te.

No wonder they cancelled Search For Tomorrow and moved up Scrabble - that show was low-key killing it in its slot!

On 8/24/2023 at 3:51 AM, Chris 2 said:

The other problem is that it was trying to be a glamorous soap about rich people living in Florida. Even back then, we knew that if you had any kind of money, you got the hell out of Florida.

Re-watching it now and I realised that the setting is a huge issue for the show as in it's not distinct enough. Besides obviously filming in California, when Lane at the end of the pilot does some dramatic speech about how she'll one day live on Flamingo Road it's like... okay, why? There's the Weldon's house and I guess Titus'? In all honesty, LiliMae's house seems really nice. They needed to do more to sell the angle of "bad part of Truro" vs the "good part of Truro", but even then it's hard to imagine that a character would be desperate to live in any part of Truro, especially once she gets a multi-millionaire boyfriend.

1 hour ago, danfling said:

soap opera historian Ron Lackmann speculates that "perhaps the story was too familiar, or perhaps once the basic story was told, there was nothing else to say about Kitty and her problems."

Looking at the schedule, it seems like it was the lone soap on NBC at that point, plus their inability to create a long running soap at that point bar Hawkins Fall (which "only" ran five years) and then a new format to boot? It was also against Art Linkletter at the time; still it was odd how quickly they gave up on it; Today Is Ours didn't do much better, so maybe they should've just moved it up a half hour to see how it did when From These Roots premiered to build a block.

Very interesting to see how the total viewers differs from the actual Nielsen ratings. Makes me wonder how the charts year-to-year would look if they just showed total viewers; would there be the same drastic drop-off over the decades pre-00s?

I mean, that's a no-brainer for Sony / NBCUniversal to do - they want them to watch on Peacock or wait until it comes onto whatever international services that carries DAYS. They need as many viewers / clicks as they can get in order to keep getting renewed and they're not measured by some flimsy Nielsen rating system anymore; streaming sites know exactly how many that watches, what they also click and watch on the service and duration. 

1 hour ago, SoapDope said:

It would have been nice if Bobby and Pam could have had their happy ending as the series finale. The shows would end like the show began with Bobby marrying that Barnes girl. 

I think Pam and Bobby (and Christopher) leaving Southfork in that red car, leaving JR all alone finally getting what he thought he wanted all those years would've been a good finale. The final shot would've been JR at that dining table, getting served by Teresa with nobody else there.

7 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

As mentioned primetime soaps didn't really go back to past stories and characters to propel new plots

Which was dumb, especially when these shows started shedding cast members left and right (although KNOTS managed to keep a lot of its cast intact for a long time). You'd think bringing back someone with connection to the canvas would be a good way to help transition the show, but it rarely happened.

8 hours ago, Jdee43 said:

Soap producers are fearful that the extra hours will be filled with even cheaper-to-make reality programming.

Even in 1991 they were afraid of reality programming replacing the soaps. Interesting read.

On 1/7/2024 at 10:56 PM, Soaplovers said:

I always thought Laura was adopted.. but she didn't know she was adopted.

 

I mean...

On 1/1/2024 at 2:29 AM, Paul Raven said:

Dallas 3.4 10 51.7 92

Dynasty 3.4 10 48.7 47 

Knots Landing 3.3 10 12.5 20 

Interesting how similar these numbers are, yet if I read this right, Knots had 12.5% coverage yet had pretty much the same numbers as Dynasty and Dallas which both had around 50%? Makes you wonder if Knots could've done better than both of them with more coverage, but maybe these just overperformed in some and bombed in others.

On 1/4/2024 at 4:24 PM, carolineg said:

It makes me curious how far along this pilot or bible got.  Two head writers were working on it, but you only get the vaguest of details. 

I'll admit I always thought the whole thing was more of a set up to keep Deidre happy by vaguely promising a spin-off and just keep it permanently in development, but from those articles it sounds like it was ready to go ahead. I wonder what changed their minds, especially once Santa Barbara exited the screens? They ended up premiering Sunset Beach a few years later and Manhattan Lives could've, if not anything else, worked as an effective placeholder (I guess a bit like Capitol). 

1 hour ago, Khan said:

Think about it: you try and go about your day - mowing the lawn, playing with the kids, whatever - but fans and tourists keep stopping by, wanting to take selfies in front of "Abby Ewing's house."  If ever a community needed to be gated....

I guess it depends on how you deal with it really... personally, I'm not really a people person, but there are those that are. Apparently the guy who owns the "real" Casa Walsh is very much someone who'll chat to people if he sees them stop to take pictures. I think he invited the woman who runs IAmNotAStalker.com into the house from memory.

