In a day that will live in soap infamy, it was 14 years ago on April 14, 2011 that then ABC Daytime President, Brian Frons called a meeting to be attended virtually by both cast and crew of All My Children and One Life to Live. In that meeting, it was announced that in one fell swoop both soap operas were canceled. For AMC, that ended its 41-year run, and for OLTL that would end its 43-year run,
The original replacements for those series are also gone with The Revolution lasting only six months in OLTL’s time slot, and the cooking show The Chew put in AMC’s time slot lasting seven years before exiting the air. A far cry from soap operas that to this day has legions and legions of fans and that lasted four decades.
On the latest edition of General Hospital star Maurice Benard’s (Sonny Corinthos) You Tube talk show and mental health series, State of Mind that dropped on Sunday, he welcomes his co-star, Cameron Mathison (Drew Cain). During their discussion, Cameron talks about his time as Ryan Lavery as Maurice touches upon his time as Nico Kelly on All My Children.
At one point, Mathison recalls the moment he found out from then All My Children executive producer, Julie Hanan Carruthers (who is now at Beyond the Gates) that the meeting he needed to attend was mandatory; which gave him pause realizing this was the end of the line for the soap on ABC. Sadly, both shows were created by the late, great Agnes Nixon.Benard acknowledged that: “They (ABC) made, and they know they did, a huge mistake cancelling All My Children and One Life to Live. They didn’t know the power of a soap opera audience!” The three-time Daytime Emmy winner also added about ABC daytime’s flimsy attempts at replacement shows, “Nothing worked, and that’s why it’s difficult to cancel a soap … now. I think they (ABC) learned from that, and that’s my opinion.”Mathison responded about losing the viewers who watched both AMC and OLTL: “That’s a big chunk of the audience, and you see how General Hospital is doing, not only on network television, but on streaming … there’s revenue internationally. It’s a bigger entity than just that time slot, and the fans and the loyalty and what Frank Valentini (executive producer, GH) is doing over there to make sure they get new eyeballs on it, but yeah, I bet you’re are right. Those people absolutely regret it.” It was Maurice who summed it up best, expressing, “I think year’s ago … they knew they messed up!”Since the cancellations of All My Children and One Life to Live, the mainstream has had a doomsday attitude about the soaps, but this year on February 24, 2025, CBS launched the first new daytime drama in over 25 years on network TV with Beyond the Gates, and that gives some hope that all is not lost to keep the genre vital and still a part of pop culture while maintaining its core fanbase.
