Will General Hospital Be Cancelled Too?

Ever since ABC announced they were cancelling All My Children and One Life to Live soap fans have been writing, calling, emailing, tweeting, blogging and facebook-ing in protest. Though it's now a cliche to paraphrase Network's Howard Beale, it's still fitting: soap fans are mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore! The results have been astounding: Hoover is dropping their ads on ABC in protest (will Hershey soon follow?), the mainstream media has taken notice of our little revolution and even ABC has been forced to acknowledge the uproar (in a condescending and patronizing way, of course.) But amidst all the campaigning, many of us have been asking repeatedly, what about the other soaps? And specifically, what about the last ABC soap standing: General Hospital? I think most will agree, it doesn't look good. Many have theorized (and I agree) that the only reason GH hasn't been cancelled yet is because completely changing that 3 hour block would have been too drastic. The compromise was to cancel AMC and OLTL in two stages, with GH to go later.

Word On The Street:
We don't do much spoiling/rumors/gossip here. We've got some great friends in the know, but for the most part we keep things to ourselves (we don't want to get our friends in trouble!) But I will say this, a friend who is usually right on the money has told us: General Hospital: Sept 2012 - possibly earlier. The decision is not final, some of it depends on how well the replacement shows do. But we can expect a decision/announcement early 2012.

I'm not telling you this to discourage you or to offer a 'scoop' or whatever (like I said, that's not our thing here at Denial Island.) I'm saying it because 1. I believe it to be true and 2. Because we should use this information as Motivation. It really is do or die time and as hard as we've fought so far, we need to fight even harder. My friend says to keep going after the sponsors and to target advertisers that run ads "across the Disney spectrum" - she specifically names Novartis as a good target because they advertise on all Disney networks.

Spoiler Diva Ravenbeauty recently wrote in her column:
Disney needs to feel it the most or it means very little. This means addressing Disney's sponsors as well as ABC's. This means focusing a little more on Disney themselves, and their products. We need to contact the heads at Disney, and tell them that we will no longer take our families to Disneyland or Disneyworld, and will not buy their products or services any longer and why (which is our right). We have been doing some very good work here (and have made progress), but we are only giving them flesh wounds when we need to be aiming for the heart. From what I was told, Disney finds this all very amusing, even though ABC does not. If we get to Disney, it will trickle down to ABC with some real force.

Let's Keep Fighting!
So I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to keep fighting! I will continue to make calls, write letters and emails to the networks, their sponsors and also to soap and mainstream media. If you notice, towards the top of the page on our blog, we've got links for each soap. Click on those links to get their contact info (if you see any incorrect info or have contact info to add, please let us know!) I will also continue to boycott all ABC shows (except for the daytime soaps.)

ABC hurt us by cancelling our shows, so let's hurt them back! Maybe now they'll think twice about messing with soaps and their fans! This may truly be General Hospital's last chance.

-Melanie/SoapOperaBabble/daisyclover