Broderick

The hosts are horrid, so that makes it difficult to listen.  

Here's what she said that I found interesting ---

(1)  She'd watched Y&R since 1973.  She'd watched a few other soaps before (Edge of Night, Secret Storm, and All My Children), but she was instantly captivated with Y&R.  Bill Bell asked her what drew her to the show.  She said, "Bill, I like the show because it's a mood piece.  That's what makes it beautiful and captivating.  [Obviously, that aspect of the show is now out the window entirely.]

(2) She said of all the shows that had expanded from 30 minutes to an hour, Y&R had the roughest, rockiest, most turbulent transition.  

(3)  In 1982, she attended a writers workshop.  In late 1982, she put her "skills" to use and wrote a long-term story projection for Y&R, based on what was airing in late 1982.  Bill Bell read it and was impressed and hired her to work as his story consultant.  She said it was because he was extremely frustrated in late 1982, due to the show having dropped so far in the ratings during the transition to an hour.  

(4)  She was only 26 years old when Bill Bell hired her in late 1982/early 1983.  

(5)  Writing for the show is currently difficult, because of the SET restrictions.  You have to use certain sets.  They can't be moved; they can't be changed, because it causes budgetary problems.  Therefore, a number of things you'd like to SHOW HAPPENING, instead must be recapped in Crimson Lights.  

(6)  She never specifically mentioned "Black Lives Matter".  She said that her projection (which CBS nixed in 2016) was that Devon and Hillary would have a fight, Devon would drive away angrily, he would be speeding, he would be stopped by the police, he would get out of the car with an angry, bitter, combative attitude -- she said he would be a complete "a-hole" to the police -- and they would be unnecessarily brutal to him because of his belligerent attitude.  She thought it would be an interesting storyline, with multiple facets, because no one in the altercation was completely right and no one was completely wrong.  [Sorry, but this is the type of storyline that soaps did extremely well in the 1970s and 1980s when they were at the top of their game, before all the evil twins and doppelgangers.  This would've been a much more provocative storyline, in my opinion, than anything we've seen on Y&R in 20 years.]    

2 hours ago, kalbir said:

Thanks @Broderick Found it, 7/2/1985.

Great!  I was thinking I'd just seen it again recently during the early stages of the Jack/Nikki/Victor/Ashley quad.  

On 1/17/2023 at 7:16 PM, kalbir said:

 

Summer 1985 - Feeling Ashley's talents are wasted in the Jabot lab, Victor offers her an executive position at Mergeron.

 

That episode is actually floating around.  I watched it just a few weeks ago.  I believe it's either 7/1/1985 or 7/2/1985.  It's not the scene where he first offers her the job at Mergeron, but a follow-up scene in which he asks her if she's made a decision yet.  Much discussion about him believing Ashley was "born to be an executive" and "together, we can take Mergeron to new heights, etc."  

6 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

So let's say an extra is now earning $250 a day.

Five Lines or Less – Hour Program Minimum scale program fee – effective: 11/16/14 11/16/15 11/16/16 $429 $440 $451 Additional Day Fee - $170.00 Length of work day - 9 hours plus a 1 hour meal period. Hourly overtime rate - First two hours of overtime $29.00 an hour third and each successive hour of overtime $38.00 an hour.

U/5 might now be earning $500

Newbies like Alison Lanier are probably earning around $1500 an episode I would guess based on a figure of $1038 in 2016.

That seems downright affordable, unless as j swift noted, the backstage Covid protocols run up the cost far in excess of the actual SAG rates.  And I suppose having multiple "strangers" on the set does indeed require a great deal more testing & monitoring.   

5 hours ago, j swift said:

I am not worried about the profit margins at Sony or Bell Productions, but it would be important to add the cost of COVID testing.  Variety noted that it added 5% to the cost of an average TV production https://variety.com/2021/film/news/covid-costs-film-tv-production-1235113051/

About 40% of those costs go to labor — COVID safety officers, testers, drivers, location assistants, and medical personnel. The remaining 60% goes to “materials,” which includes outside testing vendors and stipends for quarantining, as well as things like masks, face shields and sanitation materials.

“Amid all the disruption and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, today’s report affirms that California’s Film & TV Tax Credit Program has continued to work as intended to create jobs and opportunity across our state,” Colleen Bell, the commission’s executive director, said in a statement.

