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

[allmc2008]

Errol!

[Errol]

CENTER STAGE: A View from the Top with Angelica McDaniel, Senior Vice President, CBS Daytime (Part 1 of 2)

[P.J.]

*snort*

Love ya, Errol, but the woman has nothing new to say. If she wants to hold her 'Hos of The Talk up as a shining beacon of daytime, she can go screw herself. The Talk could pull in four nobodies off the street and get ratings doing publicity interviews for CBS.

[allmc2008]

Finally.

Finally.

[wingwalker]

So, am I supposed to take away from that, that P&G told CBS they were closing up shop and cancelling them? I'm with P.J., since she wasn't there at the time, I feel I didn't learn anything new and no closer to "the truth" than we were yesterday.

[EastMA2]

I've said before in this thread, WHY is any of this relevant? Errol, you've sunk low. Angelica was NOT at CBS when any of the decisions were made to cancel GL and ATWT.

[Max]

With all due respect, the statement she gave was total bulls-hit. If P&G was the one who shut down production, it was because both shows were not making adequate amounts of money (if they were making any money at all). It's not as if CBS treated these shows like royalty and promoted them heavily.

It seems as if she is absolving CBS of all responsibility in the demise of ATWT & GL. Yet, normally it's the network--and not the production company--that cancels a show (though I do believe that P&G didn't fight for its soaps once they were cancelled). Then, she doesn't express much regret that the P&G sopas are gone, but rather takes the time to pimp The Talk. (From a business perspective, she shouldn't have any regret, because CBS Daytime is more profitable with The Talk and LMAD than it is with ATWT and GL. I just hate that she gave this interview in a pathetic attempt to pander to soap fans.) And based on the way Les Moonves acted at the time of ATWT's cancellation, he didn't even try to make a half-assed attempt to blame P&G for the cancellation; rather, he coldly--but truthfully--said that it's day was done.

[Soaplovers]

Well P & G did cancel Edge of Night even though ABC wanted to keep the show, even offering to move the show to a different time slot with more affiliate support... and they canceled Search for Tomorrow even though NBC was willing to keep the show on for at least another year or more.

If it costs more to produce the shows then what is being bought in, then they have the right to cancel them. In both of those instances, the affiliates were the blame.. and the networks should have mandated that they carry the shows on the scheduled times. If they had done that, then I think they would have had longer runs.

[Max]

Exactly. The networks were at fault in those cases, even though P&G technically pulled the plug. The company would be crazy to make shows that lose money.

[Max]

I also would like to reference this quote from Ms. McDaniel taken from Errol's article:

The main thing that gripes me about the Sony/Y&R parallel is that one can infer that--in the event Y&R was to dip to ATWT/GL levels in the deoms & households--the decision to cancel would be completely up to Sony. If ratings and demos merit Y&R cancellation, CBS doesn't have to wait for Sony to bail. I believe that Ms. McDaniel took one truth--that P&G was no longer interested in producing GL and ATWT--and used that to gloss over the fact that CBS wanted to cancel those shows because of their poor performance.

She must have mentioned The Talk at least four times during the interview, so I give her many points for being smart at office politics. This is off-topic regarding the P&G soaps (but still on-topic regarding the interview, given how relentlessly she promoted Mrs. Moonves' show), but I would be very curious as to why there was such frequent turnover of co-hosts on the show during the first two years. Obviously, McDaniel is not at liberty to say, and perhaps she may not even know (as she wasn't there during some of the departures).