General Hospital changes time slot Monday

Longtime fans of ‘General Hospital’ are looking at a big change Monday.

That’s when ABC’s lone remaining sudser officially moves to the 2 p.m. slot that used to be owned by ‘The Revolution’ – and ‘One Life to Live’ before that.

The move was announced months ago – and fans are still complaining about it.

 I spend a decent amount of time on soap message boards – and I understand the complaints. The thing is, I think we should be glad we get another year of GH at all and quit focusing on the time slot.

There’s a conspiracy theory out there that goes as follows: ABC is moving GH to the 2 p.m. slot to try and kill it because the last two shows in that time slot were cancelled.

Here’s the thing, I do believe ABC is trying to kill GH. I just don’t think the time slot has anything to do with it.

What essentially happened was that ABC designed a talk show vehicle for Katie Couric (a very expensive talk show vehicle). The show is a syndicated program that ABC owns the rights to.

Couric’s show will be shown on the majority of ABC networks – although I have seen chatter about it appearing on other networks in different markets. For the most part, though, it will be shown on ABC.

As for a time slot, ABC did push for affiliates to put the show in the 3 p.m. slot. I think ABC network bigwigs did think they would be free of all of their soaps at this point. Between ‘The Revolution’ tanking so badly and soap fans creating such a stink, though, ABC decided to give GH a reprieve for another year.

The simple fact of the matter is, though, ABC is still trying to kill GH. It’s just not happening until next year. ABC will develop another cheap reality show to take GH’s place – so we should enjoy what time we have left with the show. There is no five years down the line for GH.

As for the argument that the 2 p.m. time slot is death – well, that’s just ludicrous.

For the bulk of its final year on the air, ‘One Life to Live’ was getting better ratings than GH in that time period. It wasn’t cancelled because GH was getting better ratings – it was cancelled because GH has the better pedigree and ABC wanted to free up that two-hour block of time together.

Honestly, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think the time slot is going to affect GH’s ratings all that much. Will it take a hit? I’m actually interested in seeing the first week of numbers. Even if it does dip, I think it will rebound back within a week.

Essentially, I’m looking at the one-year pickup for GH as a gift – because I honestly wasn’t expecting it when it happened.

Fans expecting more than this last year, though, are probably going to be severely disappointed.

 

What do you think? Is ABC trying to kill GH?