A Open Letter to Carolyn Hinsey

[Darn]

What follows is my friend/writing partner Jase's response to Carolyn Hinsey's recent SOD "It's Only My Opinion" article. It hits on nearly all of our compliants about the state of daytime. I'm rather proud of how eloquently he's able to express the multitude of complaints we've all shared over the past, 5, 10, 15 years. Check it out.

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Recently, Phil Carey (Asa Buchanan on OLTL) was let go. OLTL revealed that his exit was due to his refusing to go off-contract and recurring, which Phil has always swore never to do. Also, Erika Slezak (Viki) spoke out publicly in her fan newsletter about the sad state of the show.

In the most recent issue of Soap Opera Digest, "It's Only My Opinion" columnist Carolyn Hinsey wrote thus:

What follows is my response. Warning: It is [!@#$%^&*] long, son.

Dear Ms. Hinsey,

Hello. I'm Jase, and I blog with my writing partner "Darn" at a silly soap blog we call "The Wreck Center." You do not know me, but I feel like I already know far too much about you. You see, I've been reading your "It's Only My Opinion" column in Soap Opera Digest ever since I first started surreptitiously, shamefully sneaking issues of it off the shelf at the supermarket as a junior high schooler to buy and take home with me. That was about ten years ago. Actually, I really don't know if you were in it all the way back then, I can't recall, but I imagine so. You're something of an institution in the magazine, after all. And that's all well and good. Institutions deserve a degree of respect and attention, even if they're as consistently wrong as I usually find you to be. But even though I regularly, joyfully disagree with you, I have never felt compelled to write to you until now. You wrote recently about having a "Come To Jesus" meeting with your readers and through them, the contemporary daytime audience. You explained to us poor, starry-eyed soap fans in very sweet language about how "soaps are a business," and how sometimes, the beloved or elderly veterans, or both, have to go in the name of commerce, budgetary concerns, and the youth demographic, and that if they do go, it's usually because they're not "pulling their weight" (like, say, Anna Lee, who you cited in your article, who was fired at 91 and dead shortly thereafter after the new executive producer broke "General Hospital"'s longstanding promise to her and her family) or are making "unreasonable demands" and are thus no longer of use, but that we should "keep watching and loving [our] faves." I'm sure your unspoken addition to that sentence was "....while you can," but I'm just giving you the benefit of the doubt, okay? Okay.

Now, I want you to know first thing: I understand everything you said. I even agree with some of it. Soaps are a business. People do have to go. There is a youth demographic which is, understandably, the primary target of daytime television executives. And what you wrote is, after all, "only [your] opinion." Supposedly, but I have my doubts. But here's the thing, Ms. Hinsey, see, something just hit me like a ton of bricks: For all your long history in the world of daytime media, it turns out that I am a daytime institution too. I know, crazy, right? Not only that, but it turns out that - wait for it - I'm actually a lot more important than you and your opinion. And I'm more important than any of the executives or creative staff at ABC Daytime, be it Brian Frons, or Bob Guza, Jr., or Frank Valentini or Dena Higley. I'm even more important than some of the veteran soap stars who you just might have been obliquely referring to as "unreasonable" or "not pulling their weight," such as Phil Carey or Erika Slezak (Mr. Carey, a recent cancer survivor, was just let go from "One Life to Live" after decades of service for insisting upon his contractual renewal in lieu of "recurring," and Mrs. Slezak just spoke out vociferously on the show's quality, or rather lack thereof, in her fan newsletter) . I'm just plain more important than you and all of them. But it's not just me, right, because so is my blogging partner Darn, and so are most of those obnoxious online posters at Soap Opera Network, and so are most of those shrieking young women in the audience on SoapNet who scream for "old" folks like Hillary B. Smith or line up for Erika Slezak at Super Soap Weekend. Here's why, see: I'm not just the audience. We already know the audience ceases to matter to daytime after they hit 50, or 40 or 35 if we're being honest. No, see, I, and Darn, and all of those others, are all in the 18-49 demographic. Not only that, but Darn and I are both at the very low end of 18-49, namely under 30. Cast your mind back to those halcyon years, Ms. Hinsey, I'm sure you can remember. Which means, as you know, we are gold. We are made of frickin' bling. We live on iPods and cellphones and YouTube and MTV and instant gratification. We're gold to daytime advertisers, we're gold to daytime producers, to daytime executives, to daytime programming heads. If we tuned out or tuned in in a certain way starting next week in record numbers for a long enough time, we could have Steve Burton out on the street doing "Death Of A Salesman" in a Florida dinner theater, like Kevin Kline's character in "Soapdish." In that strictly vicious, corporate sense, we are, then, the only voice or opinion that really matters. Not yours, and not even the voices or opinions of the people behind the scenes at ABC Daytime. Ours. Which brings me to my complaint.

