Networks & Network Execs

[Contessa Donatella]

I've been a fan of and a scholar of daytime dramas since the 70s. As a fan activist it was impossible for me to not know about the networks, companies that were interested in AW, honchos, etc.

 

Near the end of AW, in the 90s, Viacom wanted either to merge with P&G or to acquire AW. It was a Sumner Redstone project. Fans were in favor of this because it would keep the show on the air. It fell through.

 

Paramount wanted either to merge with P&G or Viacom or to acquire AW. Eventually Paramount & Viacom merged with Viacom as the parent company. This did AW & its fans no good at all.

 

The last company that wanted in on a P&G/AW deal was FOX. They had wanted a daytime lineup for years! Their choices were the P&G soaps. Beginning with AW and ATWT would have given them a minumum of two to start with. Eventually they did begin a daytime lineup but it wasn't soaps. Instead it was news shows & talk shows.

 

Brandon Tartikoff, who began on ABC and the moved over to NBC, ran into Victoria Wyndham, met her, and said,  “Oh my God, you’re the only reason we keep that show [Another World] on the air.” And he was dead shortly after that, so it didn’t help me very much." He died at the young age of 48. I keep thinking that he did a cameo on some show but I can't get any further with that memory. Anyone? I think instead I'm thinking of Brian Frons appearing as god on Santa Barbara.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 13, 2019 by Donna B
spacing; add line of text

[Contessa Donatella]

NBC's Susan D. Lee was one of the handful of people who made the decision that Frankie Frame would be brutally murdered by a serial killer, Fax Neuman, written by Margaret DePriest. They had started out to kill off Donna as part of that "age thing" they were onto. Well, fans found out & pitched fits! JFP & Susan D. Lee then moved on to 2 mid-level actresses: Frankie Frame & Paulina. They held a focus group to see who would be chosen. As it turned out it was Frankie. Now, she was one of the Frame family that Harding "Pete" Lemay had written back in the day. And, she was married to Cass & had a child with him, Charlie. And, she was a P.I. with Joe. And, she was a very grounded person. Meanwhile, fans were against all of this! JFP tried to talk MdP into not having her killed dramatically onscreen but she wouldn't hear any of it. They went ahead with their murder of Frankie. Some fans left the show entirely.

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It really made no sense that NBC's Susan D. Lee gave Sunset Beach a 6 month extension when AW had better ratings. And, MADD had put AW on a deadline & then came back in the country just to cancel it before that deadline was up! (MADD aka Mickey was a network exec.)

 

Chris, like everyone at AW, openly wept at the end of the show.

 

A few months later Susan D. Lee was fired. My partner & I had a party!

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Paul Rauch was not a network Exec. He was an EP. And a noted one.

 

But, he did pull one stunt that maybe equates to a Network Exec's.

 

Rauch appeared at the end of the final episode of Santa Barbara on January 15, 1993. The final shot consisted of Rauch standing in front of the camera, smashing a cigar under his shoe, and walking away.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Donna B
Draw a line.

[Contessa Donatella]

      Lucy Johnson, Laurence Caso, Felicia Mini Behr, Kenneth Fitts, Angela Shapiro, Ed Trach, Bob Short, etc. were all network execs. There may be more.

 

For example, one must respect the contribution made over the years to his company's shows by an executive like Ed Trach, whose background includes a degree from the Yale School of Drama. He understands storytelling, and the continued viability of of Procter & Gamble's major soaps shows it. -  Writing for Daytime Drama, Jean Rouverol © 1992

 

 

     Related entities were Young & Rubicam, Rose Cooperman, Irna Phillips, and Arno Phillips.

Edited October 17, 2019 by Donna B
Snip. Snip. Add. Add

[Contessa Donatella]

