Tuesday, April 19, 2011

SOAPnet Sticking Around Till Spring 2012

Despite the cancellations of ALL MY CHILDREN and ONE LIFE TO LIVE last week, it looks like SOAPnet will not go off the air in January 2012 as expected. Instead it will be sometime in Spring 2012, according to a new report on Deadline.com.

Deadline published an ABC insider's perspective on the events that led to the cancellation of AMC and OLTL:

I have worked at ABC Daytime for several years and have experienced a lot of the ups and downs especially since Brian Frons and Kate Nelson took over. With the announcement of the cancellation of All My Children and One Life to Life, I feel that they completely failed all of the people that worked for them.

A couple of years ago, they started a project to evolve SOAPnet into a new female network that was code named "Carrie". Anne Sweeney had told them that they needed to evolve the network for the future, especially as more people had DVRs and just airing soaps at night was not enough. They pitched an idea to make the network hip and cool for women basically the type of woman that Carrie was in Sex and the City. We thought that it was a go and then found out that the executives rejected their idea all together.

Then they started again to pitch a product called DM - Disney Moms. The idea this time was a network that moms would want to watch and their families would watch with them, cooking shows, dancing shows basically everything that is found on other networks. It was part of that project that they started talking about combing All My Children and One Life to Live. They were putting together ideas of what would replace the one soap and were competing against an idea called Good Afternoon America. They failed to convince anyone that their idea was good, they had a pilot with Aisha Tyler that was awful.

At the same time, the Disney Channel team pitched Disney Junior, and when Anne compared DM and Disney Junior, she decided to shutdown SOAPnet and replace it with Disney Junior. They were furious and made some nasty comments about how the Disney Channel team went behind everyone's back and stole their channel.

Over the last 6 months, our entire team has been under the impression that SOAPnet was going to shut down in January 2012 and replaced with Disney Junior. Over the last few weeks, I have heard comments that Disney Junior is now having problems getting the cable contracts done. So Disney Junior's launch has been pushed from January to Spring 2012 and now SOAPnet is not shutting down in January 2012. Both networks will be run at the same time it could be for several years, Disney Junior will only be in a few homes and a lot of money will be spent keeping both networks up. So now we are shutting down AMC in September and OLTL in January, and SOAPNet is still going to be on the air, we are going to run a network on General Hospital and some acquired soaps, it is embarrassing to all of us who had cared so much about our work.

We are not just angry that they are shutting down AMC and OLTL, but over the last 3-4 years we have been following a leader and his head of strategy who have not been able to do anything right.

9 comments:

  1. Frons should be fired. ABC/Disney has made a huge blunder. The idiots in the executive suites at ABC are going to do incredible damage to the network. Another cooking show and lifestyle show will flop and General Hospital will also suffer and eventually be cancelled. Once AMC and OLTL are gone, the wheels will come off the network's daytime. If NBC was smart, they'd pick up one of the shows...but they're run by morons as well. JMO.

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  2. What a complete clusterfuck!!

    Thanks for including this write up.

    That insider's account of the SoapNet situation is disturbing. Frightening to know that such clueless people are making impulsive decisions without all the information in.

    And they wonder why ratings are going down, why network TV is in such bad shape . . .

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  3. Brian Frons should be fired and bring somebody who could bring soaps back. I watch GH everynight at 10:00. Preschoolers, hopefully, do not watch tv at night. Why doesn't ABC put ABC junior in the daytime and soapnet at night.

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  4. There are too many channels for children already! We don't need more! This is crazy! Why not cancel Lifetime instead of Soapnet?! What a huge mistake!

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  5. Yeah Frons should be fired. He should also be dipped in honey and left naked in the woods. There's no need for another network for kids. Or split it so kids could watch shows earlier in the day and the adults can enjoy soaps at night.

    I watch the network since I enjoy the convenience of being able to watch since I'm not able to watch in the afternoon. I also enjoy being able to catch repeats of 90210 since there are so many episodes of that I haven't seen in ages.

    It is just sad that ABC is being just as moronic as NBC. I'm surprised that Days is still on since I expected that to be cancelled after they killed Passions.

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  6. It Truly shows The worst Blunder in History.

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  7. there is no need to watch ABC cooking shows when there the food network is round the clock...why bother? now, I wont watch ABC at all!

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  8. We are a couple that has loved to watch breakfast in bed on the weekends, One Tree Hill, 90210 and Brothers and Sisters (by the way Veronica Mars sucks). We have been watching this station since its existance faithfully. What about us? We dont have any kids and there are plenty of kids stations. When as a wife I can get my husband to get into shows like One Tree Hill by just simply watching this station 24 hours a day it really shows that TV can bring couples closer toghther. I am very disappointed that Soapnet is no longer and would really like for a network to start something similar. I would have never seen shows like Brothers and Sisters without it (which is 1 of the best series that I have seen in a while. I love Sally Feild!) Is there anything we can do to change their minds and bring back the station that we love? If anyone knows of anything we can do to fix this life changing problem please let me know. Our entire TV schedule has changed and now we sit here flipping threw the stations looking for something to watch. WE CANT BELIEVE IT! PLEASE HELP!!

    Melanie (and on behalf of my husband Bryan)

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  9. MAD YOU TOOK OUR NETWORK!! I Tried to change it. Sorry just really MAD!!!

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