Soap Budgets and the Stars
Written 10/5/03 by Suzanne originally for
Bella Online
It's hard to tell what network I'm watching my soaps on any more. Todd
Manning, Marcus Taggert, and Dixie Cooney Martin are on As the World
Turns. A.J. Quartermaine, Rafe from PC, Julia Santos, and Frisco Jones are
all on Bold & The Beautiful. Julia's husband Noah is on Young and the
Restless. It's hard for me to watch my favorites; there are too many soaps
on!
Thank goodness the second Lucky is going to All My Children and Caleb is
going to One Life to Live!
I keep reading about budget cuts at ABC and NBC. What is CBS's secret? Are
they the only network with money for daytime?
ABC cut its budget by canceling Port Charles and making cast cuts. NBC cut
its budget by forcing Days of Our Lives to cut its cast and crew. I guess
CBS is making so much money off the two top shows Y&R and B&B that they
don't have to worry about it. They can even steal all of these out-of-work
ABC actors for their shows. I hope they hire Abe and Maggie from Days;
it's such a shame that Days wrote them out. I'm surprised the media has
not made a bigger issue about this. Abe was the longest-running African
American character in the history of television. How terrible to fire him.
Plus the actor, James Reynolds, does a lot of charity work in his spare
time, way more than your average actor. That's just wrong. I'm surprised
that no one has pointed out that all of the shows seem to be cutting out
black actors from their casts. Why are they the first to go when there are
budget cuts?
Think I'm wrong? How about the fact that both Marshall and Bonnie are
fired from As the World Turns (A show that had a compelling African
American story until recently)? Guiding Light has a whole black family but
we hardly see any of them except an occasional glimpse of Mel or her
father. We know about Reynolds on Days. Hank was cut to recurring on OLTL
(we haven't seen him since) and Keri was killed off, but fortunately they
just hired the excellent actor Kevin Mambo. Taggert was reduced to
recurring on GH, so who can blame him for going to ATWT? Gia is the only
remaining black character on GH. I think there's only one black actor on
AMC and none on B&B. So far Passions and Y&R seem to be the only show that
is not cutting its black characters. Good for them!
What about other minorities? The latino characters have been written out
of AMC except for Maria. They had a badly-written Asian family but
mercifully wrote them out. OLTL still has the Vegas, but Cristian is being
written out soon. GH has two major latino characters, Sonny and Alcazar. I
could point out that Alcazar is played by a non-Latino, but that would be
petty. I could point out that both characters are bad guys, but then
that's unfair because there aren't many good guys left on GH nowadays.
After much ballyhoo, B&B quietly wrote out its Latino character (who they
gave AIDS!) and his family. There are a couple of lesbians on AMC and one
on Passions. It's pathetic that most of our soaps are populated mostly by
lily-white, straight actors. Daytime a poorer track record then primetime
and I don't understand why none of the writers or producers seem to see
that.
Get with it, you guys!
Page updated 12/27/11
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