The Revolution won't be televised

Now, again, I'm no Soap Opera fan by any means, but this has to put a smile on the face of those who are.

ABC Daytime's CRAPPY show, The Revolution (that pointless thing they canceled a Soap for... I forget which one, was it One Life to Live?) isn't even going to finish the season, pathetically ending before July. Now, for whatever the reason, either because the angry letters were piling up or the ratings for yet another make over your life show hit rock bottom (apparently the terrible Nate Berkins program's been canned as well, but having a second contractual obligation season... thanks Oprah)... but the bottom line is, the spoiled brat that runs ABC Daytime looks like a complete tool because of this.

In fact, General Hospital has actually been saved from the chopping block, presumably threatened to be replaced by some OTHER piece of daytime crap otherwise.

Sigh... Now only if we can get rid of Litton's Weekened Bland Health Lectures for Boring Teens.

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I'd wondered WHY we needed yet another "tell me how to run my life" show...

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Yeppers, tis true. Even Forbes Magazine was writing about how replacing One Life to Live with The Revolution was one of the biggest blunders in network programming history...not only did they lose over half its audience and demos pretty much right away and went into freefall but even the initial decision had disaster all over it given how OLTL had the best ratings of the ABC soaps at the time of cancellation and stayed on top all the way to its Jan 13th finale (by way of contrast, All My Children which was cancelled on the same day plummeted in ratings.) Oltl was not only the only cancelled daytime drama to have strong ratings after its cancellation announcement in recent years, but was the only soap on all the networks to be consistently up in ratings compared to the year prior. More people were watching oltl during its last week than were watching the NBC primetime lineup.

...And chances still remain good that the show will be brought back in some form or another; a few different companies are interested but until Prospect Park releases the rights or pulls it off themselves, right now it's a waiting game til January when PP's rights expire. And in the meantime, several OLTL characters have been part of a crossover storyline with General Hospital with more to come so oltl fans at least have their "fix" while waiting for something more permenent.

It's pretty much gotten to the point where ratings aren't half as important as not spending all that much money. Like I always say, Seinfeld was constantly on the verge of cancellation the first 2 seasons... they gave it a chance and it became one of sitcom's biggest hits... so much so, NBC was literally throwing money at Jerry to keep the show going, but he refused.

I bet a lot of OLTL fans were REALLY annoyed by the comments of the show hosts when the show premiered. The whole "This is a different kind of show for people who want to change their lives" bit... that sounded like it translated to "Shut it losers! This is for those morons in that imaginary Podunk town where everyone's too stupid to blink that us elitist TV types want to dumb programming down for. Get a life, and stop liking stuff." It had a condescending, smug tone to it.

But where did the ABC Daytime programming head do his research? Every single one of those kinds of make over daytime shows gets canceled within a year. I can't even remember any specific show names. They all just vanished. There was some Dr. Drew thing that was here and gone in a couple months, replaced with yet another Maury Povich episode. How stupid is this guy if he thinks that people want life changing shows? The second they announced this program, they canned Nate Berkins. That's real smartness right there.

This is a clear case of Karma coming back to get you after having the nerve to cancel some of the most long running shows in the history of Television.

Nah, it's not even karma, or divine or poetic justice. It's a clear cut case of hubris, incompetence, and entitlement. A decision that's not even bottom line thinking, because bottom line implies effort and willingness to spend money to make money. What ABC's Daytime D-bag wanted was programming so cheap that ratings came second. While there's a lot of that I understand, due to shifts in media climate that are driving people away from television. But then again, half the decisions made by TV execs ARE the reason people are shutting their TV's off in anger in the first place.

There are 2 things that are laughable here.

First off, like I said, the guy neglected to do the research. While The Chew is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of, Rachel Ray's exactly the same program has been on the air for several years now. Plus, we're in some weird healthy cookery fad, so a cooking show talk show almost makes sense. Again, Rachel's the only one to ever combine the two for daytime. I don't even know if the Food network has cooking shows anymore, or just loud, annoying guys eating stuff at different places. That's food porn, right there it is.

But a makeover your life show? Those vanish quickly (except for maybe Dr. Oz, and the Dr. Oz ripoff called The Doctors). Pat Croche Moving In moved off the scheduled in a year.... there was something called "Home Delivery" that thankfully ended in a year... even the Nate Berkins Show was getting terrible ratings. To think that The Revolution would be Revolutionary instead of Revolting was nothing short of Ridiculous.

