With the recent death sentence delivered to One Life to Live (OLTL) Brian Frons and the Network Henchmen team, I began to wonder what reasoning went into ABC’s decision-making process. When it was followed almost immediately by news of a lawsuit brought by the Hursley estate, claiming royalties from the General Hospital (GH), the parties seemed to fall. Although OLTL was only a daytime drama with a growing audience size (proving that High School Musical-themed daytime shows really do work) and the lowest budget show of its kind on the air, and consistently came in under budget, it was still killed . To me, the GH issue seems to answer the question of why.
Front and the GH company knew they couldn’t cancel the lawsuit that was coming, despite the declining ratings (and the rumor that it would make Doris Hursley roll over in her grave) because they knew they were going to pay the profits they were asking for in the estate. find out OLTL was cheap to produce, and its ratings were constantly increasing, which threw a wrench in Front’s decision to have it slaughtered to unless enough money to pay the lawsuit, and they still keep ABC from losing any profit for 2011. Additionally, SoapNet (which is owned by ABC) is set to go off the air in 2012; and with the potential for massively increased ratings (The Teen and the Restless, currently the #1 show, has almost double the viewers of any other soap, and is one of the last to agree to be broadcast by the SoapNet channel) ABC of the day had time to act quickly to ensure that the ratings did not go up to him a place where the fisherman seems to have been canceled for what he has already done. Frons couldn’t kill the narrative style he did with All My Children (AMC) because managing the small show required too much time on the east coast, and the shows were mostly under his control on Los Angeles were based so that AMC decided to kill the death sentence on the same day.
What dear old Brian didn’t realize was not one, but two of the longest running shows on television history on the same day would cost as much as the most expensive. Almost immediately, fans of the two shows joined in and exclaimed. Protest parties with names like “Fans United Against ABC” (or FU-ABC for short) have sprung up on Facebook, and ABC’s Untouchable prime-time shows like Stars and Grey’s Anatomy have been taken with double stars. The ratings will drop. Hoover, under pressure from fans, pulled all of his advertising from the network, and Frontman became an insult on television overnight. Her voices and e-mails were posted on social media and on blogs, former and current stars started talking about her unusual treatment of any actress over 40, or over 110 lbs. It came out that their order to kill off one of AMC’s most beloved characters, Dixie Cooney Martin (played by Cady McLain) and Kathy Brier (OLTL’s Marcie McBain) called her too fat for television. Catherine Hickland (ex-Lindsay, OLTL) and Julia Barr (ex-Brooke, AMC) both filmed their final scenes without announcing that they were fired. The list goes on and on —
So, flooded with hate mail from fans, when advertisers are under heavy pressure to pull out or face boycotts, the local affiliate is surrounded by the screams of angry fans, and when the ratings are falling, Frons sits in the office and refuses to listen to the e-mails left by angry fans, or read their letters. By reversing one of his cancellations, and moving Susan Lucci to OLTL, he was able to save face, and possibly his job, not to mention the PR battle of affiliated fans and attacking advertisers. He wouldn’t even keep OLTL on ABC. TVLand (another ABC station) or AGE OF LOVE would like to gain another five million or so viewers. Not to mention that five million angry people would be convinced to stop boycotting ABC and Disney (the parent company of ABC, which, in a not-so-clear move, left the Front in recent days.) Meanwhile, in New York, he is protesting. Los Angeles During the May and June schedule, fans buy tickets to Las Vegas to make a strong daytime showing of the Emmy Awards, and other sponsors ( (namely, Hershey) continue to feel the heat as Hoover’s lead in tracking and advertising drags. One protest group is targeting local Allies, isolating local advertisers one country at a time and flooding them with calls and letters and faxes, making normal business operations nearly impossible. It’s just a matter of time that the heat is too much for ABC/Disney to bear, and Front is reaping the rewards of his work, joining the actors and writers and crew of AMC and OLTL on the broken line. Business concept, canceling OLTL was dumb. On the PR side, he was aware of his death the same day AMC and OLTL shut down. Front can still keep their job by putting OLTL on life support, at least until SoapNet goes off the air and the real numbers can be shown.
Sadly, I believe AMC’s fate has probably been sealed despite the best efforts of promoters and advertisers. It was probably signed the day Fron moved the show to LA from New York, and even Fron himself admitted that the project was postponed a year in advance. But with a little help from Erica Kane, OLTL was able to jump into the #1 spot during the day with minimal effort. Obsessed chef Mario Batali (from the show planned to replace AMC’s Chew will definitely bring more negativity with him , when he boarded. How does ABC align itself with someone who is being treated as a wage earner?
