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We want drama! ABC soap fans rally to keep Erica Kane and her daytime friends on the air

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Like sands through the hourglass, daytime soap operas are falling off the TV grid.

The recent demise started in 2007 with the cancellation of “Passions” on NBC (and later on DirecTV). Two years later, CBS nixed “The Guiding Light” and ‘As the World Turns.” Earlier this month, ABC announced “One Life to Live” and “All My Children” would be coming to an end.

Deanna Paige Uranga, though, isn’t ready to give up on Erica Kane just yet. Like the conniving characters she’s grown up with, Uranga, a 43-year-old nurse from Los Angeles, has devised a plan.

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Fans are ticked off, she said. “And we’re not going to just let this slide.”

Fifteen minutes after learning the ABC soaps had been canceled, she set up Rally for Amc and Oltl on Facebook. The page has generated nearly 3,000 “likes.” But it’s not a place to commiserate. Oh, no, they’re on a mission. Each day Uranga and her partner Jamie Vaughn list an advertiser’s contact info and ask fans to flood the company’s phone lines, Facebook pages, etc. in hopes that the sponsors will stop advertising on ABC.

“We have a lot of passion. We’re focused. We’re not deviating from the plan,” said Uranga, who has been watching “AMC” since she was 7. “We’re doing this for us, for our mothers, for our grandmothers. Soap opera fans have negative stereotypes. But it’s just like being an avid reader. This has been one grand book that we have been watching for decades. We do not want this book to end.”

Every book, though, eventually reaches its last page When asked if she was prepared for the idea that the campaign may fail, Uranga would only say: “I’m not allowing that thought to even be a possibility.”

So far, the efforts haven’t been a total waste. Uranga and Vaughn’s page has teamed up with a sister page, Save AMC and OLTL, to get their voices heard. Fans inundated Hoover with messages Sunday and the company announced Monday that it would no longer advertise on ABC. Wednesday, they targeted the Hershey’s. Thursday, the soap fans are going after pain reliever Excedrin -- though, some of the postings seem to have been deleted, according to Uranga.

Novartis Consumer Health, the pharmaceutical company whose products include Excedrin, had this to say about the outcry: ‘Novartis Consumer Health is aware of consumer feedback regarding advertising support for Excedrin on ABC. We’ve told our fans who’ve posted their frustration on our Facebook page that we’re sorry to hear that the cancellation of two of the longest running shows on ABC Daytime has caused them a headache!’

ABC had no comment on the fan campaign.

ShowTrackers, do you think the fans have a chance? Do you plan on joining them in their fight?

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-- Yvonne Villarreal
twitter.com/villarrealy

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