Time After Time/Soap World

Word on the street according to an article in the Los Angeles Times is that ABC talk show is being considered to take over General Hospital's time slot with hopes to increase it's ratings. Here are a  few excerpts from that piece:

"Another option, although less likely, would be for ABC would be to swap THE VIEW with GENERAL HOSPITAL, which typically airs at 3 p.m. on most of its stations. The risk there is that GENERAL HOSPITAL has been running in the afternoon forever and a move to late mornings could severely hurt the show, which is one of the few remaining soap operas.

ABC is also studying whether to try to turn THE VIEW into a syndicated show. That would mean selling it to individual stations for cash and commercial inventory. ABC affiliates might get upset by the idea of losing the show to the highest bidder, although there is a potential of bigger bucks for ABC and parent Walt Disney Co."

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"The dangers in all this are fairly obvious. "The View" is working at a mid-morning chat show. It averages about 4 million viewers and of those, more than 1 million are women 25-54. Winfrey gets a bigger audience and it seems unlikely that "The View" would grow a whole lot more running in the afternoon. ABC could end up damaging a successful franchise. If it also moved "General Hospital" as well, it could jeopardize two shows."

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Oh no Brian Frons is back at it again.  Let's hope they make the right decision and keep things as they are or allow the View take over Oprah's timeslot when that show ends in 2011.