IMO: Bring back the 30 minute soap

[Cheyenne]

I agree. I don't have the time for all the soaps I would like to watch anymore. It's a shame really.

[Matt]

Well, :30 soaps wouldn't be an automatic fix. They still have to be well-written. A crappy :30 soap is still just as crappy as a crappy :60 soap --- there's just less crappiness to deal with. But :30 soaps *do* require writers to focus on fewer storylines and characters. A :30 soap might only have 1 or 2 primary storylines to focus on while a :60 soap might have 4 or 5 (each format with various secondary stories that exist under the developments of the primary storyline). Also, :30 have fewer characters to deal with, approximately 15 - 20 (sometimes fewer) while many :60 soaps have casts that can stretch from 30 to 40 contract performers (even more in some cases). I also believe that :30 soaps would for TPTB to have a tighter theme and feel for their series. A lot of the :60 soaps seem to be all over the place in regards to identity --- is it a comedic soap? supernatural soap? camp soap? family soap? business soap? "D" - all the above? I hate it when you ask what a soap is about and the only answer that can be created is "it's about the residents of the town of Whoville". We'll DUH! Soaps no longer have distinct identities -- they all look and sound the same.

[Juliajms]

I think because of people's busy schedules the 30 min soap may have to make a come back as a practical matter. It's certainly not my preference though. I find that when watching 30 min soaps such as B&B and Ryan's Hope the show is over before I've even had a chance to really relax and sink my teeth into it. I like being able to spend time in the soap world. I want to spend a whole hour there. I guess some people's "filler" is my fun. I just wish it was more practical right now for me to spend that kind of time . At this point I find myself roating between soaps. I guess I wouldn't have to do that if they were 30 mins..

[Cat]

Yes, I think it definitely depends on the soap. I remember when Y&R or Days or GH had me gripped for the full hour because all the interweaving SLs were stand-alone good. And, as I've mentioned on other threads, B&B can consistently disappoint when crap is going on, because 18 minutes can feel like 18 hours of nuthin'.

Basically, the same rules for 1 hour shows apply for 30 minute ones. Better balance, better mix of characters, more cogent writing and far better pacing. I *do* think 18 minutes is FAR too short for a "half-hour" show. Sorry, but that's a 15 minute soap if you cut out the credits and the repeat of yesterday's "cliffhanger" at the beginning of the show. It's a cop-out. I know it's impossible, but cut out the first ad break after the opening theme and just do one ad break in the middle.

[Keith]

I've been saying this for ages. It could save soaps for a long time, because of production cost cuts and less pressure over timeslots from affiliates and the networks themselves. of course, they could afford for the Today show (and others like it) to just be a half hour, too, but that's another story

[Cat]

Kinda OT: I don't get this love for Today and GMA. I mean, WTF? Are we going to have 9 friggin' hours of Meredith Viera and Diane Sawyer every day? With their million dollar salaries and live links to the Bahamas for Anna Nicole Smith's funeral? How on earth is this a cost-cutting move?

Soaps may not be generating the same ratings they got back in, say, 1987, but there is a core loyal audience there who will tune in day after day after day. That is brand loyalty you just cannot buy. Piss them off, cancel the whole Daytime set-up and they will be gone. Everybody else will be at work so I doubt a rip-off of The View or Entertainment Tonight at 2 in the afternoon will bring in any kind of break-even ratings.

[Brandeis]

Agree 100%. It's like an architect told me - "Don't look for art in the buildings with unlimited space, look for it where the designer has had to work within stricter limitations."

[bellcurve]

I disagree with whoever said soaps should air three days a week. I would like to think I could just live with that, but a lot of reasons why soaps have thrived is because they air every day of the week. If soaps went to just three days a week(say T-TH), and if I was out of school or work because of a snowstorm on a Monday, what the hell am I gonna watch on TV?! LOL. 5 days a week is what sets soaps apart from everything else in primetime.

My personal opinion, if soaps went to a half-hour, the nets would find someway to slash their budget so they wouldn't have their hourlong budget anymore.

Someone years ago on another board suggested that PGP should reduce both ATWT and GL to a half-hour, produce GL one half of the year, and ATWT the other half, to save on production costs(this was around the time ABC announced it was producing episodes of PORT CHARLES this way).

I think half-hour soaps would work well, but how does one pick and choose who makes the move and who doesn't? If AMC were reduced to a half-hour today, would it be the Chandlers? The Kane-Montgomery? The Martins? Someone would have to go.

[bellcurve]

BTW, the article on the FOX soap pilot sounds promising. Maybe this will be the beginning of a daytime lineup?! Lord knows NBC doesn't want one anymore.

[All My Shadows]

I've been thinking that 30 minute soaps would be a better idea for a long time now. Like somebody said already, hour-long soaps were great in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because that was when soap opera hit its biggest popularity and when budgets were highest. Now that things have lulled back down a lot, the networks need to take notice of it. You can't expect a 60 minute soap to do as good now as it did 25 years ago. It would without a doubt free up more time for either more soaps or, god forbid, some network daytime game shows, which, since about 1994, has only consisted of "The Price is Right."

