DramatistDreamer

The Simpson trial, no doubt drew away viewers’ attention from daytime soaps but it’s sad to me that, no one mentions any strategies that were developed and implemented to draw back those lapsed viewers or to actively cultivate new ones, that didn’t involve simply bringing in new characters , copying off-brand Hollywood scripts and cheap gimmicks. Everyone cites O.J., leading me to ask “and then what? What did you do in response to draw those viewers back?” The shows I used to watch back then brought in a whole bunch of dull characters and/or showed storylines that could have been the antidote to insomnia. On occasion of a compelling storyline, there was usually no follow up.

2 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

Seeing Barbara Ryan and Kirk McColl in yesterday episode made me miss ATWT even more.

Aww, even though I am no longer watching…still, aww.

10 hours ago, Khan said:

And I think I like "THAT LYIN' HEFFA GOT CAUGHT!" better.

That’s a headline from The Root or The Grio.

On 3/10/2024 at 6:22 PM, Taoboi said:

Ooooo taste!!! Pun unintended. Can't wait for Season 3 in June.

 

So...among fans there are 3 fave episodes from that season? Which one is yours?

I will have to give that question more thought since I have watched other things since then and it’s no longer as fresh in my mind lol. I know that many people will say that the Thanksgiving (or was it Christmas?) episode was among their favorite episodes but imo, personally, I thought it ran a bit too long, although I just know that Jamie Lee Curtis probably relished diving into such a messy flawed character.

I will say that I enjoyed the character arcs of each character and I really think the series is well cast, it was such a nice surprise to see Robert Townsend turn up. Another aspect that the writers do well is, they get you to care about these characters fairly quickly, even the ones who appear to be antagonistic at the outset. Many of the characters clash and can sometimes say awful things to each other, but they are never demonized because the writing shows where each character is coming from emotionally. It’s a lesson that I wish today’s remaining soap writers would learn and adopt because most tend to write overly broad characters-even the so-called “grey” characters are so broadly written as to appear more like caricatures. Here’s how you can write a character, even an antagonist, while maintaining viability. I appreciate how show builds situations that pull the characters into either conflict or rising to the occasion, and in a few instances, both.

One really memorable episode for me was when Marcus went to Norway to apprentice to a pastry chef. I thought the episode did well at showing how Marcus was bringing that sense of discipline and focus to build his craftsmanship and up his level of skill. With all of the happiness of his accomplishment, lurking in the background was the precarious state of his mother’s health, which added tension to the episode.

10 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Much of the hype for Sheffer at the time was about lifting him above ATWT, all about the changes he wanted to make to ATWT and wasn't allowed to do. Sheffer, Guza, JFP, Ron Carlivati, all hyped for themselves, not for what they did for the genre. We were never meant to care about ATWT itself when he was there - it was just the template for his work. Marland certainly put his own issues into ATWT, but he also respected the traditions of the show. When you run a show for almost 8 years, you will inevitably change the show irrevocably, but he still tried to keep the core intact. To be fair, by the time Sheffer got there, most of the core was gone, but it's still extremely difficult to watch a show where someone who seemingly has such contempt for their show, or their genre, is treated as such a god. .

From my on again, off again experience of viewing during his tenure and reading the press surrounding this screenwriter who deigned to condescend to write a daytime soap opera (back then, there still was a LOT of snobbery about what media someone wrote for, as I would learn after getting into a dramatic writing. MFA program when my school’s career services head asked me whether I had submitted a play or a screenplay or television script for my admissions portfolio and when I answered that I had submitted a stage play, he said “oh, that’s a much higher bar!” As someone who specifically applied to that program to gain for experience in writing across all media, I was shocked to hear him say this, needless to say.) It was telling that during his acceptance speech at the Daytime Emmys, Sheffer mixed up All My Children and As The World Turns, as AMC was the soap he had often desired to write for—he really should have prepared a speech, it all came tumbling from his lips during and post acceptance. Bless.

10 hours ago, DRW50 said:

The darkness under Marland was in some ways harder to watch because you did care about the people involved. You felt the pain. '00s ATWT was just a corpse being kicked, as you were encouraged to watch and laugh.

So ATWT had become daytime’s version of Weekend At Bernie’s? I know I’m wrong for thinking this, but that image popped into my head immediately when I read this.

