ABC Soap Opera Cancellation: Will it Be One Life to Live or All My Children?

Rumors have been circulating for weeks on the cancellation of ABC daytime's soap operas, One Life to Live and/or All My Children. However, ABC denies that neither One Life to Live nor All My Children is at risk of being cancelled. Considering that CBS denied it when they cancelled Guiding Light, the ABC soap fans do not trust that their shows aren't in danger. Are the fans concerns valid?

It's no secret that All My Children has been over-budget for a long time and their solution was to move filming from NY to CA. This resulted in losing some actors including Thorsten Kaye (Zach Slater) and all of the small children because their families didn 't want to move to the West Coast. However, the show is still over-budget. Considering the expense and effort to move the show cross-country, it's assumable that All My Children will be given time to straighten out their budget. But budget issues aside, All My Children does have other problems.

While the show's main character Erica Kane, played by Susan Lucci, is still on the show, most of the other actors are gone. James Mitchell (Palmer Cortlandt) had left the show before passing away in January 2010 and David Canary (Adam Chandler) also left the show last year. In an effort to regain fan interest, two old characters were brought back, Angie and Jesse. But this isn't working because they don't have any good storylines going for them. Mostly the storylines revolve around Ryan and Greenlee. In fact, many fans jokingly now call it the Ryan and Greenlee show.

Now compare that to One Life to Live, who stays in budget, has an excellent cast, and a bigger fan following. If one of the ABC soaps has to be cancelled then it should be All My Children.

The other rumor regarding these two ABC soaps is that the network is contemplating a merger. However, a true merger doesn't seem feasible. The two fictitious towns are near each other, but the actors wouldn't get enough screen time. Even if some of the smaller characters were axed, it would still hurt the storylines. Merging the two soaps would probably lead to a cancellation of the new merged soap opera within a year.

The better alternative to a merger would be to have only a few Pine Valley citizens move to Llanview. But choosing which ones would be difficult. It'd most likely be the characters of Ryan and Greenlee. For the actors who play those two, it probably wouldn't be feasible to move back to NY and most likely have to take a pay cut.