Brian Frons: The ABC Villain Responsible For All My Children's Demise

FYI, I just came across this TVLine article reporting that Lucci's upcoming memoir,"All My Life" has a passage that blasts ABC daytime exec Brian Frons whom she holds responsible for the downfall of All My Children: 

Many of this blog's readers have posted comments indicating they agree with Lucci's opinion that Frons is the Simon LeGree of television, with good reason.  Not surprisingly, there have been a number of petitions signed by viewers calling for ABC to fire Frons.

(The ratings for The Chew, AMC's replacement are down from those of All My Children [see TV Takes All: Ratings for The Chew Week Four Flat and Still Behind All My Children].)

A little digging has shown that Frons may indeed be responsible for the whole debacle and that he moved the show to Los Angeles, despite the fact that he was counting on a cancellation, a huge betrayal to those of the program’s employees who uprooted their lives and lost money to do so.  While he made those physical changes to the show, he did not bring in the right writing team to keep the show up to date in the new media landscape of the 21^st century that competes with reality shows, the Internet, mobile devices and more.

Frons has been a huge failure at ABC and, inexplicably, he’s been kept on.

Named president of Daytime, Disney-ABC Television Group in 2006, Frons had been head of ABC Daytime since 2002.  Since then, he had been responsible for AMC, One Life to Live, Port Charles and The View, three of which are now DOA.

He also took on the roll of head of SOAPnet, another Disney holding, which is now on its way out as well.  It will go off the air in 2012.

How does this guy survive?

Frons’ order to move All My Children to California lasted a little more than year.  According to Wikipedia, he told the cast and crew that in order to save the program, it was vital that the show move to LA to cut down on production costs.  All the players and production team members were asked to take pay cuts.

In a move of solidarity, they all decided to relocate, so the show and other employees’ lives would not be compromised.

Many people left friends and family and left their homes behind – some losing a good deal of money due to the real estate bust, since they sold in a down market.

Even though ABC confirmed that production costs were cut by 25%, the show was not making enough money for the network and it was cancelled.

Frons, notoriously, has said the cancellations were a year in the making, meaning the move to Los Angeles was just window dressing.

Many AMC followers blame poor writing for the downfall of the program.  That could have been fixed if new, more talented scribes had been brought in – by Frons. 

It’s a new world and there’s no doubt the show needed updating and storylines in keeping with the times.  Surely, there are writers out there who could have updated the look of the show and the plots/writing, making it right for today’s younger viewers while preserving the characters for older ones.  Unfortunately the last head writer, Lorraine Broderick, and her predecessor, Chuck Pratt, were not able to do so.

Now that the show is moving online in January 2012 – at least according to the production company that bought it, Prospect Park – the new producers should be able to do just that.