OLTL, AMC Cancelled. An In-Depth Analysis.

Agnes Nixon would be heartbroken to see her two soaps getting the axe by ABC on Thursday.

Impact players: Susan Lucci (Erica Kane, AMC, left), and Erika Slezak (Victoria Davidson Banks, OLTL, right)

The news came out on Thursday that both One Life to Live and All My Children are history after some point in September, according to officials at ABC. Both are produced in-house by ABC. In it's place, two reality shows, unlike NBC when Passions and Another World were cancelled a few years back, decided to give back it's hours to local affiliates. CBS did the same thing in 2009, almost, but when As the World Turns and Guiding Light got the axe from CBS, the network got two replacements: The Talk, a talk show in the style of The View, and the network TV return of Let's Make a Deal, with Wayne Brady as host, now in it's second season, with a third season of episodes on its way this fall. OLTL went on the air in 1968, and AMC two years later, in 1970. Agnes Nixon, the creator of both shows (still presently living), was a writer at AW, ATWT and GL in the 1950s and 1960s.

So where does the soaps world leave with now? Only four choices remaining.  Regardless of the cancellations of OLTL and AMC, still leaves General Hospital (1963) as the oldest still running. Days of Our Lives (1965), and The Young & the Restless (1974) are still active soaps to this day. So is The Bold & the Beautiful, who replaced Capitol as CBS's 30 minute soap in the spring of 1987.

My question remains is this? Will this new move for ABC daytime be good or bad? For some, especially those OLTL and AMC fans (my mom watches AMC), it will be heartbreaking to see them gone. But for me, who cares? As a male, I don't have the time, because I have the Internet and places to go to!

So why is ABC (and NBC) passing up on game shows, but CBS isn't? You see, the networks are wanting the local affilates to get time for them by airing early newscasts, syndicated shows for local ad revenue. The same could be said years back in the '80s when NBC and CBS had those powerful daytime game show lineups, and some affiliates decided that airing shit like Phil Donahue, or other syndie programming (or locally produced talk shows in large markets) instead of stuff like Scrabble, Classic Concentration, Hot Potato, $25,000 Pyramid, or Card Sharks, could give them more local ad revenue than network programming.

Also there is some questioning about the move by ABC and whether or not affiliates would want to take advantage of airing these shows or pre-empting for syndie and/or local produced shows. That is the burning question that is on the station programming directors in the months to come. Also, who knows what will be on the mend for syndicated programming in the fall now that Oprah is going off the air (thank God!). The natpe convention is in June in LA, and who knows what will be pitched for the fall. Stay tuned!