Today ABC announced that it will kill off two of its soap operas: All My Children and One Life to Live. Sources tell us that the daytime dramas will fall down an elevator shaft and slip into a coma, respectively, which gives the network room to bring them back whenever they want. The last soap opera standing on ABC will be General Hospital... so good move, whoever cast James Franco on a recurring role on the show.
Both of the shows are filmed in New York City, and as Pat Kiernan noted, this is "sad for the remaining NYC production team." It is also sad for all of the viewers who will no longer be able to watch their stories, and the staff of Soap Opera Digest who will soon have no more shows to write about. (In 2009 Guiding Light was given the ax, starting the soap-opera-cide).
According to Deadline, they will be replaced by two new shows, The Chew (a Mario Batali-hosted food show) and The Revolution (featuring Tim Gunn and focusing on health and lifestyle transformations). ABC's daytime president Brian Frons says, “While we are excited about our new shows and the shift in our business, I can’t help but recognize how bittersweet the change is." (The soaps first hit the airwaves in 1968 and 1970.)
