CBS’s recent decision to cancel Procter & Gamble's As the World Turns was bad enough, but then the network’s straight-shooting chairman Les Moonves gave soap fans an extra chill with his comments to The New York Times. “Is it the end of an era?” said Moonves of ATWT’s demise. “Sort of. Only the special soaps are going to survive. It’s certainly the end of the client-owned soap.” Here’s the concern: All of the soaps airing on CBS are client-owned, including the two created by the late Bill Bell. The Young and the Restless is co-owned by Sony and Corday Productions while The Bold and the Beautiful is owned by Bell-Phillip Television. Did the Big Eye boss misspeak? Or was this a not-so-subtle threat? TV Guide Magazine spoke with Brad Bell, exec producer of B&B, about Moonves’ bizarre statement.

Should we be worried about what Moonves said? What was your take on that?
I believe that he was specifically referring to the P&G shows when he said that. B&B just recently signed a two-year deal with CBS in October, so we have legs with the network. Y&R signed a similar deal around the same time.

So there’s no cause for concern? I hate to be paranoid here but a lot of us were creeped out by Moonves’ cold, cavalier attitude toward soaps in that CNBC interview he gave on the day of the cancellation. He’s just not showing the love.
I think we’re now down to the six soaps that will survive. For me there was no surprise that ATWT was cancelled. Their business model wasn’t working. I had [prior to the cancellation] spoken to people at P&G and they were very free with the information that they were losing money and they wanted to either find a way to make ATWT profitable or get out of the game. So they had to pull the plug and CBS had to pull the plug.

So you’re saying P&G wanted this?
P&G is a big company and they’re more focused on selling their products and less concerned about their shows. They certainly care about their fans…but it was time.

Any concerns that you’ll soon be part of a two-soap lineup on CBS? Could that affect ratings?
I’m not concerned. Days of Our Lives is standing alone on NBC and their recent numbers have been pretty good, so I think the two soaps can hold their own on CBS.

B&B is the most widely-watched soap on the planet. What, if anything, does that mean to CBS? Would it weigh in your favor if there were ever thoughts of cancellation?
Our status internationally means nothing to them. What’s important is our ability to sell to them at a deficit. That’s all that’s really important—CBS buying the show at the right price.

Which you’ve been able to do by cutting back your production costs—but how much more can you cut?
Oh, I think we can produce these shows even more economically than we are right now. In a way, we’re going full circle back to the 1950s where they were producing these soaps for next to nothing. We got very fat and happy in the ’80s and ’90s, doing five takes per scene, and going on all these lavish remotes. We couldn’t spend money fast enough. Now we’ve been tightening our belts a little bit but we still have a long way we can go.

What more can you do to slash the budget before it starts showing on air? From what I hear, your actors are now performing with next-to-no rehearsal, doing almost every scene in one take, and turning out more episodes in less days than ever before.
It might mean writing more scenes with fewer people—two-person scenes require much less time to stage and shoot—and we might be able to eliminate some of the sets. We can also expand our ways of doing the show. We shot much of Betty White’s final four-episode arc very inexpensively and on location at the beach, and it all came together wonderfully. Those episodes are right up there with the ones I’m most proud of. And let’s be honest, we still pay for certain things that are a little bit luxurious. We may need to do without them.

So there’s still a silver lining in all this rotten news?
If we’re to look at the positive, there are now hundreds of channels and soaps are still the top-rated shows in their timeslots. I look at the ratings for Mad Men—a show that has everybody talking—and they’re only pulling in a million viewers. You’ve got to be kidding me! Talk shows and game shows are so inexpensive to produce but we’re determined to challenge them and stay competitive with them. It’s not over yet for the Bell family. We plan to be in this business for many years to come.