General Hospital Nightshift - is it Ruining General Hospital?

General Hospital Nightshift is a spin-off of ABC's General Hospital. This isn't the first General Hospital spin-off; ABC ran the thirty minute soap opera Port Charles for about six years. Port Charles was certainly different from General Hospital; they even had a storyline with vampires for a while. But the difference between Port Charles and General Hospital Nightshift is that General Hospital Nightshift is only shown on SoapNet. Great for people who have that channel, but what about those of us who don't?

The existence of General Hospital Nightshift makes it hard to enjoy the storylines of those characters that are also on General Hospital. I often have this feeling that I am missing something because I do not get to see General Hospital Nightshift. For example, there was a storyline on General Hospital Nightshift where one of the new nurses killed a bunch of patients in some conspiracy to help someone else buy the hospital. I'm not sure that's even right, but that's what they were saying on General Hospital. But the entire time I was watching this, I didn't know if the girl was guilty or not because I didn't see General Hospital Nightshift. Now that her character is in a coma, I won't know what's going on unless I look it up online.

But who is really going to go to all of that trouble to look up what they're missing?

I have slacked off watching General Hospital because of feeling like I'm missing something. And it isn't only the one example given above. It's also the break up of Dr. Robin Scorpio and Dr. Patrick Drake. All of the reasons for that were aired on General Hospital Nightshift. Supposedly, there was a baby that Robin wanted to adopt, but Patrick doesn't want to be a father. There is so much going on with those characters and I'm left in the dark because General Hospital Nightshift airs on SoapNet. I doubt I'm the only viewer that General Hospital is losing because of this.

I don't understand why these problems exist with General Hospital Nightshift and didn't with Port Charles. I used to watch Port Charles and, while they had the same characters sometimes appear in both shows, I never felt that I had to watch both shows in order to know what was going on with General Hospital. Maybe it's because General Hospital Nightshift is on SoapNet while Port Charles aired on ABC. I'm sure that ABC wouldn't have wanted the two shows to conflict since they both aired on their channel. It's a shame, though, that General Hospital Nightshift is being allowed to ruin General Hospital.