The second thing... the fact a cheap replacement show, something where the ratings only mattered second of all, did so poorly it's barely finishing its season (even Tony Danza had 2 seasons) is a laugh riot, and will forever be an asterisk on this guy's record. If he wants to move to another network, he'll hear... "Oh. Yeah, you're the guy who got greedy and canceled a high rated show for something NO ONE will watch." Either that will effectively blacklist him forever, or it'll make him the highest paid network exec in 3 years.

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*is still slightly annoyed that this thread had nothing to do with the classic poem*


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I dunno...

"ABC Cancels stupid show it canceled a Soap Opera that actually got death threats mailed to the idiot that made the decision, thus making themselves look like complete freaking morons" just doesn't have the same ring.

My mother was a fan of All My Children and One Life to Live. She's very happy that The Revolution didn't do to well. She was also hoping that The Chew doesn't either (which took over All My Children). Though she does admit that some of the food that The Chew makes, looks good. She's trying to avoid (she is really )

She has been watching General Hospital lately. Mostly because they moved a character from One Life to Live (Star).

Tell her if she misses oltl to keep tuned in to gh - not only has Starr fully crossed over but so has John McBain. Cole/Hope/Blair/Todd showed up at the beginning of the Starr story - and Todd will soon be returning fulltime. Tea Delgado's also set to crossover...and those are just the ones that have been officially confirmed.

(OLTL's previous head writer and executive producer currently have those positions at GH)

I'm not a fan of soaps, but this is great news! Seeing any sort of program like this get cancelled just warms my heart!

I'm sure she is aware of it. Thank you. I remembered one of her first complaints was that they killed Starr's family (Hope and Starr's boyfriend/husband? I'm guessing that's "Cole" ). She was like, 'if they were going to kill them off. Why didn't they just left them alone?'

I honestly have NO IDEA what these guys were thinking. Again, as I've said a hundred time, cheaper syndicated shows like the Revolution did poorly. The Chew... at least they have Rachel Ray's show to go on. That's been on for a randomly long amount of time.

The only selling point of The Revolution was that it was cheap to produce. To think that they were so blinded by the money they thought they'd save, only to wind up losing most of it and looking like the biggest wads in television history only goes to show how incredibly stupid and lacking of foresight corporate heads are.

Still, The only reason the Chew exists was that The View was such a cheap hit for them they wanted to come up with something similar, got lazy, and just picked the first word that rhymed with View.

Seriously.. I dunno what's more pathetic. That show or the such a direct ripoff of The View it's a wonder it wasn't made in a Taiwanese Sweatshop, The Talk.

When i heard that was Starr's entrance story, i didn't like it either. Cole didn't bother me so much because he had recently had his death faked anyway and Starr was only a handful of people who knew he was still alive and until recently was in jail for a third-strike offense. But killing off a young child seemed like overkill.

But then over time i actually came to kind of agree with the story decision. Given Starr's overall history - this was a character we watched grow up, being played by the same actress since she was six - Starr should always have been a real fiery complex character given who her parents were and the things she grew up with and throughout her childhood, all those elements were in place...up until Dena (worst HW ever) Higley became headwriter in the mid-00's and turned Starr into a very bland milquetoast "average teen" character - and by the time she became a teen mother, Starr became incredibly unrecognizable. Towards the very end of the series when her real father came back, we started to see a bit more of Original Recipe Starr resurface with how she interacted with him...but all in all - with the death of her family, that not only took away elements that was really holding her back but her huge losses are adding a long lost fire back to her character which turns her more into an unpredictable wild card. I may not have liked the car accident but i'm very much enjoying the results of its aftermath. (Not to mention, it's given the actress some meaty material which she's been knocking out of the park)

(For the record, i'm also enjoying John Mcbain - who was often among my least fave characters. Again, he was a great character when he was introduced but got destroyed during Higley's reign as headwriter and ever since i've never liked his relationship with Natalie - their relationship became less like equals and more like a disapproving father/older brother-daughter/younger sister. I loved Natalie in just about any story/pairing that didn't involve John and likewise John became more tolerable and even likable when he wasn't in Natalie's sphere. Seeing John interacting with a whole different set of characters has been really refreshing.)