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US soaps dropping like flies
VoodooChic
Posts: 9,868 Forum Member
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With One Life To Live ending on January 13 there'll only be 4 left.
General Hospital (1963 – present)
Days of our Lives (1965 – present)
The Young and the Restless (1973 – present)
The Bold and the Beautiful (1987 – present)
recently they have axed many long running ones
One Life to Live - July 15, 1968 - January 13, 2012
All My Children - January 5, 1970 – September 23, 2011
As The World Turns - April 2, 1956 – September 17, 2010
Guiding Light - June 30, 1952 – September 18, 2009
(+ on radio - 1937-1956)
Not that I watch them or have ever watched them (well apart from B&B on Sky Soap in the 90's!!)
General Hospital (1963 – present)
Days of our Lives (1965 – present)
The Young and the Restless (1973 – present)
The Bold and the Beautiful (1987 – present)
recently they have axed many long running ones
One Life to Live - July 15, 1968 - January 13, 2012
All My Children - January 5, 1970 – September 23, 2011
As The World Turns - April 2, 1956 – September 17, 2010
Guiding Light - June 30, 1952 – September 18, 2009
(+ on radio - 1937-1956)
Not that I watch them or have ever watched them (well apart from B&B on Sky Soap in the 90's!!)
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Hopefully Debbi Morgan will get more of a chance soon to show how capable an actress she is,that's IF Maria Arena Bell & Co give her decent material,we'll have to wait and see on that front!!
GL by the end was abit rubbish and wasnt a surprise it was axed. ATWT I think had the potential to get back to being a good show again.
Days was in a bit of a precarious position a few years back when ratings were low but they axed a load of the long term cast which have cut the budget and ratings have improved a bit so it might be OK for a while.
I don't know why they didn't just retool the shows instead of axing them completely. Paring down the casts and cutting the episodes to run for 30 minutes instead of 60 minutes a day would have saved a lot of money I imagine.
I'd like to think the bosses over here have more faith in our shows. Not that we're in a similar position at all, as much as people want to believe we are. The soaps are still consistently the top-rated shows on television. And apparently people still think they're on their last legs. As if.
Days is quite good these days, new writers and they brought back John and Marlene. It's really improved over the last few months, but I don't hold out much hope for the genre as a whole. People have too many choices and I think the best days ( no pun intended) are in the past for American soaps.
It'll probably just be Y&R and B&B standing in a few years time, and that's if Maria Arena Bell hasn't completely killed the show by then.
True, but that's not 52 weeks a year - I'm referring to their daytime continuing soaps
Exactly! Bell is doing her damnedest and she might just be successful!:eek::eek:
You're so right. I used to love Y&R. My mother has been watching it since its inception here so I've pretty much grown with it. Of course they're not a patch on UK soaps but every single character has such a rich history that I felt connected to them. But in recent times, I can't even bring myself to watch it. It's more a chore than anything, which is sad. MAB nees the chop ASAP!
When they start using doppelgängers galore, you realise they've scrapped the bottom of the barrel (Emily/Patty/Mary Jane anyone?). Not to mention they keep changing family ties like people change socks, which is quite frankly stupid. Marriage doesn't hold any significance AT ALL for them (you can get married as many times as you like and with whoever you like, especially within the same family). Oh and they also go way overboard with their OTT recasts (Abby Abbott springs to mind) - but that's US soaps for you.
Low ratings and low demos were letting the show down in 2009-10 and instead of allowing them to fix this, they decided to axe the show instead, and really it had been in the planning for a lot longer. The point is, ABCD favoured GH and AMC over OLTL, and even after the cancellation, OLTL had begun picking itself up and turning things around. It has been on fire for the majority of last year, and ratings and demos improved immensely. This show should not have been cancelled; it has been rating higher than AMC last year, beating B&B a few times for #2 spot, as well as thrashing GH. It certainly had life left in it, and I'm so happy that show is going out on a major high. It will be missed.
This was ace but apparently the American's never got it the way the UK audience did which is odd given how OTT Days Of Our Lives was at the same time. I remember reading that Sunset Beach would have ended in 1998 had it not been for its UK popularity, NBC must have been getting huge rights payouts from Channel Five. It wasn't enough to stop the axe from falling a year later though. Channel Five even offered to part fund the show to keep it on the air!
Another World is the main Soap i'd like to see more of. I own the books and some of the storylines sound fantastic.
I did see the Frankie Frame death storyline & youtube has a 100 or so episodes in TV section.
Crazy how close Days came to being axed a few years ago, yet it outlived GL/ATWT and now AMC/OLTL
how do so many people manage to watch us soaps assuming you are all english of course.
this is what i have never understood, the shows are no different so why did brits love sunset beach but hate other US soaps and why was sunset beach hated by americans but loved other US soaps. Sunset Beach is also the shortest US soap ever and possibly the world.
All soaps have wooden acting. And no edge of your seat stuff/dullness? theres plenty much more than UK soaps. You must've caught the wrong episodes. Or watched Bold & Beautiful in that case I agree
I watch Soaps from all over the world, and imo American ones are the most exciting full of twists and turns.