Which makes me wonder if he was conflating the financial cost of extras with the cost in terms of risk?

Either way, it always amuses me when we make a full meal out of a single throwaway comment from an actor in an interview, as if they are knowledgeable about the annual production budget for a soap.

 

I believe the profit margins of CBS, Sony, & Bell are likely the three most significant factors at play in stripping the show down to this embarrassing "bare bones" budget.   If CBS can't guarantee a certain rate of return on their annual licensing deal with Sony (which is obviously tougher each year with viewer erosion & declining advertising revenue), CBS would happily ditch the show entirely and expand "Price is Right" or turn the hour over to affiliates, especially with that hour of programming being in the noontime/early afternoon in most markets.  I would imagine CBS is squeezing Sony pretty tightly on the licensing fee. 

And of course if Sony & Bell Dramatic Serial Company can't guarantee a certain target profit from the licensing deal with CBS, they've got no financial motivation to cough-up the funds to produce an expensive hour of television. 

What's suffering, we all see, is the show itself. 

It seems to be a repeat of what we saw with the P&G shows, where the networks were paying P&G less and less annually for the package, until it ultimately reached the point where it wasn't in the financial interest of P&G to continue outlaying the production costs without a target guaranteed return for the shareholders.  (In P&G's case, the advertising itself for P&G products was a "plus", while Sony doesn't even have that layer of motivation to continue producing & licensing the show if their profits on the licensing deal with CBS aren't satisfactory.)         

5 hours ago, kalbir said:

Y&R has a good number of 25+ year veterans in their cast, so I imagine salaries eat up a good chunk of the budget.

I expect so, too.  TOO MANY of them, in fact. 

But there seems to be a "fear factor" in play:  if you cut one of those old veterans out of the picture, are 100,000 viewers gonna leave, as well?  Looks like the show is afraid to take that chance. 

Supposedly, the median age of a soap viewer is about 66 years old, which means about half the viewers are even older than that.  The show seems to believe older viewers are so attached to Victor, Nikki, Jack, Phyllis, etal that they'd have a conniption fit and stop watching if those performers weren't featured prominently. 

It seems to be a dawg chasing its tail.  If the show refuses to invest in fresh, younger performers in engaging storylines (and we all know that's the case, and its been the case for the past 20 years), the audience will continue to age further, and then the show is stuck even deeper in the "expensive vet pit" that Y&R seems unable to claw its way out of. 

With this anniversary approaching, you can't help remembering that in 1973 & 1974, the four "older characters" on the show, the ones who portrayed the parents of the primary cast -- Julianna McCarthy, Bob Colbert, Dorothy Green, and Jeanne Cooper -- were all in their early to mid 40s and were significantly YOUNGER than Nick and Sharon are now.  Y&R isn't a show that's aged well.       

1 hour ago, will81 said:

I think once Victor and Ashley were done her next and only other marriage should have been Brad. Whether Brenda or Eileen, that pairing worked very well and they seemed more end game to me than Ashley and Victor. 

Couldn't agree more.  Kay Alden -- though her writing could be sort of "dull -- was meticulous dealing with Brad & Ashley, going to GREAT lengths to show the ever-changing dynamics in Ashley and Brad's marriage, and it worked.  Once Jack Smith popped back into the picture, Ashley was suddenly announcing the paternity of Sperm Abby on videotape, Brad was suddenly hot for Olivia, and the entire storyline imploded.  

I can't honestly answer, because I'm not 100% familiar with the SAG scale for extras.  But it seems like each extra is about $1,000 per day.  If you book him for 3 days, you can get him for about $2,600.  If you book him for the whole week, he's about $3,500.  So if they've got TWO of them, that's about $7,000 for the week, and we'd start noticing they're the same two folks.  And if they speak, they becomes "under fives", and they suddenly cost about twice as much, lol.  

Hence, all the mute bartenders who only stare at you while you place your order in Crimson Lights.  