Take, for instance, CBS's daytime lineup, which runs from 10am-11am (TPIR), and 11:30am-3pm (Y&R/B&B/ATWT/GL). I could easily see P&G downsizing ATWT and GL if CBS wanted to cut some of the soaps in half. It'd make sense for Y&R to stay at an hour. You'd have a lineup like this:

10:00am-11:00am: "The Price is Right"

11:00am-11:30am: Local programming

11:30am-12:30pm: "The Young and the Restless"

12:30pm-01:00pm: "The Bold and the Beautiful"

01:00pm-01:30pm: "As the World Turns"

01:30pm-02:00pm: New soap opera

02:00pm-02:30pm: "Guiding Light"

02:30pm-03:00pm: New game show

Personally, I always thought the perfect formula for a daytime schedule of game shows and soap operas was an hour-long game show, followed by three half-hour game shows, followed by five half-hour soaps.

[All My Shadows]

That's something I've always wondered about too. I think it depends on who's in charge of the show at the time of the reverse-expanding. When you think about it, many of the families who are at the core of the current hour-long soaps were introduced after the shows expanded. GL has the Spauldings (I think a few came up before the expansion, but most came afterwards), Shaynes/Lewises, and Coopers; ATWT has the Snyders, Munsons, etc; DAYS has the Bradys, DiMeras, etc; OLTL has the Buchanans; AMC has the Chandlers, Montgomerys, etc; while GH and Y&R both pretty much fail to acknowledge anything from the time before they expanded. It'd be a very interesting situation to see who'd make the jump and who wouldn't. Would DAYS scrap the Hortons and make the Bradys the focal point of the show? Would ATWT do the same with the Hugheses and Snyders?

[billyjill]

About the number of days a week -- I think 3 days a week could be okay becuase it'd still be repeated airs throughout a given week. That is still something soaps would have over other genres. I agree that the regular presence of soaps is a key factor to their identity and appeal, but in times like this I could definitely accept three.

Abot 30 vs 60 minutes -- the potential gain would be more artistic than monetary I think. There would be some money saved, but costs would not be cut in half by this reduction alone even though the duration is cut in half. I think more important is the rest the actors would have and the lack of dilution that could result in the writing.

Because the networks would still have to fill up that other 30 minutes, this could end up being more beneficial to the soap than the network ... unless it ends up boosting the quality enough to translate into ratings increases.

[jfung79]

I think this would be a mistake, depending on what you mean by filler. Jokes between characters, characters asking each other how they're doing, that is not filler, that's part of what makes the characters "real." But if you mean, you don't want people to repeat the same thing over and over, then yes, that kind of filler would need to be cut back.

The kind of 30-minute soap I would support, the EastEnders model if you will, doesn't have just a couple storylines, and doesn't have fewer characters. It wouldn't be like B&B, which seems to have the same story all the time and a tiny cast, at all.

It still has many storylines and lots of characters, all interweaving, but with shorter scenes in some cases, including the jokey casual scenes I mention above, and time jumps between scenes -- the day actually passing by so that we go from dawn to dusk in a single episode --and also with occasional episodes that focus heavily, in-depth, and intensely on one set of characters (called "two-handers" for EastEnders, a bit like GL's ITL episodes).

In an American context, rather than something narrowly focused on the same people all the time like B&B, I'm thinking more that "The City" is a good example of my kind of 30-minute soap -- but, with families and multigenerational stories unlike the youth focus of "The City".

This probably wouldn't save the networks money in the short run, but I think it would improve the ratings in time.

But anyway, the point of my post is, to add to what I said earlier, I do think 30-minute soaps are a good idea -- but not if it means cutting back casts and stories. My post sketches out what would work for me for 30 minutes. Otherwise, give me the good old 60-minute soaps any day!

I only want a move to 30 minutes if it represents an improvement in the ability to tell good stories about interesting characters. I don't support a move to 30 minutes as some kind of compromise or with the idea that it would save the networks money somehow.

[jfung79]

You'd still have soaps everyday, but just not the same soaps.

You could watch one soap on Monday Wednesday Friday, and another soap on Tuesday Thursday Friday for instance. Devoted followers of only one soap thus wouldn't have to watch everyday to keep up -- so it'd be easier to keep up -- but soaps would still be on every day for those wanting them every day.

I still like 5 episodes a week ... I just think less episodes a week could also work.

[KMan101]

Count me as totally on board for 30 minute soaps. I mean 30 MINUTES, not 15 minutes with another 15 for commercials. That's ridiculous. Even maybe a 45 minute soap, but that would be stretching it.

I think soaps never should of expanded to an hour. I mean, it was feasible in the 1980s, but the quality now is just gone. Every show is a hodgepodge of whatever floats the current writers boat. I miss the days when we had STORIES. real STORIES that interwined. Granted, I wasn't alive in the 1960s or the 1970s, or hell, half of the 80s, but I've seen episodes, I've seen clips, I've read history pages ... stories were STORIES. Plot points made sense (as wild as some stories were) ... and by stories I mean, STORIES. Like we can look back on and say "Marty's rape" or "Phil and Tara's love story" or ... you know ... STORIES.