5 hours ago, Chris B said:

I’ve read it got better throughout its run and the ratings weren’t bad. I feel like if the show had another year or two it would’ve cemented itself in the NBC lineup. It shocks me they gave up so quick considering it was a name show. 

Unfortunately, with How To Survive a Marriage being a pet project plus the line up of Days / Doctors / Another World flying so high I guess they expected more from Return to Peyton Place, despite being slightly higher rated than Somerset. If they had bumped that off instead who knows if NBC daytime had developed differently. Probably not though.

Lots'o'tea about Charmed in this:

I'm just happy a daytime soap is getting a prime time outing.

Really bad year for soap actors as it feels like there's been a lot of young-ish losses.

RIP.

5 hours ago, Vee said:

Don't engage. Block and move on and wait for it to burn itself out. I always do when another one of these shows up.

Yes, I know I'm starting to wonder if this is the weird stalker dude I had on another forum. It's the same sort of talk and formula. It's stupid to post this in public but yeah, since I was accused of being him it's just weird, lol. But maybe soap opera fans have an over-arching mental health issue we need to deal with.

Ashley Benson's character on Pretty Little Liars was called Hanna Merin

https://deadline.com/2023/12/days-of-our-lives-casts-annalynne-mccord-90210-1235671750/

Signed a one year contract playing "Marin". She was one of the bright spots on the 90210 reboot (the CW version, not the Fox meta-reboot), so I hope they don't screw her character up (they will).

13 hours ago, Khan said:

I think I see where you're coming from, @dc11786.  Although a "found family" has its unique advantages, having a "traditional" family with multiple generations lends itself very well to conflicts, too.  Like you've said, it all comes down to how families are explored, and TC apparently didn't explore its' "family" very well.

Ultimately, both have its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of a "found family" / work place / community soap is that you can just introduce characters without much explanation. You don't have to do a contrived backstory for someone to move in or to write someone off. It leaves less headache in terms of having to recast or introducing random cousins or secret children.

The disadvantage of course is that eventually you'll have to ask yourself why these characters are even talking to each other, or just doesn't move, especially when there's a notorious schemer amongst them? Even Melrose Place utilised the bad sister bond with Jane and Sydney. Family soaps of course are easier to explain in that way - families will fight and do bad things to each other, but will still be in others lives because blood is thicker than water and all that.

11 hours ago, j swift said:

I think it was simply not what people wanted in daytime in the early 90s when trash talk shows were more compelling to a young urban audience.

I said it before and I'll say it again - airing The City and Sunset Beach at noon was such a mistake when they obviously targeted a very specific demographic (ie people who liked the Fox Aaron Spelling soaps); not saying that either would've lasted for a long time, but it just felt like a death sentence from day one to place them there. They needed to be later in the afternoon. 

It's like when they moved old-fashioned Love of Life to an afternoon slot. Kids and college students coming home from school wasn't going to tune into that...

On 12/14/2023 at 6:19 AM, Khan said:

or they'd simply disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.

what,s a michael culhane? whose amanda?? leslie--what???

1 hour ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

I'm still curious where you came up with this. Were you maybe not watching when it was shown? Because it was very clear - Korean War. The only way it wasn't weird, because it was weird, but we were watching M*A*S*H* at the time, I believe, and that was also the Korean War. And then as a nation we had a considerable pause before we had the Vietnam War appear in pop culture. 

And apropos of nothing any more than a lot of talk about JER & about Marlena, did folks know that Deidre has a new dog & that she named him Reilly? I want to see a pic but none has been forthcoming! 

I wasn't even born when it aired, but yeah, my impression was always that they handled it with more of a "don't mention what war" approach. Apparently not! It must've been something that filtered through considering they modified it later when they could mention the Vietnam war. It's my bad! But glad to have it clarified that they did mention it on air.

1 minute ago, JAS0N47 said:

Don't know which sources you are referring to, but when the story originally aired, it was fully mentioned that it was the Korean War.  Here's the storyline synopsis sent to newspapers for 11/9/67: Susan tries to tell Tom what happened that brought her to the hospital, but she is weak. Meanwhile Mark undergoes nightmares as he relives his experience as a prisoner of war during the Korean conflict.

Thanks! I was about to tag you if you knew more, but looks like they mentioned it on air. 

On 12/7/2023 at 7:45 PM, Gray Bunny said:

Jeezus, so one of Tom & Alice's kids was lost in the Korean War in the early 50's, and their great-grandchild David is in his twenties by the mid-70's. Just how old were Tom & Alice and when did Alice start popping out children? 

To be fair, from what can be deciphered from sources it seems like they went the route of not specifying what war he was in instead of saying it was the Korean. I imagine that it might be what was said backstage rather than on-screen.