Partially OT: Supernatural Soap Passions Cancelled

[David]

After years of steadily declining ratings, the DS/Bewitched
hybrid Passions ends it's NBC run this summer, after 8 years of struggling to find an audience.
It's fan base was, frankly surprised it lasted as long as it did.
Dead last in the daytime ratings for over 3 years, Passions
low this past year was a 1.3, it's high a 1.7.

Port Charles & Passions both tanked, proving once again that DS was truly a one shot deal.

David

[Satan]

What should have been a joyous occasion has turned into a black day in soap history. I hate to say it, but all those Passions fans were right. Its cancellation has caused trouble for other soap operas. You know what really sucks about all of this? The creator of Passions knew his show was going to be canceled if he didn't improve it because NBC warned him and still he did nothing. He didn't care because he was still bitter about being fired from Days of Our Lives. NBC wants out of the soap opera business so in 2009 Days will be going to either ABC or CBS and when that happens another soap opera will be canceled for Days to take its place. Word has it ABC daytime really wants that show.

[B.Collins]

it got cancelled" FINALLY? when it aired on sci-fi channel i tried to like it. & a started to a little bit. but it's QUITE HARD to like a show when the acting is SOOOOOOOOOO BLOODY bad that it's NOT EVEN funny. & i think what you also  meant to say is that it proves once again that "Dark Shadows" is by far the BEST supernatural show!TRUE on "DS" there's some actors that can't act such as the actress who played "Amanda Harris" for starters. another is the woman who played "Roxanne" just to make another example. but anywys for those "Passions" Fans i do hope they end the show as the fans want it though. has it got any better as of late? i'm just curious.

[Satan]

has it got any better as of late? i'm just curious.

Nope. Lately it's just been women characters getting raped. One character got raped twice from what I read. I don't like the change the show took when the actor that played the doll died in real life. They dropped all of the supernatural storylines over the years and that's why ratings kept going down. That's why it's not different anymore. Passions is a stupid, slow pace soap opera that was begging to be canceled. Well now that it has, I hope the real actors / actresses move onto better things. I hope they don't try to stay in the soap opera business because it looks like soaps are becoming a thing of the past.

BTW, they still have storylines from day one of the show still going on. And with the cancellation and the death of a former main character recently, it doesn't look like her story will get to be completed. They had great potential when it started, they just didn't go with it.

[David]

You are right, Satan.
Just read the Passions boards at www.soapcentral.com
Though it had wonderful sparks of comic genius, fans were
disgusted that, in 8 years, not a single storyline was resolved, not a single character was allowed to be happy.

Other than the Bewitched styled moments, there was no payoff to watching Passions.
At leat not on an emotional level.

Recent case in point:
Beloved character Grace Bennett (Dana Sparks), written out in 2004.
Brought back last month amid much fanfare.
Grace spent her entire month back on the air TALKING ON THE PHONE.
There was no onscreen reunion with her loved ones.
Then, she was killed with no warning!!!!
Fans were pissed!!!!!!

James Reilly was warned publicly by NBC to improve the show, but he ignored the network.
A shame.
Because Passions had SO MUCH potential.
Remember the mad adventures of Tabby & Timmy, Zombie
Charity, the Angel Girl, Miguel and Charity in Hell, etc

RE: Days: now #3 in the ratings, it's expected to go to ABC in 2009, while AMC and OLTL will go back to 30 mins to make room for it.

I don't think the soap genre is dead, though.
SoapNet is a VERY popular network.
It's AC Neilsen's refusal to count VCR, online & Tivo viewers (i.e. more than HALF the audience)
that causes the ratings to go as low as they are.

BTW, SoapNet begins airing Santa Barbara reruns this summer. That makes 4 older daytime shows they air.
Maybe DS can be their 5th......

David      

[BuzzH]

TRUE on "DS" there's some actors that can't act such as the actress who played "Amanda Harris" for starters. another is the woman who played "Roxanne" just to make another example.

Have to disagree here, I didn't think either of these actress's were that bad, no Meryl Streeps for sure, but not bad.  Now, the chick that played Joanna Mills, Lee Berry?  Whoa!!  She was HORRIBLE!!  

BTW, SoapNet begins airing Santa Barbara reruns this summer. That makes 4 older daytime shows they air.  Maybe DS can be their 5th......

DS would be a good choice.  Me personally, I'd KILL to see old eps of Guiding Light!  Say from 1968-1976? 

[Brandon Collins]

I'm not at all surprised that Passions was finally cancelled. I, too, attempted to watch it numerous times, but I absolutely cannot stand anything on NBC, so maybe that was my downfall. It's odd to hear that NBC wants out of soaps. With all that space during the middle of the afternoon, what the hell are they going to air? TALK SHOWS? I'm sorry, but with every celebrity in the world who is washed up wanting a talk show now, it's going to be harder to find a stable one then to have a decent soap with ratings, which is what Days seems to be now.

Not to mention the fact that I'm outraged that ABC is going to cut OLTL down to a half hour show. BOO! I never liked AMC--too goody goody for me--but they should just air Days at 12 for an hour. But hey, at least they're not cutting GH down to a half hour, which, frankly, I'm surprised at as well because I know that they were being heavily criticised in the past for their crappy storylines, and rightly so. So I guess that their ratings are climbing back up again? I guess the critics are swarming back towards it again.

(Really the only thing bad about GH that I've had to say lately is when they brought in the "good" twin to Manny Luis' "bad" twin part. THAT was REALLY uninspired, considering that just did that a couple years ago with Alcazar.)