          Around the globe Procter & Gamble Co. products take consumers from cradle to grave. Pampers diapers cover babies' bottoms and Ivory soap floats in their bathtubs. Crest toothpaste brushes their teeth and Tide detergent washes their clothes. Folgers coffee starts the workday; Duncan Hines cakes mark each birthday.
          The Cincinnati company is an American success story. A share of P&G stock purchased in 1986 hsd appreciated 159 percent by 1992---more than double the Dow Jones Average growth rate---and the company has increased dividends to shareholders for 36 years in a row. All told, P&G goods are found in 98 percent of all kitchens and pantries. P&G's invention of selling competing brands has been duplicated to sell everything from Cadillacs to candy bars.
     P&G, which popularized consumer advertising and daytime soap operas, has built an empire partially by reinforcing stereotypes about women as subservient to men.
     P&G's standing as the country's largest advertiser gives it a stranglehold on Madison Avenue. Armed with a $2.15-billion annual advertising budget, the company blankets the country with messages about Ivory purity, Downy softness, and Scope freshness. Those massive P&G accounts offer steady work in a tumultous industry, but the soap company controls virtually every aspect of its ad agencies' work. It has tried to block mergers between agencies and moved multimillion-dollar accounts when its wishes weren't obeyed. Even account managers get locked into restrictive P&G agreements that limit where they can work after doing business with the company.
     P&G tried its soap opera format on daytime television. Their first daytime soap was "The First Hundred Years", launched in 1950. It lasted only a month.
     But, P&G tried again with "Search for Tomorrow" and a TV version of its radio show, "The Guiding Light". By the mid-fifties it had thirteen different soaps on the air.
     The company was criticized from the start about the sappy content of its ads and TV shows, but P&G believed it was in the business to sell soap, nothing else. "The problem of improving the literary tastes of the people is the problem of the schools," said CEO Neil McElroy in 1953. P&G consumers "aren't intellectuals---they're ordinary people, good people, who win wars for us, produce our manufactured products, and grow our food." He then added, "They use a lot of soap."
     P&G's G-rated nature is hypocritical considering its continued sponsorship of the daytime soap operas "Guiding Light", "Another World," and "As the World Turns", which all portray marriage as disposable as diapers. For example, in a typical episode of "Another World" the women sob about their tortured love lives.        
     P&G  has moved into new markets in China & Russia & they've sent their old traditional soap operas there, too. "Search for Tomorrow and "Guiding Light".

Edited October 11, 2019 by Donna B
spacing

[Contessa Donatella]

Mary-Ellis Bunim (RIP) was both a Producer and a network Exec. She produced at different levels at SFT, ATWT and SB. Then she became associated with Jonathan Murray where they formed Bunim/Murray Productions. It was best known in daytime drama space by a reality "character growth/life coach" show, STARTING OVER, where they housed a half dozen women in a place to work on their lives. In primetime they did REAL WORLD and various shows like ROAD RULES and music management. STARTING OVER was probably best known for the wisdom of Iyanla Van Zant.

[Contessa Donatella]

Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin, nicknamed "Mickey" since childhood. She is an American television network executive. Accolades include recipient Maggie award for television documentaries Planned Parenthood Federation American, 1982, Ace award for best magazine show, 1983, Clean Air Week award American Lung Association, 1989. Member National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (board directors 1985-1987), National Cable television Association (chairman Ace awards committee 1983-1984).

 

https://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/1240445

 

Dwyer-Dobbin initially stated that no soap opera would be canceled under her watch; however, that promise was broken when, in 1999, Another World was cancelled after 35 years on television. This decision appears to have ultimately been made because NBC and Procter & Gamble could not agree on the fee NBC would pay for the show; nonetheless, viewers blamed Dwyer-Dobbin.

 

(That is the first time i have ever heard that as a reason for cancelling AW. Has anyone else ever heard it as a reason?)

 

 

Edited October 11, 2019 by Donna B
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[Contessa Donatella]

On Sept. 22, I said: Unfortunately, not much time passed before Brian Frons canceled SOAPnet, AMC & OLTL.

 

On Sept. 26, Raven Whitney said: In fact, worst exec in modern times should go to Brian Frons.

 

https://deadline.com/2011/09/susan-lucci-blasts-abc-daytime-chief-over-all-my-children-cancellation-as-she-is-yet-to-commit-to-continue-on-the-show-166716/

 

Susan Lucci Blasts ABC Daytime Chief Over ‘All My Children’ Cancellation As She Has Yet To Commit To Continue On The Show

By Nellie Andreeva    
Nellie Andreeva

Co-Editor-in-Chief, TV
@DeadlineNellie
September 3, 2011 11:01am

All My Children star Susan Lucci has some blistering parting words for ABC Daytime president Brian Frons as her soap ends its 41-year run on ABC this month. In a  freshly written epilogue to the upcoming paperback edition of her memoir “All My Life” obtained by the New York Post, she blames the show’s cancellation squarely on “some very bad decisions by” Frons. Among them, according to Lucci, the 2008 hiring of Chuck Pratt as head writer, which led to “subpar” writing on the show (he was let go a year later), the 2009 relocation of the show from New York to Los Angeles, and the pushing out of AMC creator Agnes Nixon. “I watched Brian Frons’ decisions destroy the production of our show and the lives of people on both sides of the country,” she wrote, adding that he has “that fatal combination of ignorance and arrogance.” As for the soap’s cancellation to be replaced by a cheaper unscripted show, “an iconic show was losing out to greed,” Lucci wrote. “I cannot fathom any network executive choosing to alienate millions of loyal viewers in these economic times.” Frons recently told Deadline that the protests over the cancellation of All My Children and fellow ABC soap One Life to Live demonstrate that “we actually did a good job for all of these last 40 years. I think we’ve spent 40-plus years trying to keep the soap-opera audience happy. So in an odd way, (the outcry) is actually good. It’s just sad that we don’t have a solution.”