"Lack of money drives everything ... Y&R actually spends money, but you'll notice on Y&R, whenever you're in a restaurant or a bar, there's no one else there.  No customers.  There's maybe a maitre'd, or a bartender, but there's not customers.  Ever.  And that's because in terms of budget, they can't afford anymore to bring in, say, twenty, background performers to play customers in the restaurant, when they're doing scenes in the restaurant.  They just can't afford it.  So you've got empty restaurants, empty bars, empty hotel lobbies.  There's just aren't people there.  That's a budget-driven issue."

I believe the problem is in the way Y&R is distributed to CBS. 

If CBS thinks they can sell $20 worth of ads during a year of Y&R, CBS tells SONY, "We'll pay you $15 to provide us with a year of Y&R".  (This gives CBS a $5 profit on the show.) 

SONY then pockets their OWN $5 profit.  That leaves a budget of $10 for the show.  The Bell family wants to make a profit of $3 as co-owners of the show, and Corday Productions wants to make a profit of $1 for their 1% ownership.  

We've now got a budget of $6 for the show.  CBS is offering $20, but once all the owners and distributors make their profit, the budget for the show itself is $6.  That's not the case with "General Hospital"  (which is owned by the network) or with "B&B" which is distributed by Bell-Phillip.  But it's what I believe drove Days of our Lives off network TV, and what I believe causes Y&R to look so pathetic.  

On 1/15/2023 at 12:44 AM, Paul Raven said:

GL

Morgan and Kelly - Doug Marland's young love front burner destiny couple. But neither truly belonged to a family-Kelly was a Bauer godson, Morgan loosely linked to the Spauldings, so once they split there were forgotten.

That's the first one I thought of -- summer of 1980.  Whenever Kelly would even glance at that little girl, "You Needed Me" by Anne Murray would start playing, and the little girl would start whining, "But what about Laurel Falls?" (or whatever that rural/rustic place was where he kissed her).  After a few interminable episodes of that mess, I couldn't even tolerate the Anne Murray song when it came on the radio. 

Then we had to relive the whole saga a few years later on World Turns with Lily Walsh, Holden, and Dusty, with our rural/rustic spot being moved from Laurel Falls to Luther's Corners or the Snyder Pond or the Snyder Barn, where Lily always needed to go "sort things out".  (But at least this incarnation wasn't as wholesomely sappy as Kelly and Morgan on Guiding Light, and it lacked the grating Anne Murray soundtrack, and at least it amounted to something in the long-term.)  

With Y&R's budget evidently being $2.38 per episode, it's a shame they've veered away from the Bill Bell Trademark of a lower-income family interacting with an upper middle-class family.  In the early days, most of the scenes were in the Foster house, the Brooks house, a nightclub, and a newspaper office.  Later, they added Kay Chancellor's house and the Prentiss house (both of which were extremely nice sets), but they were seen as "impressive enough" to overwhelm even Lorie Brooks, who was from the wealthier of the two main families.  

Y&R really lost its way (in my opinion) when they began trying to tell stories in which everyone is a zillionaire.  Especially on a budget of $2.38 per episode.  

1 hour ago, j swift said:

Just within the past few years I learned that Victoria was actually named for Kevin's maternal grandmother and his overbearing mother Alison insisted on the name.  

I believe it was Kevin's paternal grandmother who was named Victoria -- Earle Bancroft's mother.  Alison Bancroft, who suspected all along that Victor Newman had fathered the child, taunted Nikki by saying, "Earle's mother was named Victoria.  Have you considered that for a name?"  

I'm the only person on the board who feels this way, but I've got no problem with Joshua Morrow.  He's not an especially good actor, but his somewhat dimwitted character has always struck me as someone who would've been spawned by Nikki.  

lol.  It'd be pretty heartless, but an ideal way to explain where Paul has been lately.  Dead. 

Bell & Alden retconned a whole story for Carl Williams around 1998 -- "Back when Carl was presumed dead ..."  (And for the past 7 or 8 years, we'd been thinking he was upstairs asleep!)

Then Sally Sussman retconned a long, sad death for Mary Williams.  Jack Abbott:  "Paul, you remember how it was in Mary's later years -- God rest her soul!"  (And all that time, I'd been thinking she was visiting the Vatican with her church group.)

Patty popped-up crazy as a loon, after disappearing in 1984 (?) perfectly adjusted, but slightly annoyed with Danny for hauling off & marrying Traci Abbott.  

They definitely don't mind surprising us when it comes to the Williams family.  

