Rant: Death of the Daytime Soap Opera
ABC announced today that they're canceling two of their three daytime soap operas, All My Children in September and One Life To Live in January, and replacing them with shitty food and health-based ripoffs of their shitty talk show The View(The Chew?! That's the best name for a talk show they could come up with? Really, ABC? Really? Really?), leaving just General Hospital as its only soap opera left and one of just four remaining, joining Young and the Restless and Bold and the Beautiful on CBS and Days of Our Lives on NBC. T
The sad part about this is not just the fans of the shows(84 years of combined TV history between the two shows down the drain) losing their favorites, or the actors, writers, and production crew losing their jobs(espcially the people involved with All My Children, who had to move from New York to Los Angeles a year ago when ABC moved production of AMC to Hollywood), it's the fact that the acting profession is losing two training grounds.
The daytime soap operas are like an acting boot camp, with the shows running 5 days a week(Monday through Friday) barring preemption for sporting events and holidays. Like Mick Foley described how Memphis wrestling was run in his first autobiography "Have A Nice Day", an aspiring actor or actress that offered nothing but potential could become a polished performer because of the rapid pace of the shows.
Quite a few big name actors and actresses, whether legends or up-and-coming wunderkinds, got their starts in soaps: Kevin Bacon(Guiding Light), Tommy Lee Jones(One Life To Live), Nathan Fillion(One Life To Live), Tom Berenger(One Life To Live), Brittany Snow(Guiding Light), Hayden Panettiere(Guiding Light), Bethany Joy Galeotti(Guiding Light), Kelly Ripa(All My Children), Lyndsy Fonseca(Young and the Restless), Danneel Harris-Ackles(One Live To Life), Kelly Monaco(Port Charles/General Hospital), Amanda Seyfried(All My Children), Ashley Benson from Pretty Little Liars(Days of Our Lives), Sarah Michelle Gellar(All My Children), Lacey Chabert(All My Children), Michelle Trachtenberg(All My Children), Amber Tamblyn(General Hospital), etc.
ABC couldn't have brought back some old game shows instead of garbage talk shows? If I couldn't watch a soap, I'd rather watch a game show like Press Your Luck, Sale of The Century, Card Sharks, The Joker's Wild, $25,000 Pyramid, etc. And if I were inclined to watch a show about food, I'd watch Food Network or Man vs. Food on Travel Channel.
Further proof that all network executives are idiots and scumbags.
The sad part about this is not just the fans of the shows(84 years of combined TV history between the two shows down the drain) losing their favorites, or the actors, writers, and production crew losing their jobs(espcially the people involved with All My Children, who had to move from New York to Los Angeles a year ago when ABC moved production of AMC to Hollywood), it's the fact that the acting profession is losing two training grounds.
The daytime soap operas are like an acting boot camp, with the shows running 5 days a week(Monday through Friday) barring preemption for sporting events and holidays. Like Mick Foley described how Memphis wrestling was run in his first autobiography "Have A Nice Day", an aspiring actor or actress that offered nothing but potential could become a polished performer because of the rapid pace of the shows.
Quite a few big name actors and actresses, whether legends or up-and-coming wunderkinds, got their starts in soaps: Kevin Bacon(Guiding Light), Tommy Lee Jones(One Life To Live), Nathan Fillion(One Life To Live), Tom Berenger(One Life To Live), Brittany Snow(Guiding Light), Hayden Panettiere(Guiding Light), Bethany Joy Galeotti(Guiding Light), Kelly Ripa(All My Children), Lyndsy Fonseca(Young and the Restless), Danneel Harris-Ackles(One Live To Life), Kelly Monaco(Port Charles/General Hospital), Amanda Seyfried(All My Children), Ashley Benson from Pretty Little Liars(Days of Our Lives), Sarah Michelle Gellar(All My Children), Lacey Chabert(All My Children), Michelle Trachtenberg(All My Children), Amber Tamblyn(General Hospital), etc.
ABC couldn't have brought back some old game shows instead of garbage talk shows? If I couldn't watch a soap, I'd rather watch a game show like Press Your Luck, Sale of The Century, Card Sharks, The Joker's Wild, $25,000 Pyramid, etc. And if I were inclined to watch a show about food, I'd watch Food Network or Man vs. Food on Travel Channel.
Further proof that all network executives are idiots and scumbags.