 

https://serialdrama.typepad.com/serial_drama/2011/12/serial-dramas-best-and-worst-of-2011.html

 

https://ew.com/article/2011/04/14/abc-brian-frons-all-my-children/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

soapfan770 Posted September 8

Actually glad to see Angelica McDaniel go the way of her predecessors Barbara Bloom and Lucy Johnson. Even better yet, like Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin(remember the MADD one?) at P&G her position is pretty much eliminated altogether. Micromanaging meddlesome exec's, whether it was Johnson or McDaniel at CBS, MADD with P&G, John Rohrbeck, Susan Lee, and Sheraton Kalouria at NBC, or Angela Shapiro and Brian Frons at ABC are all that helped kill the daytime soaps with their very short-sighted and self-fulfilling agendas.
McDaniel's support has always been suspect; championing the work of MAB, Pratt, and then pushing the Rosales family in to replace the Winters were all horrible. She will not be missed. ABC and NBC haven't had any specific daytime exec for years; the CBS daytime lineup, while ailing, will be fine without one. Sad to say, unless their are extremely drastic changes I just don't see the current CBS Daytime lineup existing in its current form beyond 2021.
Unlike GL which is the only soap I considered that really did die of natural causes as opposed to the typical shocking cancellation, Y&R and B&B still have a lot of life left in them but it would actually take a lot of drastic change, focus, talent, energy and even perhaps a change in format & delivery to save them, something I just don't see happening either unfortunately.

 

soapfan770
Posted September 8

Actually glad to see Angelica McDaniel go the way of her predecessors Barbara Bloom and Lucy Johnson. Even better yet, like Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin(remember the MADD one?) at P&G her position is pretty much eliminated altogether. Micromanaging meddlesome exec's, whether it was Johnson or McDaniel at CBS, MADD with P&G, John Rohrbeck, Susan Lee, and Sheraton Kalouria at NBC, or Angela Shapiro and Brian Frons at ABC are all that helped kill the daytime soaps with their very short-sighted and self-fulfilling agendas.
McDaniel's support has always been suspect; championing the work of MAB, Pratt, and then pushing the Rosales family in to replace the Winters were all horrible. She will not be missed. ABC and NBC haven't had any specific daytime exec for years; the CBS daytime lineup, while ailing, will be fine without one. Sad to say, unless their are extremely drastic changes I just don't see the current CBS Daytime lineup existing in its current form beyond 2021.
Unlike GL which is the only soap I considered that really did die of natural causes as opposed to the typical shocking cancellation, Y&R and B&B still have a lot of life left in them but it would actually take a lot of drastic change, focus, talent, energy and even perhaps a change in format & delivery to save them, something I just don't see happening either unfortunately.

 

 

Micromanaging meddlesome execs were surely some of the worst of the 1990s and 2000s. Personally I don't slap a natural causes death on GL. GL tried too hard to be new & different & to win.

Edited October 12, 2019 by Donna B
emphasis

[Contessa Donatella]

 

 

 

Angelica McDaniel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelica_McDaniel

In 2010 she joined CBS as VP of daytime programming, overseeing the launch of the network's first daytime talk show, The Talk. In February 2012 Angelica was upped to SVP and became network TV's youngest Head of Daytime.

 

During McDaniel's rookie year as head of daytime, CBS nabbed 51 Daytime Emmy nominations and 21 wins, more than any other network.

 

In this newly created role, McDaniel continues to oversee CBS Network's top-rated lineup in the day-part (daytime dramas The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, game shows The Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal, and the entertainment talk show The Talk), as well as development for all new first-run programming at CBS Television Distribution (CTD), the industry's leading domestic syndication company. She is also in charge of developing new series across all traditional and new genres of programming for the syndication marketplace.

 

Angelica McDaniel was fired from CBS on September 5, 2019. So Angelica McDaniel is no longer the Vice-President of Daytime Programming at CBS, CBS got rid of her position altogether, so there won't be a successor for her position.

 

Edited October 12, 2019 by Donna B
Snip.

[Contessa Donatella]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Daytime

 

John Rohrbeck Vice President of Daytime Programming 1991–1996 Gave Another World another shot to improve ratings and offered them an extension on their contract and instead first, Generations was canceled in 1991 and then Santa Barbara, 2 years later in 1993.

