You are correct. Ellen and her lamebrained Peapack stuff, her Into The Light Wednesdays and her Find Your Light ridiculousness were the final nails in the coffin. And she proudly boasts that these were her ideas. She ought to indeed be ashamed!
Posted by: RoseVioletDaisy
Date posted: Tue Mar 9 13:28:10 2010
Message:
By the time GL was cancelled, P&G couldn't shop it around even if they wanted to. It was a shell of it's former self and as such, in the aftermath of CBS's cancellation, no one was interested in taking the show on. The new production model deeply tarnished the brand and the show was too expensive, even shooting half the show in Peapack, for almost any cable outlet to be able to afford with their ever decreasing budgets.
P&G is a huge advertiser but CBS got in real trouble when the Big 3 started collapsing and pulling their ads because they couldn't afford them. That's what really started costing CBS hundreds of millions of dollars. Since CBS's overall audience skews older, auto ads were a huge part of their ad revenue. If CBS hadn't been so close to bankruptcy, they might have been able to give GL another year, but they simply couldn't afford it under the circumstances no matter what P&G said, did, or wanted.
Posted by: Rosebud1
Date posted: Mon Mar 8 21:12:26 2010
Message:
She isn't an executive at the decision making level. I've never said that CBS didn't end their affiliation w/the show. But they didn't do it without P&G's consent. CBS wanting to end their relationship w/the show didn't automatically mean that production had to end. If P&G had a marketable product that they believed in, they could have shopped the show around or made a place for it (& others), but that isn't what THEY wanted.CBS never owned the soaps they air, like ABC/Disney does. So if the network no longer wants to air the show, they can simply not re-sign. However, P&G has always been in the unique position of also being the networks' cash cow, in daytime & primetime. If they hadn't wanted this to happen, it wouldn't have.
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Rosebud, no one backs up your position on this issue. You weren't a part of GL, CBS or P&G so you really can't say what happened. In fact, everyone who was a part of the equation disputes your claims. I'll choose to believe those people over you. Thank you. eom
I wasn't a part of the inner circle, no. But that doesn't mean that I don't know what I'm talking about. Budget overruns were P&G's responsibility, not EPs or HWs. P&G doesn't make automobiles. The whole idea that auto advertising has been the biggest source of $$ for the network is ridiculous! P&G has held that position in both daytime & primetime for decades. They aren't some mom & pop operation who's future is determined by the networks, exactly the opposite is true. P&G has been crying 'poverty' for decades, while they made $$ hand over fist, worldwide. They could keep producing 20 soaps a yr & not notice the difference to their bottom line--much the way they said that they could lose every soap fan (almost 20 yrs ago) & not feel it. If P&G had been supportive of their soaps then the snowball effect wouldn't have been so great. But everyone took their lead & dumbed things down beyond recognition. ICAM, if they hadn't let things go so badly then they would have had product to shop around. The foreign market, the Internet, new technologies, expanding tv options should all have been in soaps' favor to make the genre stronger, not weaker. Sorry, but EPs & HWs simply don't have the kind of creative control on soaps that many seem to think. If it hadn't been EW it would have been someone else's name on the EP credits. eom
Have you completely lost it? Who's talking budget over runs and the auto industry? Shakes head.
Posted by: Zimmer Fan
Date posted: Mon Mar 8 19:19:40 2010
Message:
Well we all knew Rosebud is wrong. This confirms it even more.
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I knew about 13 years ago that Rosebud was a nut. Her continual need to think that she knows more than the people who actually worked at these shows is embarassing to her. No one takes her seriously. eom
Posted by: fee
Date posted: Mon Mar 8 12:21:45 2010
Message:
Well, gee! I wonder what they might have THOUGHT she was done, with the budget slashed the way it was? No change or something? I don't see as she had any choice, but to try implementing things that slashed the budget.
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Fee, the reason the budget was slashed was because of Ellen Wheeler's stupid ideas when she became EP. The reasons are many.
I don't know much about this subject but I don't recall Ellen Wheeler doing much that screamed overspending to me prior to the Peapack move. It's not like she was sending the cast to remote spots in the islands, or building extravagant new sets or even hiring big name expensive stars. I got the impression that EW was told to make cuts or else. Maybe she started by cutting back the sets. Maybe her last ditch effort was to do the Peapack thing. In retrospect, it was daring and maybe nothing could have saved the show. Still, when I go back to my tapes of the last months, I love seeing the Jersey scenery at the opening, and I can't believe I'm saying it, but I even enjoy hearing the theme song. GL was nothing like it was in the 50s when it was a 15 minute show, but it was still enjoyable for me, up until the end. Speaking of show length, maybe it was the people who decided soaps should be an hour long who started the whole downhill spiral, eh?
P&G has a history of saying that EPs 'overrun' budgets--as though they don't sign off on the expenses before productions spend lots of $$. At AW, they claimed that JFP went over budget on sets--yet P&G mandated those set changes. Yes, they were expensive, but the EP didn't just wake up one day & make a decision to spend millions on a set! That was P&G. It was a stupid expense that no soap should have made, & it wasn't about 'going to the islands' or something luxurious. It was about getting a set that looked like ER's, which everyone was doing at the time in daytime & primetime. eom
