Could the cancellations of ABC 's "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" have been prevented?

[acroyear]

it's sad to see daytime drama being replaced by reality TV. Especially when you consider that - back in the 1950s, 1960s & 1970s - one of the main reasons that soap operas were so popular with housewives was because these shows then gave their viewers a break from their sometimes desperate realities.
[Jim Hill Media] Could the cancellations of ABC 's "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" have been prevented?
 

 

 

One of the great curses of reality TV is that it is, to the studios, the best of both worlds: insanely cheap but with insane ratings.  So the curse of moving to this is that when the ratings drop a bit, they can still keep profitable enough to keep going even as a dying program a lot longer than a show with real writers and real actors would be able to do.  Thus, we're stuck with the dregs a lot longer than we used to have been (which in turn continues the drive away from the networks and more towards cable rerun marathons, or just giving up broadcast TV entirely for netflix).

Comments

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

What they should do is start re-runs of the soaps from the 1950s. 2 shows a day and they still have 25 years worth of stuff to re-run and it will be new to an awful lot of people. Cheaper than reality TV since it is already filmed.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

they did that. It was called the SOAP network (owned by Disney/ABC, and trying to cash in on retro 80s General Hospital as its flagship attraction, reintroducing newer "fans" to the whole Luke & Laura thing).

That network is now gone to be replaced by another Disney Kids channel.

Thing is, it is kinda like watching 40 year old Doctor Who: it is incredibly *slow* compared to today's programming, and just can't hold an audience that is used to 10 important things happening in 30 seconds time (or the constant interruptions that happen in reality tv where they speed-edit through tedium while the participant talks about what they felt after-the-fact).

It is no longer an age where people are addicted to the emotional content of drama. It is an age where people are addicted to the adrenaline that comes from being addicted to the emotional content of drama, and real (even soap opera) drama can't feed that addiction fast enough anymore.

[sestree.livejournal.com]

awwwwwwwwwww :( I watched All My Children from the first episode.

[tchwrtr.livejournal.com]

Of course, there's PBS. Oh, wait.