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Brian FronsVice President of Daytime Programming1983–1991Under his leadership of NBC Daytime, he brought in several new game shows such as Dream House, GO!, Hit Man, Hot Potato, The Match Game – Hollywood Squares Hour, Time Machine, Your Number's Up, and Wordplay – all were canceled due to low ratings and neither lasted more than just one season. The only games that would make it pass season 1 or more were Sale of The Century (1983–1989; revival of the 1969–73 original, which also aired on NBC), Super Password (1984–1989), Classic Concentration (1987–91) and Scrabble (1984–1993). He canceled the long running daytime version of Wheel of Fortune (1975–1989). He also added a new soap opera Santa Barbara (1984–1993). He canceled Search for Tomorrow in December 1986, after it was on NBC for 4 years. Frons previously work for Search For Tomorrow, while working as the head for CBS Daytime. Frons appeared as God on Santa Barbara in a dream sequence involving Mason Capwell (Lane Davies). He helped Santa Barbara garner three daytime emmys for best drama series and brought the short-lived soap Generations (1989–1991).

 

Brian Frons appeared as god in a dream sequence on SB.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Daytime

Laurence Caso

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Caso

 

Edited October 12, 2019 by Donna B

[Contessa Donatella]

Fred Silverman was early at CBS Daytime and then moved to ABC Daytime. While he was at ABC Daytime AW had ratings in the 8s and GH had ratings in the 7s and he hired Gloria Monty as EP at GH.

[Contessa Donatella]

1. Bob Short was a P&G man. It was Bob Short who called Pete Lemay to tell him of Irna's death.
2. Lucy Johnson was at ABC & was then moved over to CBS.
3. Laurence Caso was a long-term EP at ATWT.
4. Felicia Mini Behr was an ABC person who was moved over to CBS.
5. Kenneth Fitts was a P&G person.
6. Angela Shapiro was a higher-up at ABC.
7. Young & Rubicam was an ad agency that was involved in the first ownership of AW. So was Irna, her brother Arno, her secretary, Rose, and Bill Bell, etc. A whole year went by before P&G actually owned AW.

 

When people were moved over from ABC to P&G/CBS it was referred to as the abc-ification of the network.

Edited October 13, 2019 by Donna B
Add data.

[Contessa Donatella]

https://deadline.com/2019/09/cbs-head-of-daytime-angelica-mcdaniel-exits-restructuring-1202713488/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[Contessa Donatella]

http://search.myway.com/search/GGmain.jhtml?cb=CNK&n=7858e04c&p2=^CNK^xdm108^TTAB02^us&ptb=7C453980-8940-4F33-9BF1-FB758DD0254A&qid=aedfc4d1-b9d4-485e-88c0-52fad04ec532&qs=&si=&ss=sub&st=tab&trs=wtt&tpr=sbt&enc=2&searchfor=PTo0EVk5S3LjE71qbhZ33fnkowI6yPy2w3PJAI4cBmgsZFIh-zV1xr0Ij-RfqnCKtQcPh9hLWF4ZI8SGLBLxM8p4xPS4B6PszbmSnrb8Siur92hr7UV1fNGBe1_Z-N3qrrv_8Mx4lPhfZk6PrDo7kFLY4_GXmpAdZWQrkST7fNQa2OyEx1vWX_jF9GM7jZZHWF0z2D1Bz7cUsVeypdXm2eVZ8c5KPYj4LUwNNz-XUHI6BITF0di7qFZb6Z2bkcOIt8RPjUi_1Q7iCeV8543z4SXWCvc3BCoFeSYsmlU1Ny62dbVkKNyyj6mBYJq5khVkyrJ9UZfPNhpbLYQwRBd0Ng&ts=1571001271228

[Vee]

Donna, you are posting old recent news items we've all seen and posted before. A simple search of the site for these topics would explain we discussed McDaniel's exit for weeks. You are also posting huge strings of search results instead of using the link button properly, and walls of unedited text that are often poorly formatted and unnecessary.

 

If you want to learn the rules of the board and how formatting in the 2010s works, look at the help sections of the board or look at the help section re: Invision and its coding. The buttons in the message form are very self explanatory. The least you can do is not just post anything anywhere, and not quote yourself. Posting Wikipedia pages is also not done here.

 

Don't ask us to do it for you and educate you: Go to the help section and read up, or msg Errol or Toups.

[Contessa Donatella]

I'm intentionally consolidating into one thread. I think whenever people do that here that the result is better. And, many people do it.

I don't think I'm asking you to educate me, although I am making some mistakes & having to correct errors. But, I will msg Errol and Toups. I have already but I will again. Thank you for the recommendation.