Paramount+ recently sent me an email offering me a free month after I terminated my subscription, after a promotion that I had received ended. I don’t know if it’s worth it just for a month. For years, power struggles between the Shari Redstone contingent and the Leslie Moonves contingent dominated the corporation and its sense of itself. After one side “won”, it seemed like there wasn’t much of a plan to figure out what came next. Speaking of which, 

This announcement about The Gates had me wondering just how much of an impact Les Moonves might have had in the mindset and programming choices of every show before his ouster. Everyone knows by now that the CBS under Moonves featured many shows that would be regarded as masculine-centric, if not utterly hypermasculine-The NCIS, CSI, 48 Hours type of shows, lots of crime and detective fare. Anything that seemed to cater to women and minorities, seemed to be outside the purview of his worldview. I know he wasn’t responsible for daytime programming directly but never underestimate the power of company culture-what starts at the top will trickle down to the rest of the departments. I don’t know if Y&R will ever step forward, away from its ambivalence toward its nonwhite viewers @Vee. It feels ingrained in the culture and short of sweeping changes with different people with different creative approaches, I don’t see it changing. If “The Gates” takes off and sees success (whatever that looks like these days), it could force Y&R to adopt some changes, but honestly, it seems like a “we’ll just have to wait and see “ type of scenario #1 in a diminished landscape is still #1 and a #1 show may not see a need to “fix” apparatus that, to them, isn’t broken.

9 minutes ago, Vee said:

I remember your posts. I found this stuff curious at the time too, along with the social media details where they touted inventing the soap opera. It was suspicious, but I thought it might have to do with releasing library/archive content down the line or maybe someday even revisiting some of the existing IP. I never once thought they'd come back in with an all-new show.

I have suspected for some time that soaps would become the safe harbor in the wake of the streaming crash, and I talked about it a bit over the last year. But these changes at several networks are bigger and swifter than I'd anticipated.

Oh, it was absolutely galling to me that they were putting out mini documentaries touting their association with the soap opera while they leave their IP library to collect dust! But P&G had some intense power struggles (intraparty strife and a close call with a possible hostile takeover) that Y&R wishes they could write. In a previous life, I used to conduct research on M&As so that type of reading was intriguing to me, like reading a novella.

On a separate note, not to be disrespectful to L.A. soaps but I really hope “The Gates” can employ some of that NYC style of production. Please, no actors reading cue cards or strategically placed cheat sheets, learn the lines, please!

People can believe or disbelief in foresight as they like, I really couldn’t care less. I wonder how many other people mentioned Vail Bloom returning to Y&R? For years, there were folks who had sworn she had burned her bridges and wouldn’t be back. I was not one of those people.

4 hours ago, Faulkner said:

times. All of a sudden, we have proof of life. We can certainly try and work our way back to identify signs that we either overlooked or underestimated. A few people like @Vee and @DramatistDreamer suggested that maybe the pandemic and the bursting of the SVOD streaming bubble could lead to a reinvestment in soaps. There does seem to be a return to the “comfort food” of the old monoculture.

I know sometimes my posts may get buried in these threads but it became obvious to me when P&G was putting out press releases (yes, I read those too lol) about those silly little “Choose Your Own Adventure” shows just to sell soap. Years ago, I posted an article about it and somewhat sarcastically mentioned that if they were going to invest in this type of experimental programming just to sell their products, they may as well go back to producing a soap because those “Choose Your Own Adventure” dramas sounded a lot like an interactive soap opera. This was the around the same time that everyone was talking about the “Choose Your Own Adventure” themed episode of Black Mirror. Nobody remembers that, I guess.

3 minutes ago, Chris B said:

I’ve been saying for years that soaps are more viable than people think. I don’t think this news is that shocking if you really think about it. 

It really wasn’t shocking, even the P&G part of it, if you read/watched their social media and their investor relations reports. They left a trail of clues over the last few years.

4 hours ago, vanguard said:

If I didn't know any better I would've thought that this was some kind of a viewer's hoax. Clearly I thought the daytime soap genre was dying slowly but surely, and now I hear this news. Sounds like Generations 2.0 by the way.

Generations was groundbreaking in its own time but I hope that this soap by virtue of having a Black HW would pay more attention to detail than Generations did. Generations was akin to the first season of A Different World. Hopefully The Gates will be more akin to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th seasons of ADW.

1 hour ago, Faulkner said:

Robin Thicke is going to meet Prakash in the parking lot. 

Ha!

On 12/14/2023 at 10:29 AM, Faulkner said:

Is Prakash dating Paula Patton?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Prakash Amritraj (@prakashamritraj)

Did you lose track of this like I did?

