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KATIE Shifting To Live Format In Final Six Months Of Its Run! Talker Has To Tighten Budget!

By Michael Fairman

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Courtesy/ABC

Courtesy/ABC

Last week, we brought you the news that the axe had finally fallen on Katie Couric’s Disney/ABC syndication afternoon talk show, Katie!   The show will end after only two seasons, but  now in the final six months of production, January to through June, due to budget issues the talker will shift to a mostly live format!

A representative for the series told The Hollywood Reporter, “The content of Katie will mostly be produced live on four out of five days.  In order to keep the production schedule to four days a week, the fifth show will be taped but is expected to be limited to the one-hour time allotted (less commercial time).”    They added that the reason to switch to the mostly live format was in the works prior to the news of the officially cancellation.

THR revealed that originally: “Couric’s tapings ran longer than the allotted time because she wanted to keep going to get as much good content as possible.  In some cases, shows were running twice the scheduled time.  A source close to the show insists Couric’s decision to run longer was made jointly with Rachel Miskowiec, who was brought in last May as executive producer for the show’s second season. The result was that producers and editors often racked up overtime to cut the content to fit the one-hour format, triggering significant budget overruns. Katie was already one of the more expensive daily talk shows ever produced, in part because it had more field producers and news staff than most.”

So, Katie was clearly an over-budget talk show that was made room for in the ABC line-up for affiliates in the original timeslot of General Hospital!  And everyone was complaining how over budget soap productions are!  Well, it looks like it happens in talk shows too!  What do you think of the switch of Katie to a mostly live format, and the troubles the show has had?  Weigh-in!

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You know, an awful lot of unexpected surprises can happen when you air live….like a guest suddenly making a speech to ABC to bring back the soaps…or a large portion of the studio audience breaking out into a We Want the Soaps chant….

Oh, I’d love to see that happen.

SO happy ABC FINALLY CANCELLED HER SHOW!!! I ONLY WATCHED HER SHOW IELLSB WHEN SHE DID THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY FOR GENERAL HOSPITAL & WHEN RICK SPRINGFIELD WAS ON!! I’M A HUGE ELLEN FAN!!!

They can always use reruns of OLTL in place of Katie until they figure out what their going to do. That will save on a lot of money and I bet it gets better ratings.

Honestly, I don’t know what to say about ABC Daytime and their budget problems. But one possible suggestion is that they may want to get out of producing original content, and just become a giant billboard like AOL. Hey, it could be groundbreaking! Just think about it… an all infomercial major network! LOL. ABCommercial! 😉

Good riddance !!!Now please bring back OLTL and AMC !!!!!

That will never happen mike, OLTL and AMC will never come back on abc. Time to move on, I’m over it now. i enjoy watching general hospital and days of our lives.

So true..
I can not understand how some think ABC will air the 2 soaps, again..
It will never ever happen, they are over/done/gone the same as the canceled soaps before them..

Unless! PP by way of a miracle gets them up and running, again, and that is not probable..

The 2 soaps are no longer in ABC’s hands and when or if ABC gets them back they will collect dust on a shelf, forever archived..

I have an idea on how they could save even more money-just stop producing the Katie show right now. Then they could broadcast repeats of the last 6 months of OLTL, bring OLTL back into production and give us new episodes after 6 months.
I guess that would be a longshot! A guy can dream, can’t he?

I am happy about anything that shows just how stupid ABC is. It is so sad that our wonderful soaps are being replaced with these awful talk shows. Bring back AMC! Bring back all the soaps!

Why bother? Get out now!

Funny, talk was cheap(cheaper than soaps) but in this case it wasnt and the show gets cancelled…but 4 those who dislike Katie…well, she still has her fans and we havent heard the last from her…i wish daytime would experiment with a new soap…it could air for 6 months and repeat 6 months to help keep costs down…also in place advertising would be another way to earn extra money to pay for these shows…maybe a character could be shown ordering and drinking a pepsi or another character is shown buying a Ford truck…it would also add a little realism too…just saying! But i doubt they’d try another soap…the last 4 is it i feel so we should support them while we can…even Y&R!

I MO the budgets were just an excuse. Wonder what they will do now. If it isn’t our cancelled soaps I will not watch. I am looking forward to Tainted Dreams ABC can’t touch that

Here an idea – lets bring back soaps in a LIVE format.
See what rating the Sound of Music got.. people love LIVE (ex. Kelly and Michael)

Everything in TV is cyclical… every ‘genre’ always comes back.. but changes slightly.

What better way to create a buzz … bring back LIVE soaps… you can bet ABC would have an audience increase..

Oh did I mention bring back OLTL…

These budget and over run issues make me laugh… I’m quite sure that OLTL was giving ABC more value for less money.

maybe they can barrow Frank Valentini to get them under budget. lol!