4 hours ago, Forever8 said:

I wonder if they are going to say that Paul and Christine separated or divorced off-screen.

 

I was thinking they might do something more drastic & have Cricket say, "Back when Paul died a few years ago ..."

lol.  

35 minutes ago, dragonflies said:

The show isn't off a day, there was no pre emption

No, they're on schedule, but that seems to be why they do these "stand-alones", so they can air it on a specific date without any disruption, even if there is an unexpected preemption.    

Bell could definitely go off the deep end sometimes with saccharine.  Remember that terrible episode on the 4th of July when Victor had to "straighten out" that guy who didn't share Victor's belief that the USA is the "greatest country on earth"?  Awful.  

Friday's (horrible) episode was evidently designed to be a "stand alone episode" that could air Friday the 23rd, even if a preemption threw off the schedule.  There's one thing worse than being off a day, and Friday's show is the one thing worse!  

To me, that's just Lack Of Imagination.  How hard can it be to plan a unique shot in advance (when the director and his/her assistant first get the script) and then execute it the day of taping.  They don't even try.  And that's one reason the show seems so static -- the characters are just sitting in one place, with no movement at all, because it takes less rehearsal if they remain seated, and it takes less imagination on the part of the director who doesn't have to bother with a zoom shot or an overhead shot or anything else halfway creative.  

3 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Agree. It is monotonous to watch.

Y&R dug a hole for themselves by relying for years on the same characters as front burner and not properly nurturing the next generation.

Premature SORASING (Abby, Noah,Charlie/Mattie/Fen etc) poor recasts (Billy, Mac) questionable story choices(basically making everyone a criminal) have brought us to today where the show is forced to use the same characters over and over and is scared/unable to rid themselves of dead wood and introduce interesting new characters.

 

Yep, there's never a "fresh" new character who catches our attention, in the manner a new character, properly integrated onto the canvas, did when writers were willing to shake up the status quo.  At one point, Nikki, Jack, Ashley, Traci, Lauren were all new young characters who made a strong enough impression to promote allegiance to them.  About the only one I can think of in recent years is Hillary Curtis, but they couldn't afford her because of their overreliance on the old high-priced "sacred cows", so their solution was to kill her.  

At this point, I doubt it matters much who's writing or who's producing.  As someone pointed out way above, it's tough to write for a show that's got no sets.  You can't "show" anything.  Characters are stuck sitting around in restaurants talking about stuff that happened off-camera.  Until they find a way to get a few sets, they've got a bleak future in my opinion.  

12 minutes ago, kalbir said:

@Broderick The departures of BD, ED, TL overlapped w/ Cricket eating the show, but Bill Bell also had a new pet in that era, Cassandra. Looking back, I don't think it was a coincidence that Bill Bell elevated Nina Arvesen to front burner around the time MTS was on pregnancy leave and ED was on the way out.

1989 had Cricket eating the show and Cassandra as front burner, while the rest of the main females (Jill, Katherine, Nikki, Ashley, Traci, Lauren, Nina, Leanna) were given second and third tier storylines. 

Yes, we can never overstate the prominence of Cricket during that period.  She was injected into every aspect of the show.  Let's just be glad she couldn't sing, lol.  

9 hours ago, Sapounopera said:

Same here. 

Losing Brenda Dickson in 1987, Eileen Davidson in 1988, and Terry Lester in 1989 definitely resulted in the Abbott orbit being a bit less "quirky" and "colorful" than before, and the characters were likely not as much fun for Bill Bell to write.   Melody Thomas Scott seemed to fill part of the void, and you can't help think Ed Scott was sort of "pimping" the increased reliance on her for story material.   

I found it.  It was Friday.  

Ashley (shivers):    Brrrr.  Wow.  

Tucker:  What'll you have?

Ashley:  I would love a hot chocolate.  

Tucker:  You sure you don't want some fancy coffee drink with foam and extra shots and scalded ---

Ashley:  Tucker, I'm a very simple girl.  Ok, you don't buy it, huh.  How about some cinnamon on top?  

Tucker:  Of what?  A hot chocolate?  

Ashley:  Yes.  

Tucker (motions to mute barista):  Hi, Sir.  Two hot chocolates with cinnamon, please.  Keep the change.  

