James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten
James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten are American television writers, primarily working on soap operas. The duo have worked together for over 20 years, starting on the prime-time serial Dynasty. Together, they created the soap opera The City, a spinoff of Loving. On November 14, 2012, Esensten died at the age of 75.
Brown and Esensten are somewhat controversial; their writing has been criticized as often drifting into the absurd and sci-fi. When the two wrote for Guiding Light during the later part of the 1990s, the show's primary herione, Reva Shayne, was cloned, and when the duo would later write for Port Charles, vampires were introduced, along with other supernatural creatures. When the two took over as head writers at All My Children, the show plummeted to record lows in the ratings. The show reached a record low of 2,144,000 viewers on November 2, 2007.
Because of the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike, Brown and Esensten went financial core within the guild, allowing them to write for All My Children because of financial strains brought on by the strike. Megan McTavish, the writer they replaced at All My Children, was displeased. "These are not youngsters struggling to make mortgage payments or feed their children. Their sole intent now seems to be piling up more money for themselves," she said.
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