OT: "As the World Turns" **Cancelled** !

Joshua_me

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CBS cancels another daytime drama


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Dec 8, 1:17 PM (ET)

By DAVID BAUDER


NEW YORK (AP) - CBS canceled "As the World Turns" on Tuesday, putting the company that coined the phrase "soap operas" out of the business of making daytime dramas for the first time in 76 years.

"As the World Turns" has been on the air since 1956 and televised its 13,661st episode Tuesday. Its last episode will be next September, the network said.

It's the second daytime drama CBS has canceled in a year, after "Guiding Light." Both shows were produced by a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, the company for which the term "soap operas" was created because it used the shows to hawk products like Ivory soap and Duz laundry detergent.

Daytime dramas have been fading as a genre for years with more women joining the work force and the increased number of channels offering alternatives like news, talk, reality and game shows. In tough economic times, paying casts, producers and writers proved prohibitive to networks when there were cheaper alternatives.

The cancellation will leave CBS with only two daytime dramas: "The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and Beautiful."

Through the years, actors Marisa Tomei, Meg Ryan, Parker Posey and James Earl Jones have appeared on "As the World Turns." The show follows families in the Illinois town of Oakdale.

"It's a hell of a Christmas present," said actress Eileen Fulton, who will mark 50 years playing the character Lisa Grimaldi on the show. Her character has been through nine marriages and Fulton was hoping for a 10th before the signoff.

"I'm just very sad," she said. "I'm sad for all of the people who work out there in Brooklyn (where the show is filmed). We're a family. I hate to be split up. It's like a divorce."

Brian Cahill, senior vice president and managing director of the P&G subsidiary TeleNext Media Inc., said the company is actively seeking a new outlet to carry the show.

TeleNext said the same thing about "Guiding Light," which went off the air in September, but has been unable to find a new home. Keeping the show alive online has been discussed, but that's an alternative where cost may prove prohibitive.

Procter & Gamble first began producing soap operas in 1933 with the radio show "Ma Perkins," and has made a total of 20 such programs in its history.

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CBS is a division of CBS Corp.

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On the Net:

http://www.cbs.com/

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Wow ! The end of a VERY long era...

It's kind of embarrassing, but I still Tivo the show.

In a way, it keeps the memories of all the years I have of watching it with my Grandmother when I was growing up. All the summers and "sick days" and holiday breaks spent in front of the TV with my "Ga Ga".

It kind of breaks my heart to see it go.

:sad1:
 
WOW...we were just talking about that show on Thanksgiving. My Mom was watching it when Walter Cronkite broke in and announced that JFK had been shot.
 
I started watching ATWT in the late 70's after I was stung by a swarm of wasps and my babysitter let me stay inside with her during "outside time". I watched it during the summers with my sitter and when the VCR was invented, I started taping it.

When my oldest son was born I told the doctor he was not to let me have the baby until after ATWT.

I don't watch it every day but I do TiVo it and watch it a couple times a week.

I will miss Meg and Paul and Lisa and Holden and all the rest of my soap family.
 
Oh, no! Say it ain't so!

My mother started watching ATWT in 1956 when she was pregnant with me. Story goes, the other women in the apartment complex were talkingabout this new soap opera. She had to start watching so she could keepup with the conversation.

Mom hadn't kept up with the new storylines and new characters, but she sill tuned in occasionally.

I stopped watching when work and "real life" got in the way. Sometimes, I'd watch and not recognize the new characters. I was so happy to see a familiar face, Bob, Lisa, John, Barbara, Kim and other old-timers whose namees I can't remember now. oh, and mean James Stenbeck!

I watched so many grow up fom children to teenagers to adults.

I was proud to see Meg Ryan, Marisa Tomei, Julianne Moore do well in filsm and think, I knew them when they were on my soap.

I have a book about ATWT celebrating its 40th anniversary. I will treasure it.

To review who's who and more
http://www.soapcentral.com/atwt/index.php
 

Thank goodness Mom died this summer without knowing that her favorite, indeed her only, soap was cancelled.

But, being a smart woman, she probably would not have been surprised.
 
Wow first GL and now ATWT..

I grew up on those shows and its so sad to see they are going ot be gone.. Both made TV history
 












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