WHO CARES, I DON’T , SHE IS AS BORING AS WET DISH RAG THAT FELL ON THE FLOOR, HOPEFULLY WHO EVER GETS HER PLACE DOESN’T DO WELL EITHER, I WOULD SAY PUT THE SOAPS BACK, BUT ABC/ DISNEY DOESN’T CARE AND WON’T ADMIT DEFEAT, BUT AT LEAST IF THEY DID THEY WOULDN’T HAVE TO REPLACE THEIR DUMB TALK AND FOOD SHOWS WITH ANOTHER FAILURE.

Her contract was too expansive for what the ratings were getting which is what led to her downfall. No surprise here, this woman has always been money hungry since her NBC days.

Despite that, her failure will not bring back AMC and OLTL. Katie’s ratings weren’t stellar but they weren’t The Revolution’s numbers either. ABC will just produce another talk show but this time with an host that ask less money than Katie did. And if that talk show with the other host gets ratings similar to what Katie was getting, ABC will keep it. Sad but true. ABC absolutely wants nothing to do with daytime soaps except for GH.

Nothing against Katie or her show (don’t watch it, don’t know), but the fact that the network allowed the show to continually run over budget after what they learned about “inflated” soap star salaries and show production costs, really pisses me off. Soap stars supposedly make less than primetime stars; yet at one time, the soaps were the “cash cows” for the network. Still, the networks have treated their soaps/stars badly with very little support while they paid gross sums of money to their night time stars and promoted the heck out of them. Soaps started being cancelled and network execs said that one of the reasons was because the shows were too expensive to produce. Hmmm? One would think ABC would have kept an eye on such things with the KATIE show, which has never done well in the ratings. When, oh when, will they ever learn???

Katie and the majority of talk shows are repeats….. unlike daytime dramas.

Going live–a move of desperation. Good riddance!

A talk show going over budget!!!!!!! How can that be????????

now that Christmas is over – I dont feel as charitable to this woman anymore.
she – along with the past daytime boss – ruined the soap genre…. let her go to yahoo dot com… that way we dont ever have to see her again.

bring back the soaps…. you still own them ABC!

Beyond the Gates

RATINGS: ‘Beyond the Gates’ Inches Closer to ‘General Hospital’ in Total Viewers

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Beyond the Gates and General Hospital

The latest ratings are out for the week of October 26-30, 2026 and the big takeaways include: that CBS daytime’s Beyond the Gates was separated by only 23,000 viewers behind third place (of the soaps) General Hospital! For the last several weeks, Beyond the Gates has been closing the gap on this year’s winner for Outstanding Daytime Drama Series, and continuing to best GH in the key demos.

According to the latest Nielsen ratings breakdown from Soap Opera Network, the final week of October brought Beyond the Gates 1.790 million on average tuning-in and the show set a season high in total viewers. Meanwhile, General Hospital hit a new season low! The long-running ABC soap had 1.813 million for the week, and once again the series did not go over the 2 million mark.

Meanwhile, in the key Women 18-49 demo, Beyond the Gates was firmly ahead of GH with a rating share of 0.21, while General Hospital had 0.17 rating share.Then, in the key Women 25-54 demo, Beyond the Gates was once again ahead of the ABC soap with a ratings share for that demo at 0.30 while GH came in with 0.26.

Photo: CBS

MORE BY THE NUMBERS

In addition and comparatively, Beyond the Gates +22,000 viewers week-to-week, and had the largest gains in viewership year-to-year in daytime TV with +267,000 from this in 2025.. However, General Hospital seems to be going in reverse. The show was down -56,000 viewers week-over-week and down -22,000 year-over-year .

BEYOND THE GATES

Let’s take a look at some of the storylines that had people tuning-in to Beyond the Gates during the ratings week:

Hayley (Marquita Goings) attempted a massive shocker regarding her pregnancy and tried to use it to extract money from Bill Hamilton (Timon Kyle Durrett). Although, Bill saw right through her game, he demanded a paternity test, and made it clear he has no intention of raising the child—planning instead to pay her off to take the baby and leave. Meanwhile, Hayley confided her plan to her cousin Randy (Maurice P. Kerry).

Jacob Hawthorne (Jibre Hordges) and Naomi Hamilton (Arielle Prepetit) clashed over Jacob’s ongoing investigation into The Impaler, causing significant strain in their marriage. At the same time, Smitty (Mike Manning) considered taking matters into his own hands—including potentially heading to Mexico for evidence—while Martin Richardson (Brandon Claybon) worried about what comes next.

Photo: ABC

GENERAL HOSPITAL

Over at General Hospital for the ratings period, the story served up included:

Carly (Laura Wright) and Valentin (James Patrick Stuart) teamed up to investigate what really happened to Jack Brennan (Chris McKenna). Later, Danny (Asher Antonyzyn) leads them to Jack’s dead body.

Jude (Wil Traval) dropped a bombshell claim to Alexis (Nancy Lee Grahn); that he is Phoebe’s father, while Brook Lynn (Amanda Setton) and Chase (Josh Swickard) signed their divorce papers.

