom by then was deeply anti-soap survival. No one would have believed you if you told them soap ratings would all be up year to year and two cancelled soaps would be coming back on the Web in 2013 over a year after they were cancelled.

I continue to think MADD was an advocate for the soaps and then when she left it is when ATWT and GL were left to fend for themselves. Remember the stop-start storyline wars at GL as Paul Rauch, MADD, and Claire Labine all tugged in different directions to try to right the ship?

[Chris B]

I think if Claire Labine would've been allowed complete writing control at GL, that she could've turned it around. I know her time at OLTL wasn't that memorable, but I think her style would've fit GL well. It's a shame that she wasn't give a fair shot and then we haven't seen her as HW since.

[jfung79]

Maybe, but Labine's style wasn't always good for the ratings at GH either. She wrote amazing, memorable stories and characters at GH, but her strengths as a writer don't necessarily move the ratings needle. She also didn't know GL that well. Maybe they should have tried to bring Pam Long back.

[watson71]

P & G in the late 90s and the 2000s made numerous behind the scenes blunders- revolving door of writers and producers who outstayed their welcome. Charlotte Savitz was placed at AW after working at NBC Daytime. She went through numerous writers, including Michael Malone, who ran the show into the ground. When she was fired, P & G should have tried to get Michael Laibson back to run AW. He was the last producer of the show to give it stability and consistency in the late 80s and early 90s. Instead Chris Goutman is hired to guide the show through its last 8 months. He then is transferred to ATWT and stays 11 years. Is he the executive producer with the longest tenure at ATWT? He should have been gone from ATWT when Hogan Sheffer was shown the door. Instead, he has the honor of being the EP of two iconic P & G soaps at the time of their cancellation. I think it also would have been a wise move for GL to try to get Pam Long or Nancy Curlee back as headwriter. I think both of them could have stabilized the show under both Rauch and Conboy- not so sure they could have done it with Wheeler though.

[P.J.]

I know it's popular to blame Goutman for everything under the sun...but had he been ousted with Sheffer---what the hell---WHO the hell would P&G have put in his place?

Given what GL endured under Wheeler, I can only thank God ATWT was not subjected to that sort of indignity. At least Goutman had the balls to say !@#$%^&*] NO to a Peapack-esque/completely handheld camera experiment.

[ChitHappens]

What's PeaPack?

GL made so many wrongs turns outside of the cuts. A great story falls into their laps and it's scrapped after a week and a 1/2. Then they run with garbage for months on end. I remember reading something LW said once she left in 2005. She said she knew cancellation was on its way. She knew it what, 4 1/2 years prior to it happening (of course she was decent enough to wait to say it)? GL was a mess long before the outdoor scenes and the indoor closet scenes. Long before then. I was so disappointed in what the show had become. Just a mess! EW and Kreizmen were heinous and should have never been allowed near that show.

[All My Shadows]

Peapack is the village where the show taped its last year and a half.

[NothinButAttitude]

That's why I say that P&G/Telenext didn't care for these shows the last ten years they were on. Instead of them ushering in new blood, they decided to keep the same deadly quad: Goutman/Passananate (ATWT) & Wheeler/Kreizman (GL) to the very end, only to try and do a shakeup (adding JLH as co-HW on GL OR adding Kreizman as co-HW on ATWT) once cancellation rumors were becoming rampant and apparent.

[DramatistDreamer]

I wasn't trying to make it a contest between what show was treated worse.

I didn't mention AW in my previous post but for me, AW was the canary in the coalmine. The industry didn't pay much attention because soaps had a history of coming and going but in retrospect, the landslide of opinion that P&G felt the soaps no longer had anything to offer ($) really started with the dumping of Another World.

To me, it just looks as if P&G never really saw these shows as creative, artistic media that gave generations of viewers diversion and still had much to offer, despite their emerging struggles.

Juppiter interpreted what I said exactly right.

Bill Bell saw his soaps as a legacy to future generations (of his family and viewers) and made plans for his shows accordingly. Other creators like Agnes Nixon felt similarly (although not a family business like the Bells) about their creative offspring. Who did P&G soaps have?

A corporation that was once thought to care about families and their traditions (and soaps at one time were part of people's traditions) but in the end, merely handled things as any other corporation would.

The probelm is, Irna Phillips is long gone. Had she lived long enough to get to the 80s or 80s, she might have been in a position to secure better rights and a line of succession for these shows regardless of whether the networks cancelled these shows or not. Phillips sadly did not live long enough to see that era. So these shows were entrusted to a corporation that really only cared about its bottom line and made its decisions based on this.