With the recent death sentence handed down to One Life to Live (OLTL) by Brian Frons and his team of Network Henchmen, I started wondering where the logic had gone in ABC’s decision making process. When it was followed almost immediately by the news of the lawsuit filed by the Hursley estate, suing for owed back royalties from General Hospital (GH,)the pieces seemed to start to fall together. Despite the fact that OLTL was the only daytime drama with an increasing audience size (proving that High School Musical-themed daytime shows really do work,) and that it was the lowest budget show of its type on the air, and consistently came in under budget, it was still killed. To me, the GH lawsuit seems to answer the question of why.
Frons and company couldn’t realistically cancel GH knowing the suit was coming, despite declining ratings (and a storyline that would make Doris Hursley roll over in her grave) because they knew they were going to have to pay the estate the profits they were suing for. OLTL was cheaper to produce, and its ratings are consistently increasing, which threw a wrench into the Frons plan of having to slaughter it to save enough money to pay out the lawsuit, and still keep ABC daytime from losing any profits for 2011. Additionally, SoapNet (which is owned by ABC) was set to go off-air in 2012, and with the potential for massively increased ratings (the Young and the Restless, currently the #1 show, has almost double the viewers of any other soap, and was one of the last to agree to be aired by the SoapNet channel) ABC daytime had to act fast to make sure the ratings didn’t climb to a point where cancellation would seem fishier than it already did. Frons couldn’t kill the storyline the way he had with All My Children (AMC,)because micro-managing the show would require too much time on the east coast, and most of the shows under his control are based in Los Angeles, so he handed down the death sentence the same day he decided to kill AMC.
What dear old Brian failed to realize, is that by killing not one, but two of the longest running shows in television history on the same day would cost him, and dearly. Almost immediately, the fans of the two shows joined together, and cried out in unison. Protest groups with names like “Fans United Against ABC” (or FU-ABC for short) sprang up on Facebook, and seemingly untouchable ABC prime time shows like Dancing With the Stars and Gray’s Anatomy took a double-digit ratings drop. Hoover, under heavy pressure from the fans, pulled all of their advertising from the network, and Frons became the most reviled man in television overnight. His voicemail and email addresses were posted in chat rooms and on blogs, former and current stars started speaking out publicly about his unorthodox treatment of any actress over 40, or over 110 pounds. It came out that it had been his order to kill off one of AMC’s most beloved characters, Dixie Cooney Martin (played by Cady McLain,) and that he had called Kathy Brier (OLTL’s Marcie McBain) too fat to be on television. Catherine Hickland (ex-Lindsay OLTL) and Julia Barr (ex-Brooke, AMC) had both filmed their last scenes without being told they were being let go. And the list goes on and on and on —
So, inundated by hate mail from fans, with advertisers under heavy pressure to pull out or face boycotts, local affiliates surrounded by screaming angry fans, and with ratings falling, Frons sits in his office refusing to hear the voicemails left by irate fans, or read their letters. With a reversal of one of his cancellations, and by moving Susan Lucci to OLTL, he could save face, and possibly his job, not to mention win the PR battle of the fans attacking affiliates and advertisers. He wouldn’t even have to keep OLTL on ABC. TVLand (another ABC station) or Lifetime would LOVE to gain another 5 million or-so viewers. Not to mention that 5 million angry fans would be convinced to stop boycotting ABC and Disney (ABC’s parent company, which, in a not so transparent move, has distanced itself from Frons in recent days.) In the meantime, protests in New York and Los Angeles are scheduled for May and June, fans are buying tickets to Las Vegas to make a strong showing at the Daytime Emmy Awards, and the other sponsors (namely Hershey’s) are continuing to feel the heat to follow Hoover’s lead and pull advertising. One of the protest groups is attacking the local affiliates, one region at a time by isolating local advertisers and inundating them with calls and emails and letters and faxes, making normal business operations almost impossible. It is only a matter of time before the heat is too much for ABC/Disney to bear, and Frons reaps the rewards of his actions, by joining the actors and writers and crews of AMC and OLTL in the unemployment line. From a business standpoint, cancelling OLTL was just dumb. From a PR standpoint, it was suicide to cancel AMC and OLTL on the same day. Frons may still be able to save his job by putting OLTL back on life support, at least until SoapNet goes off the air, and the real numbers can be shown.
Sadly, I believe AMC’s fate is probably sealed despite the best efforts of fans and advertisers. It has probably been sealed since the day Frons moved the show to LA from New York, and even Frons himself admitted the decision to cancel it had been made a year in advance. But with a little help from Erica Kane, OLTL could jump into the #1 spot in daytime with very little effort. Chef under siege Mario Batali (from the show planned to replace AMC The Chew) definitely will only be bringing more negative press with him when he comes on board. How could ABC align itself with someone who is being sued by former employees for back wages? Oh wait, ABC itself is under a similar suit. I sense a pattern here —
