After learning that ABC canceled All My Children and One Life To Live, Hoover VP Brian Kirkendall wrote on Facebook:
I want you to know from me personally that we hear you loud and clear. My wife and mother are both passionate viewers of All My Children and One Life to Live, as are many of my colleagues here at Hoover. We were and are as disappointed with this news as you are.
In fact, we will discontinue our advertising with ABC this Friday, 4/22. We’re making every attempt to pull our spots from these programs sooner.
How noble! Except pulling money from a dying show while collecting a “mass emotional outpouring of support” at [email protected] won’t actually do anything to save the programs.
Brian Steinberg writes on AdAge:
Hoover isn’t putting its money where its mouth is. If Hoover really cared about the fate of Erica Kane and whoever else populates these long-running shows, it would put a call into ABC and say, “Hey, we were really upset to hear about your decision to cancel these vaunted programs. They attract an audience we care about. What say we try to sponsor a week of them? Or how about you keep them on the air a few weeks longer, and we’ll kick in extra advertising support?” That would be a true display of concern for the programs — and a clear desire to make a big splash in front of the audience they attract.
Hoover actually only spent $243,000 on ads during ABC’s soaps last year, which wouldn’t even buy one commercial on a show like American Idol. The company doesn’t have enough clout to do anything about the cancelation, it’s just trying to exploiting die-hard AMC and OLTL fans during their darkest hour.
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