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I stopped watching AW because of JFP being producer for a number of reasons....
JFP was supposedly against NBC's plan to turn AW into a clone of DOOL. Yet she created a DOOLish atmosphere by upping the violence quota(which i hated), producing DOOL-type stories such as Justine and the Nick/Sofia/Maggie triangle, hiring models who couldn't act, and experimenting with supernatural stories.
JFP took credit for increasing key demographics (women), which is apparently what she was hired by NBC to do. If you expect me to believe that she increased the violence and dumbed down the women characters *specifically* to increase viewership among women, well, I can't believe it. If the demographics did go up (and there is contradictory evidence whether they increased and whether the increase was sustained), then I can only believe that the increase is a coincidence.
JFP said that she loved the characters on the show. If so, why did she rewrite much of their history and personality?
Near the end of her tenure, JFP said that she "loved" Another World. Really? Did she hunt up old episodes? Does she eagerly tune in each day to watch the show, even though she's no longer EP? That's what it means to love the show. What JFP loved was being in control of a show and subjecting it to her latest fancy.
And did she ever listen to the advice Harding Lemay was hired to give her? From what the show became under her hands, it seems not.
Jill Farren Phelps always said those things when she staged her latest hostile takeover of a soap. People forget that she was foisted on Another World only as part of the three-soap game of musical chairs. John Valente had been doing a fairly good job as Exec Producer at AW (not great, but nothing terrible), but JFP's tenure at GL had gone downhill so dramatically that Procter and Gamble demanded her ouster. So Valente was shuttled off to As the World Turns and Jill the Pill was installed at AW. I can't recall who ended up at GL, but I'm assuming it was ATWT's Exec Producer since they were doing this game of pick-up sticks.
At any rate, Valente was a trainwreck at ATWT, and JFP pretty much tanked AW creatively and financially in her effort to turn the show into something it wasn't--a soap focused on crime, medicine, and melodrama. Valente failed mainly because he hired some terrible head writers who ended up having to be fired. JFP failed mainly because she had learned NOTHING from her failures at GL and at Santa Barbara, trying to cram the same kind of misogyny down the throats of the viewers, crowing about "raising the demos". She pushed HER story ideas on her Head Writers, even though they were hired to write and she was...not. Her storyline stunts draw in a short-term viewership (kind of like car accidents attract rubber-neckers), but pokes holes in the overall fabric of the show, eventually leading to long-term loss of viewers. It happened at SB and GL, and AW and GH, and to a lesser extent at Y&R because by then people knew her MO and didn't let her have total authority.
So yeah, when she crowed about 'loving ____" [insert dead/dying soap here] and wanting to return the soap to its glory days, I liken it to a politician promising everyone the moon and stars in order to get elected--then forgetting every single promise once in office.
Jill Farren Phelps always said those things when she staged her latest hostile takeover of a soap. People forget that she was foisted on Another World only as part of the three-soap game of musical chairs. John Valente had been doing a fairly good job as Exec Producer at AW (not great, but nothing terrible), but JFP's tenure at GL had gone downhill so dramatically that Procter and Gamble demanded her ouster. So Valente was shuttled off to As the World Turns and Jill the Pill was installed at AW. I can't recall who ended up at GL, but I'm assuming it was ATWT's Exec Producer since they were doing this game of pick-up sticks.
At any rate, Valente was a trainwreck at ATWT, and JFP pretty much tanked AW creatively and financially in her effort to turn the show into something it wasn't--a soap focused on crime, medicine, and melodrama. Valente failed mainly because he hired some terrible head writers who ended up having to be fired. JFP failed mainly because she had learned NOTHING from her failures at GL and at Santa Barbara, trying to cram the same kind of misogyny down the throats of the viewers, crowing about "raising the demos". She pushed HER story ideas on her Head Writers, even though they were hired to write and she was...not. Her storyline stunts draw in a short-term viewership (kind of like car accidents attract rubber-neckers), but pokes holes in the overall fabric of the show, eventually leading to long-term loss of viewers. It happened at SB and GL, and AW and GH, and to a lesser extent at Y&R because by then people knew her MO and didn't let her have total authority.
So yeah, when she crowed about 'loving ____" [insert dead/dying soap here] and wanting to return the soap to its glory days, I liken it to a politician promising everyone the moon and stars in order to get elected--then forgetting every single promise once in office.
AW was pretty good in the 1967-69 era, with the storylines. And the organist at that time, Clarke Morgan was pretty good scoring the show then. Just a few years after Clarke’s untimely death, soap opera had completely abandoned organ music in favor of the dreary, pre-orchestrated version of pre-taped background music. While the orchestrated music is good, nothing beats the organ music used during AW's heyday(1964-1974)
One of my grandmom's first soaps, believe it or not was this one, which she watched until the early 80s.
Interestingly enough, it led to her watching AW(because it came on before AW).
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(which i hated), producing DOOL-type stories such as Justine and the Nick/Sofia/Maggie triangle, hiring models who couldn't act, and experimenting with supernatural stories
What an enjoyable thread! 
