Here We Go Again: WETA's Cancellation Plans
By Michael Gordon
Washington, DC—WETA-26, the PBS affiliate serving the nation's capital and surrounding areas, will be cancelling EastEnders as of 27 January 2006, after having aired the programme for 18 years.
As a longtime Anglophile and frequent visitor to London, I have never missed an episode since the first broadcast and have even seen "current" episodes in London and (through a BBC connection) visited the EastEnders set.
I believe I was the first to learn of this decision, which, until my discovery, appears to have been a closely guarded secret at WETA.
I have been a member of WETA for approximately 25 years. Each year, since the station commenced broadcasting EastEnders, I have called Sue Richmond, WETA senior vice president for membership, to confirm that the program would be renewed and I have increased my membership pledge upon Sue's assurance that EastEnders would continue.
In June of this year, prior to the expiration of my membership, I placed my annual call to Sue and learned from her that Kevin Harris, the station manager and vice president for programming, had made the decision not to renew the station's contract with the BBC for EastEnders and that WETA's broadcasts of the show would end in late January 2007.
A few years ago, after Kevin Harris became station manager and vice president for programming, I spoke with him on the telephone about the future of EastEnders. He stated, without equivocation, that EastEnders would continue to be carried for as long as he remained at WETA because of the active and vocal base of fans that the program commanded.
Needless to say, I was disappointed not only over the cancellation decision but also over the fact that Kevin would go back on his word. I called him to remind him of the commitment he had made to me and his response was that "times had changed" and that the cancellation decision had been considered and approved at all levels of the station.
I asked Kevin why he would be prepared to risk losing the financial support of WETA members who were EastEnders fans and would no longer support the station if the programme were dropped.
He stated that he hoped fans would not terminate their memberships, but, even if they did, he could no longer afford to devote station revenues to a programme that had so small a viewing audience and which carried a sizeable price from the BBC. He added that he believed he would be able to attract new viewers and members to the station by carrying other programming that had a more wide-ranging appeal than EastEnders.
I pointed out that the station had done very little to promote EastEnders or attract new viewers but he responded that he believed such efforts to be a "dead end" because the show was a "soap" and could not develop a new audience because viewers would be unfamiliar with the existing storyline.
My first formal step in protesting WETA's decision (besides reducing my membership pledge from the Founder's Club level to the minimum level) was to ask fellow fans and long-time viewers Florence Neider and Saul Rosen to join an ad hoc committee with me to contact as many EastEnders fans in the DC area as possible.
We made use of a telephone list assembled by Doug Goodall, a fellow fan and former WETA volunteer, who had served as an unofficial liaison between the station and viewers, but had since left the area (although remaining a viewer by regular receipt of taped episodes through the courtesy of one of his former constituents, Ute Macuk). Larry Jaffee, editor of the Walford Gazette, after hearing of our predicament, also furnished us with a D.C.-area subscription list, and the editors of the E20 Launderette newsletter, Debbie and Dana, also agreed to publicize the station's decision.
Florence, Saul and I have made hundreds of phone calls and sent numerous e-mails asking DC-area fans to leave telephone messages for Sue Richmond () expressing their disappointment with the cancellation decision and informing her that they will terminate their membership if EastEnders does not continue or increase their pledges if it does.
A number of fans have personal contacts with members of the Board of Trustees of WETA and are in the process of communicating with them.
In addition, we have attempted to secure mainstream media coverage of WETA's decision and the impact it is having on fans, but nothing has yet been published.
Unlike WLIW in New York, WETA has not been willing to quantify the cost of EastEnders and has not been open to the possibility of having the programme's fans raise sufficient funds to cover all or a portion of the cost of the broadcast.
We will also be commencing a letter-writing campaign to WETA president Sharon Rockefeller.
If you are a D.C.-area viewer and have not been in touch with Florence, Saul, or me about EastEnders, we would strongly encourage you to join our campaign. I can be contacted at and I can assure you that your e-mail address will not be transmitted to others without your prior approval.
EDITOR'S COMMENT: WETA's tagline is ironically "be more aware." Then why won't they publicly announce its plans to cancel EastEnders, and let fans prove that they will financially support the cost of airing the show.
As usual, the BBC has been silent — once again demonstrating that they don't care about maximizing a u.s. audience for the programme that is its flagship franchise in the u.k. pure speculation on my part, the loss of weta does not bode well for eastenders' future on public television.
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