Then, Danny caught Rocco (Finn Carr) and Scout (Kayden Brenna Tokarski) sharing a kiss, plus the shocking return of Heather Webber (Alley Mills) capped the week.

Now the questions become; without having much promotional synergy in the ABC day-part to draw more eyeballs it is not helping but hurting General Hospital. It seems Beyond the Gates is also a  benefactor of a one-two-three punch of CBS soaps (Y&R, B&B and BTG) and promotion.

However, that still doesn’t take away the fact that Beyond the Gates is close to besting GH in all ratings category as they go head-to-head in some markets across the country.

So, are you excited to see Beyond the Gates climb in the ratings? Are you concerned for General Hospital? Do you think they can stave off Beyond the Gates in total viewers or will the upstart soap overtake them in the next ratings report? Share your thoughts in the comment section.

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General Hospital

Antonio Sabáto Jr. Breaks Silence on His Son’s Arrest for Fatal Hit-and-Run

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Antonio Sabato Jr.

Antonio Sabáto Jr., the former Jagger Cates of General Hospital and GH: Night Shift, and the former Dante Damiano of The Bold and the Beautiful has issued his first public statement since the incident involving his son, Jack’s arrest in Alaska for a fatal hit-and-run.

Jack is the son of Sabáto Jr. and Oscar-nominated actress Virginia Madsen, and according to court documents obtained by KTUU  Jack, was allegedly driving a white Chevy Tahoe when he hit and killed Carl Simmonds, 42, near an intersection in Anchorage around 5:35 a.m. on Monday, November 9.

The reports indicated that Jack fled the scene — but later decided to called the cops to say he hit “something” that “suddenly appeared in the road” while he was “doing late-night DoorDashing.”

Jack Sabato

Photo: NBC

Now, Antonio has taken to his Instagram breaking his silence on the situation, sharing, “At this time, my family and I are navigating an extremely sensitive and deeply personal matter.”

He added, “As a father, my love for my children remains unconditional, and my priority is the well-being of my family. We ask that the public and members of the media honor our privacy during this difficult time and keep us all in your thoughts and prayers.”

The soap alum concluded, “I also wish to extend my heartfelt condolences to the family and loved ones of the gentleman who tragically lost his life. My thoughts and prayers are with them as well. We sincerely appreciate your compassion, understanding, and respect for the privacy of everyone affected.”

Jack Sabáto was arraigned in court on Tuesday, November 10 with bail set at $5,000, and a no-driving order and the potential of $5,000 penalty fees if he fails to attend future court appearances.

Antonio is the father to Jack, 34, daughter, Mina Sabato, 24 and son, Antonio Sabáto III, 15.

This is a developing story. You can check out Antonio’s official statement below.

So, let us know your thoughts on this tragic hit-and-run, which claimed the life of another man, and Antonio’s statement, via the comment section below.

 

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A post shared by Antonio Sabato Jr (@antoniosabatojr)

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General Hospital

‘General Hospital’ Casts Ayla Bullington as the New Avery Jerome-Corinthos

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Ayla Bullington

Sonny (Maurice Benard) and Ava’s (Maura West) daughter Avery looks quite different, starting on today’s November 9 episode of General Hospital. That’s because GH has made Avery into a full-blown teenager and the role is now being played by actress Alya Bullington.

In her debut, the Tennessee native was thrown into the deep soap waters with Daytime Emmy winners, Maurice Benard and Eden McCoy (Josslyn). Bullington weighed-in to TV Insider about her first scene which featured Avery overhearing a fight between Sonny and Josslyn.

She explained “It was something I have never done before, I did not have a lot of experience with the screaming and the crying stuff, but I got my first script, and I was like, ‘OK, this is a huge opportunity to learn so much about how that stuff works and to become this character that I have never even tried playing before.’” 

Josslyn

Photo: ABC

THE TEENAGED VERSION OF AVERY WILL HAVE A LOT TO CONTEND WITH

Speaking of working with McCoy, Bullington shared, “She’s incredible. I remember her just laughing and making jokes on set, and then the minute that they started taping, she just locked in and she cried immediately, and my first thought was, ‘I want to be able to do that.’

The soap opera newcomer added, “I think she just inspired me so much because she is so great and she can just lock into whatever character she wants to in the moment.” 

The character of Avery was born back in 2014, but as recently as the October 8 episode of General Hospital, the character was suddenly referred to as a teenager. This is the second young female character in recent months to be aged up following the casting of Kayden Brenna Tokarski as Scout Cain.

As for her take on Avery and what’s ahead, Alya said,“She’s emotional, and she’s curious, and she’s a really fun person to play because so much stuff is happening in her life. I think she’s kind of confused about what’s happening and what to believe.”

So, what do you think about General Hospital making Avery a teenager? Are you excited to see the conflict between Sonny, Ava and Avery now that they have aged up the character? Share your thoughts and welcome Alya to GH via the comment section below.

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