Jump to content

Lapsed Viewers: What Would Lure You Back In?


Recommended Posts

  • Members

There's hardly anything that could bring me back to US soaps. For starters, the soaps left are some of my least favorites. B&B for example is outdated. It says a lot that the new generation reboot of sorts was to put Brooke & Taylor's daughters up against each other. Talk about redundant. And original.
Y&R is just a lost cause. Being #1 means nothing to me. Most of the long-time characters expired a long time ago but they will never get rid of some of them.
DAYS is just a dead soap walking, no offense. What would be the point of watching. Also they need to tone down with the dramatic music going on in each and every scene. It doesn't enhance drama when there is none in the first place.
GH could easily be rebooted though, take inspiration from NZ's hospital soap Shortland Street (which I cannot praise enough) with an ounce of Robin Cook who writes medical-based mysteries. But they won't.
A new soap would be good, but who would they get to create it? Carlivati? Or worse, Bradley Bell? Some production company should do a syndicated soap and sell them to big markets to air them between 5 and 8 pm, up against worthless local programming or entertainment news, game shows and the likes. But American channels are not ready for that.
Also I've always thought it and getting into international soaps only comforts me more in that idea. The hour-long format is outdated, that worked in the 80's but it should have been put to rest by the late 90's. I'm willing to bet there wouldn't have been as many cancellations had they done so.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 101
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Members

Days Of Our Lives:

Sherri Anderson and Lorraine Broderick as head writers

Melissa Anderson back in Salem

John Martin or Robert Gentry as Bill Horton

Sandy Horton back with a veteran actress in the role. 

Re-establishing the Grant Family and Carver family

Bring in more doctors (Neil Curtis, Mike Horton, Nathan Horton, Craig Wesley)

Bring Anjelica Deveraux with Anna Stuart (Ex-Donna, Another World)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Interesting question.  The entire daytime network model needs to be scrapped.  With all the choices that people have nowadays, it doesn't seem possible to get people to tune in 5 days a week to these shows for an hour.  

B&B is 30 minutes, which probably speaks to its apparent lack of stagnation in terms of that coveted demographic.

 

For me personally, I'd rather the production companies make their classic episodes available for streaming.  I rarely watch any of the remaining daytime dramas but I can binge watch a string of classic episodes from a soap.

 

I don't like it when people compare a show like Scandal or Empire to daytime soaps, it's apples vs. oranges.  Scandal and Empire are weekly shows, while B&B, Days, GH and Y&R are expected to air five days a week.  

 

Networks used to do weekday model successfully but you need talented writers to pull this off, and daytime has been experiencing a severe dearth of writing talent for about 10-15 years now (in the cases of some shows, it's been even longer than this).

Even if Daytime had the talent, with all the choices competing for viewer's time and ad $$, there would still be less ad $$ coming into these shows, and the expectation of producing good shows with less $$$ budgeted would still be there and now it's more intense with an ever expanding slew of shows trying to get a slice of the same pie-- the slices are much smaller than they were in the 60s, 70s and 80s when these shows reigned.

 

The model that I thought had the best chances of succeeding was the Hulu type model, which TOLN had but failed due to a host of factors (poor financing model, lack of critical support).  The TOLN shows only produced 2 shows per week (not counting the recap show) and that seemed to be the best they could manage.  Years before ATWT was cancelled, I wondered why they didn't either scale back episodes or scale back the minutes per episode from 60 to 30 minutes.  The reasons would become obvious why they didn't.

 

In short, the only thing that could (no guarantee) help these shows would be better writing talent with some consistency and scale back the shows to something closer to a Primetime model (1-2 times weekly or 30 minute episodes).  It would take a massive change in production and creative methods and I don't think the people behind these shows have that level of ingenuity to pull this off.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Soap operas are definitely an outdated form of entertainment. 5 hours a week, every week with no breaks or reruns is too much to ask for in this day and age, unless you're of an older demographic and/or home all day every day. Which is precisely why the ratio of viewers over 60 is so great. Quality-wise, they would benefit from being trimmed down to 30 minutes and lose some of the extra cast, but I don't think the network would go for that. They would lose half the time in programming. It's gonna be all or nothing. 

 

(Note: Any network show that's been around for 20+ years is going to have lower ratings than yesteryear. The Today Show, the evening news, The Tonight Show, and everything in between will not pull in the same type of numbers they did in the 90's.) 

 

@Nothin'ButAttitude mentioned the class structure and how everyone is rich, and I totally agree. Everyone is connected to immense wealth (even if the set of their "mansion" looks like a flimsy cardboard box...). Even if someone in town in "struggling," it's not even believable because everyone is connected by blood or by marriage and could receive a handout from various millionaire/billionaires. 

 

It's not that I want the remaining shows cancelled, because I love the genre, but they're never going to completely restructure and reinvent themselves until they die out completely. Who's to say some day a daytime soap would ever be resurrected, but the best thing we'll ever get at a current show "reinventing" themselves is the awful eyesore that was Guiding Light: Death By Way of Peapack, NJ

 

Visually, The Bold & the Beautiful has kept up with the times the best. The location shoots are amazing. But their storylines are still outdated, and their love stories are so rushed. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

That's one of my biggest problems with soaps. You're right none of them are domestic dramas anymore. Everyone is rich though half of them don';t even work. And many of the ones that do their job is basically a joke. Like GreyBunny said even if someone is supposedly struggling its unbelievable. You have all these young adults running around getting married or eager to start families with kids and a big house(which outside of the military I don't see most 20 somes rushing to do) but no struggle is portrayed whatsover. There's not much sense of family outside of one or two families on each soap that are the writer's pets. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Being ABC's highest rated show isn't that high a bar to shoot for.    It has about 8 million viewers.    But it is a show which is basically a comfy sweater at this point.   It has zero pop culture pull,  and hasn't been a water cooler type show in eons.    I am not aware of what buzz you see it getting.    Recently Patrick Dempsey left the show and that got a slight bump of media attention, but other than that I when has anyone been talking about it? 

 

If you don't like the term domestic drama, pull one of your own that covers unending love triangles, pregnancies, illnesses and divorces all in a little town where everyone sleeps with everyone and nobody goes to work.     I don't believe there is any scenario where even one's dream writer and dream cast could sell that these days.   If they could then one of them would.      

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

What soap features a little town? DAYS? Because B&B takes place in Los Angeles and Port Charles and Genoa City are portrayed as mid size to major cities between the airports, and global corporate headquarters. Also cozy mysteries sell the cute little town aspect all the time. Albeit the characters in those actually work and usually the lead is running their own business. I can't name any shows with the concept but every few months Alison Sweeney and Brooke Shields appear in a new movie. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Make that 4!  They need to cancel all soaps and have producers individually make their own soap…hire their HW….hire the actors they want and have the soap last 6 to 9 months with a beginning middle and ending. And I am not talking about how PC did it…I am talking spanish soap style.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Salem's population has suffered the same decline as Springfield. What suddenly became a booming metropolis in the 80's with International airports, hubs of major crime organizations, and home to dozens of skyscrapers, has once again become a quiet midwestern town where everyone hangs out in the same park and tiny shopping center. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy