‘General Hospital’ effectively renewed by ABC for another season

Finally, the soap-opera quartet is complete for the upcoming season: “General Hospital” is going to be back for another go.

Following the recent renewals of NBC’s “Days of Our Lives” and also CBS’ “The Bold and the Beautiful” and “The Young and the Restless,” it has now been confirmed that we are going to see a whole lot more of ABC’s only remaining soap per a Deadline report. While the show does not necessarily announce official renewals, it will be coming back yet again.

After both “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” were each sent away by ABC a couple of years ago, there were some serious concerns that we would be seeing the end of this show, as well, in the near future. What has happened since that time is pretty simple: The daytime talk market has waned, and “General Hospital” has remained solid. The failure of Katie Couric’s talk show in some ways proves that it is very hard to keep a show on the air these days in this format, and “The Chew” is now the only remaining talk show that was once involved in this unique sort of daytime drama.

Do we see “General Hospital” being on the air forever, though? It is going to be difficult, especially when you think about the way that so many younger viewers enjoy content. There are so many options now, they can just binge-watch older shows rather than keeping up with a daytime soap, which runs so many episodes a year with little time for breaks. Personally, though, we’d be happiest to see it and the others remaining still around. Variety is important, and these series are a pretty extensive part of the medium’s history. It’d be a shame to lose that.