I’d say that while my confidence started to go up, I wasn't surprised to hear the notice this morning at all, and while I’m not shocked, I am pissed.
"As The World Turns" has been a cornerstone of our business and a tremendous asset to the company," said Brian T. Cahill of TeleNext Media, Inc., the show's production company. "We are proactively seeking a new outlet to carry the show, and are open to exploring innovative formats and relationships that will enable the future success of 'ATWT.'"
This statement from Brian T. Cahill really gets to me. If the show was such a cornerstone and an asset, then one would think they’d have been treated the show better over the past several years. Head writer Jean Passanante should have been fired 3 years ago. There's no reason period why this woman should have stayed on writing this show for as long as she has, and given her track record on Another World and All My Children, I'm surprised she was hired in the first place. The majority of fans wanted her gone long ago.
And it's executive producer Christopher Goutman's own fault for alienating fans by making too many piss poor decisions and alienating fans by making statements like he didn't care what they thought, and then waiting until imminent cancellation to fix the show's problems. There have been too many storylines either told too slow or too fast which put the plot first and the characters second, too much concentrating on characters and couples the majority of fans despise like Meg and Paul, turning one character like Paul Ryan into a complete cartoon and killing him off multiple times, making female characters weak and pathetic, waiting 3+ years to begin to reunite one of the show's most popular couples, Jack and Carly, and constantly giving characters that really deserve airtime space on the backburner (Luke and Noah of course come to mind as well as vets like Lisa and Nancy). And I hope Mr. Goutman is satisfied, because his lengthy discouraged "to-hell-with-the-fans-I'm-doing-it-MY-way-even-if-it-sucks" attitude with ATWT has just cost himself his job, as well as a mostly talented cast theirs, and it also cost the fans their show.
As much as I’m happy to see the show get better creatively in the past couple or so months (I personally have been watching more of the other days now), I can’t help but be upset with the powers that be at Procter & Gamble/Telenext, because as stated, if changes came sooner, this wouldn’t have happened. And if the rumors were true of Procter & Gamble/Telenext wanting to get out of the soap business, it’s still no excuse to not treat the fans better.
As far as CBS goes… I do think they seem to like to announce items like this at the worst possible times. Guiding Light’s cancellation was announced on April Fools’ Day, and this one was made right before the holiday season. They could have at least waited until January.
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