Catherine Hickland: "You Don’t Treat Your Family Like They Don’t Matter"
Soap veteran Catherine Hickland is still steaming mad with the news of ABC's decision to yank All My Children and One Life To Live off the air. The actress sounded off on her blog and doesn't hold back. Hickland stated:
Soap actors and audiences dance a dance. We laugh together, cry together, survive together and love together. That’s what makes a family. Whenever I would hear you-know-who make a speech and call us the “ABC family,’ it made my skin literally crawl. You don’t treat your family like they don’t matter.
Hickland goes on to ask the question of how ABC Daytime President Brian Frons is still calling the shots. Hickland stated:
“The ratings kept declining” he will spin. And I say
“Yes, well that was the plan, wasn’t it?” Isn’t that what you have been doing with all of your character assassinating and lame story telling? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing micromanaging your producers, writers, and staff to insanity? Business 101 teaches that you hire super competent people and let them do their job. Control freaks find this nearly impossible, which is why they ultimately fail. Its pure arrogance to think that you know what the audience will accept on shows that they knew far, far better than you. They didn’t accept mediocrity, and for that, the viewers were punished? What’s wrong with this picture?
Actually, How he stays employed is a mystery… however life is funny, and karma is not just a theory. It may not be today and it may not be tomorrow , but he has some karma coming, that’s for sure. SO many people hurt under his tenure.
Say it again Cat! To read more of the scathing blog click here!
Kudos to J Bernard Jones for this diddy...
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Comments
19 April 2011
1 week 3 days
I love Catherine Hickland! I just read her entire blog on this and I am so glad. She is an amazing lady and I watched her court room scene from OLTL when she confessed to killing Spencer. That was AMAZING!!!
1 January 2009
9 hours 54 min
BRAVO Catherine!!!
29 August 2009
1 year 33 weeks
Thank you, Catherine!!!! I am so happy you have the courage to speak on this! Praise God... As a longtime viewer of ABC soaps (especially OLTL), it has been an excercise in frustration to watch what has happened to our soaps in recent years. OLTL is the only soap that has seemed to whether the storm, creatively...with Ron C. and Frank V. now in charge. Even though they've had their rough patches, they have managed to stay true to the essence of what that show has been for decades...The rich and the working class, having ethnic diversity, having ALL age groups represented on the show and getting story...and interacting with each other. I am SO, SO very proud of this show and proud to say I am a long time, loyal fan!!!
On the other hand, GH has been a source on constant frustration an disappointment...as I have been left wondering where is Bobbie (throughout all of Carly's crises), the Quartermaines, etc. And I have been force fed The Mob all the time. They should just rename GH "Sonny...and the Rest of Them". As good as Maurice B is, the show needs more balance and needs to show that it respects the long time, loyal viewers.
OLTL is by far the strongest, most consitently satisfying soap on ABC. It is witout a doubt in the best shape now, of the three. With the right person/people in charge with at ABC, I have no doubt that they could find a way to parlay all the strong devotion from viewers that soaps inspire into money for the network. Soap viewers devotion is STRONG and loyal, usually for decades. That type loyalty to a network is GOLD!...and hard to come by these days. It should be respected and worked for all it's worth.
19 November 2010
34 weeks 1 day
She is spot on!
16 April 2010
8 weeks 2 days
She nailed it! This isn't something that just happened on its own. The audience didn't just one day give up on the show they have been watching for 40 years. This was pure and simple a calculated move by Brian Frons to dismantle the daytime lineup so he could get rid of the daytime soaps to accomplish his own personal agenda. He has been eating away at each show like a cancer for the past ten years in an attempt to make the soaps seem to be a dying genre. ABC must have a bunch of Morons in their executive chairs to not have seen what has taken place here. Its funny when Disney bought ABC I thought, Wow this is great they will surely take care of the daytime lineup since it is such an institution and I believed that Disney being an institution as well they would respect what was built of the course of decades and loved by millions. Was I wrong! its funny, my brother worked for Disney owned ESPN Zone in Orlando, I said to him once, It must be incredible working for a company like Disney, and he replied people think of Disney as Mickey Mouse when In reality its just a Rat! I now understand that statement.
14 January 2009
2 days 8 hours
Wow. I think all the soap stars, on all the stations should see what she should wrote.
2 January 2008
17 weeks 1 day
Cat let it rip u and robin are the only ones taking frons to task
28 September 2009
2 days 8 hours
Bravo!
12 February 2010
4 days 1 hour
Damn skippy, Catherine!! As she said when the news first broke, may Frons' karma be SWIFT!! And the swifter the better!!!!
