Labor Day Is Going To Be Huge...

...Labor Day 2012, that is.

I say this in response to the changing landscape of daytime television - a turnover perfectly summed up by the fact that ABC has just announced the cancellation of two legendary soap operas, All My Children (which will end in September after forty-one years) and One Life To Live (which will end in January 2012 after forty-four years). This leaves just four soap operas - General Hospital (on ABC), Days Of Our Lives (on NBC), The Young And The Restless (on CBS), and The Bold And The Beautiful (also on CBS).

Now, with those two shows gone, surely we'll get a new daytime game show in their place, right? Wrong. While the fates of game shows and soap operas may be intertwined, so are the fates of soap operas and trashy talk shows. These two shows will be replaced by two The View clones with two of the most appalling titles you could possibly imagine - The Chew (replacing All My Children) and The Revolution (replacing One Life To Live). Yes, this is from the network that already has The View.

Now, I don't give either of these shows very long to live, which is why I'm predicting a lot of new five-day-a-week game shows for September 2012. Even if The Chew and The Revolution do survive, we'll probably lose another soap opera and some of the many talk shows being launched as a response to the end of The Oprah Winfrey Show (in September, after twenty-five years). So I think Labor Day 2012 is going to be huge - but that's Labor Day 2012, and we're not even at Labor Day 2011. What will we get on Labor Day 2011? The end of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? and Don't Forget The Lyrics, and probably a few new kids game shows. Oh joy.

While we're on the topic of daytime game shows - former The Weakest Link host George Gray has been named the new permanent announcer on The Price Is Right. As Drew Carey's contract runs out in 2012, it's easy to speculate that George is being groomed to replace him, but who knows.

Only four months, two weeks, and one day until Labor Day,

Aaron