Fans hoping to tune into their favorite daytime soap opera on Tuesday were left empty-handed and angered when ABC opted to air a General Hospital rerun rather than an all-new episode. ABC had been slated to air Season 59, Episode 18 in the usual 1 p.m. ET timeslot, with a synopsis for the episode reading, “Robert and Anna’s investigation puts them in peril. Plus, Brook Lynn grows frustrated with Austin and Victor reveals his true intentions.” However, the network instead opted to air a previous episode of the show, pushing the typical weekly release schedule back a day.
According to the show’s official Twitter account, a new episode did not air due to “ongoing breaking news coverage.” Just 15 minutes ahead of the episode’s scheduled premiere time, and just after teasing the episode with a first-look clip earlier that morning, the General Hospital account shared a tweet announcing the episode would not air. The account explained, “due to ongoing breaking news coverage, today’s scheduled episode of General Hospital will now air tomorrow.”
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While General Hospital does on occasion not air weekly episodes, that is almost always due to major events on the calendar, such as holidays. And while breaking news coverage has in the past promoted ABC not to air new General Hospital episodes, many fans noted that there didn’t appear to be any breaking news coverage taking place across any news station on Tuesday. The miscommunication led to a string and angry replies from fans upset over the lack of a new episode. Keep scrolling to see what fans had to say.
‘I do not understand’
“Can someone please tell me why in the hell General Hospital is a rerun today?” asked one viewer. “It is the middle of the week, and it is not a holiday. I do not understand this.”
‘What’s the real reason?”
“There is no breaking news coverage,” tweeted somebody else. “I live in Texas, not covering shooting, up until now, regular scheduled programming was on. So ABC, what’s the real reason?”
‘It’s really terrible’
“I turned on MSNBC to see what was going on. It’s really terrible,” wrote one person. “Every time GH is preempted by news here we have to watch it on computer later or on demand late at night. Now it’s not preempted by news and they air a rerun. ???”
‘No reason’
“No news break in here in NY – I guess something happened in another state but usually they’d air that here anyway,” commented somebody else. “Kind of over GH constantly being preempted or just canceled bc of news as if we can’t get news literally anywhere.”
‘There isn’t any news’
“Now [ABC] is preemptively canceling [GH] when there isn’t any NEWS that can’t wait until when the NEWS comes on???” questioned one person. “This tells us everything Disney thinks of [General Hospital] fans.”
‘What breaking news?’
“What breaking news.?” asked another viewer. “Watching the news and the only thing everyone talking about is the debt ceiling and the voting coming in at 3.”
‘Showed a rerun for no reason’
“I keep the news on all day at my house…saw nothing that should have kept GH from airing…now I sit down to catch today’s episode only to find it’s not airing AGAIN!!!” wrote another person. “So where’s today’s or should I say yesterday’s episode? There are enuf news channels..geesh!”