[The whole thing was like a low-budget parody of the coffee shop scene in Tommy Wiseau's The Room, where everyone orders cheesecake, water, and coffee.  Except Tommy Wiseau could afford extras.  But with Eileen Davidson's salary, the barista practically had his mouth duct-taped shut.]

1 hour ago, Paul Raven said:

 

We have discussed before having a generic office set that could be cleverly redecorated for use by different characters or the two wall sets like we saw for Chance's psychologist months back, or the Marchetti office etc

 

I believe they're too broke even to pay the set decorator to change out the props in the Generic Office Set.  Which is why they don't really have one.  

One day last week (I believe it was Friday), Tucker and Eileen had an especially poverty-stricken scene in Crimson Lights.  They wandered in, and of course there wasn't an extra anywhere in sight, because the show had exhausted its budget for the week and couldn't pay another customer $1,000 to sit at a table.  It was just an empty tumble-weed set like an abandoned ghost-town bar on Gunsmoke.  

Tony Morina was FAR too broke to pay Sharon Case to appear in the episode.  

Instead, some random male barista was standing at the register.  He was strictly forbidden to speak, because if he'd spoken, he would've gone from being an "extra" at $1,000 per day to an "under five" at $1,500 per day, and the extra $500 would've evidently forced SONY into immediate bankruptcy. 

So Tony Marina must've told the barista, "Don't you say ONE WORD.  You'd better not even GRUNT.  If you make a SOUND and cost us an extra $500, I'll kick your tail out of here so fast you'll knock that Crimson Lights Dummy off the wall as you sail past."

This left Tucker and Ashley having to take each other's orders, with the barista wordlessly looking on and trying to gesture with his eyes that he knew what they wanted.  "Well, Ashley, I'd bet you'd like a hot chocolate with cream on the top.  Me, why I believe I'll have a regular coffee.  Black."  "I'm not sure I want the cream."  "I bet you do.  I bet you do want cream on the top.  And I'm SURE I want a coffee."  

The barista was forbidden to tell them how much the drinks were, so Tucker threw him a bill and said, "Keep the change."  The barista was forbidden to say, "Thanks" or "Merry Christmas" or anything.  It was the WORST saving of $500 I've ever seen on the show.   They may as well have held up a sign that said, "We're too broke to let the barista speak.  That's why Trevor and Eileen are taking each other's orders!"  

And when you start noticing stuff like that, it's awfully hard to enjoy the episode.  

9 minutes ago, Taoboi said:

I was hoping that I was off and that was the room that off of the living room set during the Billy/Chloe wedding. And then that weird hallway showed up and I just knew someone was going to be livid. 

Yeah, when Chance & Abby were sitting in that little "anteroom" discussing Devon's having porked her, there was a hallway visible outside the little room, and you could see some french doors in the hallway.  There was no evidence of a front door, a living room, or a dining room anywhere near the little "anteroom".  It gave the impression they'd constructed this makeshift little anteroom in order to ditch what was left of the foyer and the living room.  

I don't understand the cost savings in deconstructing existing sets.  Nor do I understand why they can't create bedrooms or hospital rooms with one wall, and tight camera angles.  Their biggest problem seems to be lack of imagination, rather than the tight budget itself.   

1 hour ago, will81 said:

Oh right, I've never read his book. So few actors on the show have ever said anything bad about him for whatever reason. I will have to look that up. Do you know if Jeanne made much mention of Conboy in her book? Did Brenda in hers?

In her little interview with the television archives, Jeanne Cooper says that John Conboy hired her (along with Patricia what's-her-name who was the associate producer back then), and Jeanne says he was suave and debonair and handsome, while Patricia looked like a pastry chef.   Jeanne had nothing but positive things to say about Conboy as the interview continued.  (Bill Bell pretty much hated him, I think, by the time they parted ways.)   

4 minutes ago, DaytimeFan said:

 

Did they do something else to the Chancellor mansion set aside from the horrible rotation, painted midnight blue, then back to yellow, with hideous mediocre furniture? 

Griffith by himself will be a disaster.

When Chance and Abby were sitting around discussing him walking in on her "sofa sex" with Devon, they had their conversation in this odd, random little room in the Chancellor house that seemed to be designed to take the place of the living room.