(EMAILWIRE.COM, April 24, 2012 ) New York City, NY -- The rally will be held for a second year on May 15, 2012 outside Lincoln Center from 12:00 to 6:00PM to target advertisers arriving at Avery Fisher Hall for ABC’s Upfront Presentation.
At last year’s rally, fans let ABC/Disney know they had no intention of watching its less expensive replacement shows for the cancelled soaps All My Children (AMC) and One Life to Live (OLTL). Viewers’ voices were heard loud and clear by ABC/Disney management when the network cancelled OLTL’s replacement show, The Revolution, after only three months on air and decided to keep its one remaining soap, General Hospital, as a valuable lead-in for Katie Couric’s new afternoon talk show.
Fans will be rallying to send a strong message to ABC/Disney advertisers that their consumer dollars will be following soap operas, regardless of where they air. Soap operas continue to attract larger audiences than the cheaper talk shows replacing them. Fans and industry insiders are adamant there are other viable production models for these shows based on ratings data and viewer engagement metrics, fans believe resuming production of AMC and OLTL is in the best interest of ABC/Disney, its advertisers and affiliates.
Current articles in Deadline, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, Globe Magazine, Soap Opera Digest, Huffington Post and other mainstream publications question ABC/Disney’s decision-making process and demonstrate the impact of fans. Advertisers such as Hoover, who withdrew all advertising from ABC/Disney in April 2011, understand and are reaping the benefits of responding to consumer feedback.
As a result of The Chew and The Revolution’s failure to attract viewers in the key demographic, ABC affiliates are forced to provide free, prime-time advertising slots to meet advertisers’ contractual guarantees. Finally, according to Marc Berman’s website TV Media Insights, ABC/Disney has seen a reduction in its prime-time ratings, presumably as a result of soap fans boycotting its non-soap programming.
Soap Fans United is dedicated to helping spread useful, intelligent information among groups as many soap viewers proactively campaign to save the shows/genre and pursue the many avenues of preserving the legacy of scripted dramas on daytime television.