13 December 2007
1 year 23 weeks
I love this woman.
22 October 2010
5 hours 34 min
What makes anyone think this is right? Killing 2 soaps on the same day? It really goes to show that abc does not care about their employees (except Frons) or their viewes. We are crying out we want to watch out soaps and we have someone sayin too bad. Watch the chew. Well you know what I started to watch DOOL and YR and I will not watch abc except for GH. And Cat while you are at it, and everyone else, lets not forget Anne Sweeney. Everybody and their mother made tearful appeals to her, and she was deleting our messages and throwing mail away. Shes more heartless than him. NBC and CBS it good. I dont need to watch ABC, I hate them.
19 April 2011
1 year 50 weeks
And the congregation said, "AMEN!" Catherine Hickland was spot on with everything that she said.
20 April 2011
17 weeks 5 days
I read Catherine's entire blog post and it's great. Love her idea that the actors and audience are dancing together.
I've long had a similar thought - that there is a covenant between the show and the fans - the show promises to provide good stories and actors and the fans promise to keep on watching. I noticed a long time ago that ABC was not keeping its part of the covenant - it wasn't just that the writing was truly bad (boring, predictable, repetitive, etc.), but it seemed as though ABC was determined to thwart its viewers expectations, desires, and requests. A classic example was hyping the return of Genie Francis to GH, which had fans very excited, only to have her gone again (permanently) in just a few weeks. Similarly, Jonathan Jackson came back to GH recently with lots of hoopla. Most fans expected to see him paired again with Rebecca Herbst, because they have magic chemistry, but no - he's paired with a new actress in yet another meaningless mob story and GH fired Herbst. I could go on - GH threw away the terrific Sarah Brown on one of the darkest, nastiest characters I've ever seen on daytime or primetime.
On the increasingly rare occasions when GH manages to find a good story, they turn it into another mob story and end it quickly: the best example is the dating violence story involving Kristina. It was a great idea - socially relevant and definitely a "hot topic." I looked forward to seeing it unfold - seeing Kristina and boyfriend deal with his actions and her acceptance of them; seeing their families deal with them; seeing the therapy sessions; and especially seeing the natural consequences - what happens to the boyfriend's early acceptance to Harvard after a conviction for assault? What happens to Kristina after she accepted violence in her first relationship - is she doomed to repeat that pattern? The Gloria Monty GH would have explored all of these stories and more. Under Frons & Co., GH turned this into another mob story -it was all about Sonny (his mother also was abused and he was determined to kill the man who hurt his daughter)- and was over in a month or so.
I've found these developments perverted - it seemed to me that ABC was trying to drive me away from the soaps. And it succeeded. I didn't want it to do so - I kept holding on, in large part because of the actors. Each of the soaps had/has actors that I love and for a long time I kept tuning it to see them. But the stories were so bad, dark, mean-spirited (toward the characters and the fans), and depressing that I finally started letting go of "my" soaps. I gave up on AMC ages ago and I've been drifting away from GH for a long time, beginning with the senseless violent deaths of Emily and Alan Quartermaine. The recent death of little Jake was the end of my connection to GH, for reasons well-expressed on this site by lots of other GH viewers. My relationship with OLTL is more complicated - I gave up daily viewing a few years ago (about the time that Catherine was fired), but I still check in when Erica Slezak has a good story or when Tuc Watkins is in town.
I hate that the ABC soaps are so bad. I love that Catherine called out Frons on it and accused him of deliberately destroying them so that he could cancel them. I do not want AMC or OLTL (or GH, for that matter) cancelled. I want them to stay on the air with new leadership at ABC (and a new headwriter at GH) so they can get back to the great and entertaining storytelling they used to do so well.
20 August 2008
1 year 35 weeks
funny, my captcha for this comment was "BLAST" and that's exactly what catherine hickland has put frons on. and ssa, i cosign your comment 110%.
29 August 2010
8 weeks 4 days
Her blog post was just as fierce as she is! LOVED IT!
20 April 2011
2 years 4 weeks
You realize that they used Cat's scenes with Ty Treadway in the "Rex's Dad" show to win the Emmy for ABC? Two people that they had let go...
Everyone please unite against Brian Frons. Not only is he putting the AMC and OLTL folks out of business, it also will affect DC, Soap Opera Digest, Soaps in Depth, TV Guide, et al.
Bad management is no excuse for more unscripted shows. It's just lazy and incompetent. Boycott all ABC shows until we are heard!