Just before the wedding aired, head writer Pat Falken Smith and her team of writers angrily quit the show in August 1981 after repeated battles with Gloria Monty and ABC Daytime chief at the time Jacqueline Smith. Pat Falken Smith was also upset over the work done during her three-month absence during the writer's strike earlier in the year, claiming the Ice Princess storyline written while she was gone was, "the most convoluted, insipid, insane... crappy idea in the world." In the plot, Smith's team left and went to NBC's "Days of Our Lives". "Gloria's a genius—who runs a Gestapo operation," sniped Falken Smith in a 1981 "People Weekly" interview. During summer 1981, GH was averaging 14 million viewers per episode.