Cancelled ABC Soaps? NO.

All My Children and One Life to Live. I heard the news today that ABC is planning to cancel BOTH shows. I've been hearing the rumors about AMC for a while now. However, I was taken by surprise that they added OLTL. I choose to just say NO. And I'm not the only one.

All the big search engines are showing Thousands of protests. Including a couple of mine. I started watching soaps literally on my Grandmothers lap when I was about four years old. ABC soaps - as a matter of fact.

Over the years with a career and other life events, I have started and stopped watching them on a regular basis. But I always came back. I remember taping them on a VCR. I was overjoyed with SoapNet, then TIVO. Now I'm a novelist that still enjoys having them on as I write. If something great is happening, the music alerts me and I get to watch it. 

A lot of maybes have crossed my mind. Maybe Soapnet could pick them up on a regular daytime basis. Or even a different cable channel. OWN - maybe? Hel-lo? Oprah?

You may be surprised at the people, the Personalities - that are soap fans. Another surprise is how many of are beloved movie stars started out in Soaps. Even James Franco, who does guest appearances on General Hospital, has said he is shocked at how hard these actors really work. The huge amounts of dialog they must memorize on a daily basis.

When you get to know and love certain characters on a Daytime show, they truly become almost like real family and friends. They make you laugh, cry, and find empathy for characters you never thought you would even like. Some of the actors on these shows are truly brilliant.

And the writers may make us mad at times, but who doesn't? They are also the ones that write the very story lines that have so engrossed us for so long. 

I always laugh when someone watching one of these shows says, derisively, "That would never happen."  Well, no kidding Sherlock. I just wish you were that smart about Reality shows. 

These remarkable shows are meant to entertain. However, they have also been the very ones that were brave enough to take on real life difficult and sometimes tragic situations. Story lines that have included Aides, Homophobes, loving gay stories, interracial couples, bullying, suicides, mental illnesses such as Bi-polar disorders. Organ donations. The list goes on. Showing those very difficult stories in ways that have opened a lot of eyes, minds and hearts.

I hope that these two awesome shows are somehow saved, like in the cliff-hangers they love to give us, but if not I bid a very sad goodbye. And pay my gratitude to Agnes Nixon, the creator of both shows. 

To the great cast of characters like Erica Slezak, Susan Lucci, Micheal E. Knight, Robert S. Woods, Robin Strasser, David Canary, Walt Wiley, Rebecca Budig,  Alicia Minshew, Cameron Mathison,  Kassie DePavia, James Depavia, Andrea Evans, Darnell Williams, Debbi Morgan, Jacob Young, Bree Williamson, - the list could go on and on.

Who can ever forget characters like Janet from another planet? Leo, Jamie, Starr, Rex, David Vickers, Todd Manning, Marti, the late Megan from OLTL?

My heart breaks to think we may actually lose these awesome characters and stories. When our own lives get so hard or even strange that we don't know how to cope, where can we quietly go to find comfort and understanding from characters as weird and dysfunctional as were are? 

Mark Twain said, "Truth is stranger than fiction." Clearly, he had never watched a soap opera, - they hadn't been invented yet. To prove my point, dare I bring up Luke and Laura and the Ice Princess? Or will they take General Hospital from us next?

Drive Safely  ( if you can afford the gas)

KT Banks