September 11-15, 2006

[R!ck]

Give it a shot tomorrow, It's a great episode

At least with Passions you know what to expect. It doesn't take itself seriously, it's campy & fun with some bad acting and shirtless men..... Oh and a storyline about the investigation of the Porn Industry starting on October 5th.

[skiman12082004]

At least Passions is showing some signs of life in the demos and NBC is able to praise something about the show in their news releases. I'm sticking with Passions through the good and bad because daytime does not need to see another show cancelled right now.

[Mitchapalooza]

Are the rest of the ratings going to be up soon?

[jpoliver78]

Some thoughts...

I don't really think we can call the upcoming storm on ATWT as a "stunt", at least not the kind of stunt we have come to expect from the ABC soaps. While AMC, OLTL, and GH will milk a stunt for an entire sweeps period, I've heard that the actual "stunt" (i.e. the storm) only takes up 3 days of screen time. Taking this into consideration, I would consider the storm to be more of a plot device to move various stories forward. One could compare the upcoming storm to the flood that temporarily lifted the fortunes of the now-defunct "Search for Tomorrow" shortly after Gary Tomlin took over as producer or the earthquake that did away with needless or unpopular characters during the early run of NBC's "Santa Barbara".

Second, I'm not sure why so many DAYS fans are assuming that the minute material written by Hogan Sheffer hits the air, the soap will magically skyrocket. I will give Sheffer total credit for turning around ATWT from an unwatchable mess to an Emmy winning example. However, even the best of writers stumble from time to time, and I would bet that the "average" soap viewers (i.e. someone who doesn't surf soap websites or blogs) do not really know or care who produces or writes their soap as long as they are entertained. Sheffer may very well pull DAYS out of its current Reilly induced funk, but he could also maintain the ratings status quo or the ratings may even go down.

Lastly, concerning the future of soaps...one suggestion to producers would be to trim your casts. If you can go more than a week without featuring a character (like GH, which went a month without featuring Lucas before announcing actor Ben Hogestyn's departure), then you don't need them. Instead of bloated casts that include 25-30 contract and occasional players, how about 15-20?

One can be amazed at what trimming a cast can do for a series. For starters, it would allow the actors to have more screen time. By featuring your major players each day, writers may be forced to move storylines along quicker. Of course the obvious benefit to a smaller cast is that you won't have as many salaries to pay. The saved money could be re-invested into other areas of production (i.e. location shoots, etc.) or be used to lower to budgetary bottom line.

I have always wondered why daytime soaps tend to have a small army of contract and occasional players while their primetime counterparts have decidedly smaller casts. "Dallas", "Knots Landing", and "Dynasty", as well as newer soaps like "Melrose Place" and "Desperate Housewives" had large casts compared to other non-serialized primetime dramas, but their casts were still smaller than the daytime soaps.

[SteveFrame]

Excellent post. I agree with almost everything you said except the cast part. I don't like the idea of a smaller cast unless the show did not air for one hour. The primetime shows can have smaller casts even the primetime soaps because they are only on once a week. I already get tired of some performers and if the cast was alot smaller and the same folks were on even 3 or 4 out of 5 days a week over and over, they would get old very fast - even my favorites would.

[juniorz1]

The problem with this, to elaborate on what Steve said, is some shows would end up completely in the can. Look at 'All My Children.' Using your logic, we lose Vincent Irizarry (David- we are anyway ), Julia Barr (Brooke), James Mitchell (Palmer), Terri Ivens (Simone), Tanisha Lynn (Dani), Tonya Pinkins (Livia), Walt Willey (Jackson). Who wants to watch what's left? Not me. Hell, even with these actors, AMC is a chore to watch right now, but without them (especially Julia Barr- RIP AMC if that ever happens) I doubt I'd even bother in the first place.

Other gems that could get caught in the crossfire going with that logic include Suzanne Rogers (Maggie, DAYS), Marie Masters (Susan, ATWT), Darlene Conley (Sally, B&, Stuart Damon (Alan, GH), Leslie Charleson (Monica, GH), Hilary B Smith (Nora, OLTL), Jeanne Cooper (Kay, Y&R), and Jess Walton (Jill, Y&R). IMO, those kinds of losses would be disastrous for the industry.

I'd rather see them utilize what they have, adding 1 or 2 new or recast characters, and stop flooding our televisions with people we don't know, care about, and are not even slightly invested in. Right now, the only shows that are heavily featuring core characters are ATWT, B&B, DAYS, and Y&R (an argument could be made for GH here as well) and look at the shows consistently ranking in the top 4 of late. It's not a coincidence. Familiarity is a huge factor in keeping viewers as well as bringing them back. What is so familiar about AMC or OLTL (and arguably PSNS) right now? Not much from what I see.