You were right though.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by @paulapattonofficial

Has the main draw at Indian Wells started or are they still playing Qualifying matches?

Another aspect to consider that the standards and expectations in terms of ratings anyway, are different than they were the last time a new daytime soap was created on network television. I think the standards in terms of cultural standards will be elevated and as @Khan said, if it falls short or there is any attempt to “cheapen” the aesthetic or quality of storytelling, people will be very vocal about it, but I am not sure that the ratings pressure will be as intense as the last time a daytime soap debuted, the median will be lower.

Also, time shifted viewing will be taken into consideration in a way it wasn’t decades ago.

Most posters probably either weren’t members back then or members don’t really remember this but does anyone remember several years ago when I posted that article about P&G/PGP wanting to dive into producing dramas colloquially known as “Choose Your Own Adventure” programming to sell their products? I stated the that it sounded so much like the basis of their entry into production of serial daytime drama.  Right then and there, that told me that they were receptive to producing entertainment again, dramas in particular. I knew than that if any entity was going to produce a daytime soap at that point, it would be the company that literally still sells soap.

Also, a few years ago, I posted a YouTube clip in the ATWT thread from P&G basically Bragg about their association with the first televised daytime serials. Initially I found it galling that after dumping AW, GL and ATWT, they had the gall to produce and post this mini documentary but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that they must have been mulling something over. People can say what they want but someone there must have remembered that at one time these serials were highly successful in moving their products and they brought a measure of prestige when they began to win awards.
The timing did surprise me, even when you think it’s going to happen, you’re never sure when. But the fact that it was them to decide to produce the first daytime television soap in how many years, doesn’t surprise me. Nor does the association with the NAACP. Someone at P&G is looking at the demos and sees where the highest potential viewership is.

8 hours ago, Franko said:

That would have been an interesting (and first of its kind?) situation, since Kim played Betsy's rival, Diana, during the Meg Ryan years.

ATWT had brought back actors to play different characters years apart, but those were minor characters with limited story arcs. I think that if Kim had been brought back to play a different role, even for a somewhat prominent character, it could well have worked due to the passage of time since Diana had been on the canvas and the fact that no McColls were left in Oakdale. If they could bring back Christian LeBlanc, who once played her onscreen brother Kirk back as Michael Baldwin on the show, they could also bring her back as a different character too. 

By the way, Entertainment Tonight has picked up the story. 

https://www.etonline.com/the-gates-the-first-black-daytime-soap-opera-in-35-years-is-in-development-221126

Entertainment Tonight has picked up the story,

https://www.etonline.com/the-gates-the-first-black-daytime-soap-opera-in-35-years-is-in-development-221126

Things can and will change from a pitch to development and preproduction, let alone the production process.

That message from Melanie is so thoughtful. Thanks for sharing this @Soapsuds. It’s so funny that Kim Johnston Ulrich was also there alongside Melanie because I always imagined that if they were going to bring back Betsy in the final years of the series, Johnston Ulrich likely would have made a great Betsy recast. I can only imagine how great their scenes could have been with Melanie and Kim playing off each other.

Tonya Pinkins is also a fave of mine and has daytime experience. Tamara Tunie as well. Like I posted upthread, a lot of talent to go around.

19 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

 

6 minutes ago, Errol said:

Three hours after I got the PR (yes, I was sitting on it), and I'm still crying.

I'll take either option, but you're point is valid. It would be easier to sell a daily soap as a half-hour one, but they need another half-hour show to work it in the schedule. The only other "half-hour" show they have is Drew Barrymore, but that's only based on a technicality, and the show airs way too early in the morning on the CBS Owned stations for it to help in any way (if at all). That, and Drew is syndicated.

Although it moved down a slot, #TheGates is now part of the "Soap operas - Trending" category on X (formerly Twitter):

I know that Spoutible is a relatively new SM platform but someone (not me) has already posted about it there too, fwiw.

9 minutes ago, reallyhateskateonlost said:

Not to confusing, there was a series called The Gates in 2010:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1599357/fullcredits/cast

I'm just not going to get to excited....

 

At the very least, I think the cast of this show will look decidedly different than that one.

Over the years, in this thread, a certain person tried to make me feel foolish for even suggesting P&G could possibly get back into producing a soap…well..

1 minute ago, Errol said:

After the pandemic, they need a show to get people to buy their products through. Saves them money from having to spend it on advertising the products themselves. Just saying...