[CastleBee]

I'm not in the least surprised about this news and IMO - good ridance.  I tried to watch also from time to time - especially when I was re-couping from an operation last Spring and, sheesh, I couldn't even manage it on pain meds.  When I checked the digital cable description I thought they had a lot of gall to describe it as "the wildest soap since Dark Shadows".  Give me a break - it was the corniest piece of doo ever on daytime TV - and, with the wasteland that pretty much is daytime TV, that would be saying something.  I've heard people call DS campy (and, in light of current technology, I can see where they're coming from though, since I was there I am able to recall my original respect for it) but all I can say in comparing the two is; you'd never see thought balloons over the head of Barnabas Collins. That might not have been so bad in "Passions" case if it had been humorous - but it just came across as lame. 

The only thing those two shows had in common is that they were on during the day and they involved supernatural elements ... and in the case of "Passions" just barely.  My theory is, if you want something like that to make a go of it you have to appeal to approximately the same age group most of us were in when we first fell for DS (pre to mid-teens).  To do that, I think it needs to be taken a tad more seriously than these (apparently) self-destructive folks did.

[Satan]

Recent case in point:
Beloved character Grace Bennett (Dana Sparks), written out in 2004.
Brought back last month amid much fanfare.
Grace spent her entire month back on the air TALKING ON THE PHONE.
There was no onscreen reunion with her loved ones.
Then, she was killed with no warning!!!!
Fans were pissed!!!!!!

James Reilly was warned publicly by NBC to improve the show, but he ignored the network.
A shame.
Because Passions had SO MUCH potential.
Remember the mad adventures of Tabby & Timmy, Zombie
Charity, the Angel Girl, Miguel and Charity in Hell, etc

Grace is the character I'm talking about. Her character didn't know the first 20 years of her life. That story should have been explored more before killing her off. Plus throughout the shows run it says her and her daughters have powers yet they haven't gone into that any further. They dropped everything that was interesting for women getting raped, becoming hookers, doing drugs, killing people, it's just stupid now. The first 3 years of this show are the best episodes ever made.

I've been following this story for over a week now. When I read JER was warned about Passions being canceled if he didn't improve it, the first thing that popped in my mind along with other fans was that he was still bitter over being fired from Days. He ruined that show and that's why NBC had him canned. Now that they have a professional in his place as headwriter I read that the ratings have gone up and it's becoming watchable again. I stopped watching it a few years ago after the serial killer storyline. I didn't care for how JER finished that. Everyone who died, ended up alive on an island.

It's odd to hear that NBC wants out of soaps. With all that space during the middle of the afternoon, what the hell are they going to air? TALK SHOWS?

Not to mention the fact that I'm outraged that ABC is going to cut OLTL down to a half hour show. BOO! I never liked AMC--too goody goody for me--

I guess you didn't hear about the extra hour for the Today Show uh? That's where the hour is going to go when Passions ends its run. That will be 4 hours of The Today Show now.

I love AMC. It's the only soap opera on right now that I watch. That's why I'm upset by this news and the news that ABC wants to add an extra hour of their morning show which could lead to the cancellation of one of their own soaps. That's why I'm saying the soap genre is going out because of all these stories going on. With Passions cancellation turning out true, I'm betting the latest one with GMA will be too.

[David]

According to this morning's Variety, Passions remains quite popular with young girls.
Negotiations are alredy underway to see it continue on My Network TV or Soapnet,
but I'll believe it when I see it.

What a sad missed potential this show turnd out to be!
It almost came back last summer with a bizzare DaVinci
code styled plot set  in Rome,
but as soon as that story ended, the show went nowhere.

David  

[MsCriseyde]

According to this morning's Variety, Passions remains quite popular with young girls.
Negotiations are alredy underway to see it continue on My Network TV or Soapnet,
but I'll believe it when I see it.

Didn't it briefly run on SCI FI Channel in early 2006? My guess would be that it's more likely to show up again on an NBC/Universal network, such as SCI FI or Chiller. That would require much less cross-company negotiation.

[David]

Sci Fi reran the first 3 1/2 months of Passions this past Spring. The eps featuring Tabitha the Witch and Timmy the Living Doll (Juliet Mills/Josh Ryan Evans) were the show's high point.
The ratings then were double what they are now.

But Sci Fi is now a huge network.
A small cult show cannot cut it there anymore.
Passions on Sci Fi was LOW rated.

The only place for Passions reruns would be Soapnet, but James Reilly wants it to continue elsewhere with new shows, not likely to happen.

David

[Charles_Ellis]

And to think that "Another World" was canceled to make room for this crap!

[adamsgirl]

I"m not surprised that "Passions" is going at all, and from what I've heard, "Guiding Light" is hanging on by a thread, soon to end its run. Perhaps the soap opera genre really is nearing the end of its life. After all, these "serials" started out on radio. Maybe they just can't sustain a life of their own anymore.

Someone mentioned "All My Children." I have watched that since its inception. However, it's been maddening lately with some of its "out-there"storylines, such as Josh Madden being this miracle baby of Susan Lucci's character, Erica, and her first husband, Jeff. Way back when, Erica was the first character on a soap opera to have a legal abortion. Oh, but turns out now, years and years later, her evil gyno, Greg Madden, absconded with the fetus, implanted it into his own wife -- and voila! -- baby Josh (now a hunk of a man, by the way), biological son of Erica and Jeff. I mean, puh-leeze!

[Nancy]

According to people I know who work in the soap opera business, it is very much a dying genre and they are either pondering retirement altogether or planning on working in prime time or something else altogether.

That doesn't mean syndicating the soaps in their heydey won't do a good business on SoapNet.

A friend of mine who worked in production of Guiding Light for years moved to One Life to Live and then to General Hospital where she is now.  She had pondered going to teaching as she "saw the writing on the wall" for the continued longevity for soaps.  But the opportunity to move out to California and work on General Hospital seemed like a better way to "go out" if that is what ultimately happens.

Nancy