I have been a regular viewer of ABC Daytime since around 1993, hiding it from my friends, clumsily taping it or just staying home sick for unhealthy periods of time. I came into it full-time to watch "All My Children" and Kendall Hart, but at the time the show didn't do it for me so much (it did later) . I stayed, however, for "One Life to Live" and "General Hospital." I was fascinated by characters like Viki, Dorian, Nora, Max, Luna, Todd, Marty, Rebecca; families like the Spencers and the Scorpios, stories like those of Luke and Laura, Bobbie and Tony, Robin and Stone. Later on, I became addicted to the endless foibles of Erica Kane and Tad Martin and Liza Colby, and Dixie and her horrible, horrible hair. God, what bad hair. Now, the fly-by-nighter teens like, say, Bobby and Anita or Joey and Kelly didn't really do it for me; I might've liked them, but except for the rare stars like Susan Haskell, Roger Howarth, or Kim McCullough, my attention was almost always fixed elsewhere, on brilliant older actors and actresses like Tony Geary, Genie Francis, Erika Slezak, Robin Strasser, and Hillary B. Smith. I worship the ground Robin Strasser and Hillary B. Smith walk on, you don't even know. I did even then, and I was only in junior high at the time. Here was Nora, a fortysomething woman with grown children, or a villainous middle-aged dowager like Dorian, and yet they were my single favorite characters on "One Life to Live," which had become my show. Now, what do I have in common with Nora and Dorian? Except Nora's faith, absolutely nothing, including gender (Yes, I am that rare breed soap press and soap executives don't like to talk about: The male fan) . Yet I was entranced by their grit and spirit and forcefulness, or Viki's seemingly effortless grace of character, or Clint and Bo Buchanan's soulful resolve, or Asa Buchanan's steely curmudgeonness.

But more than just these great characters played by great actors, I was entranced by the shows themselves. I don't mean just the concepts or the production values or music or surface things like that, I mean the density of it, the scope, the length, the sheer weight and time spent - the history. I knew going in that soap operas had been on for a long time, and that these shows dated back at least twenty years or more at that time. I knew these characters and these families, the Lords, the Buchanans, the Spencers, the Scorpios, the Quartermaines, had been around for years and years, had gone through so much, had been everywhere and done everything, and that I was just the latest to come into their space and be with them. It was like a whole other universe, cozy and real and warm and full of life, not only when I was there watching but also when I hadn't been, before me. For a child watching, this fictional world was theirs, not just mine at my beck and call, and these people and these families and these towns went on and on. If you were ever that child in the audience, then I bet you know what kind of a comfort the continuing story of a daytime serial can be sometimes. A sense of history is what I kept watching soap operas for, a sense of a rich, long tapestry, something that spooled out beyond my memory and further than my eye could glean, a sense of history and a sense of family. It was because these characters remembered it all and loved each other that I remembered and loved them, too. And I was not the only one.

Here is something that I think you and those in the business of making daytime television already know but often don't acknowledge: Kids do not watch soaps for other kids. Okay? They just don't. They see enough of that around them in everyday life. They deal with it everyday at school. They watch for adults. They watch to see older people doing adult things that are so much adult and serious than kids think they could ever possibly be. I watched for Nora, Dorian, Viki, Luke, Laura, Bobbie, and all the rest. My friend Darn here at The Wreck Center watched Y&R for Jill and Katherine. I watched Nora fight to be with Bo, I watched Viki struggle with Sloan and Clint and her past with Dorian and her father, I watched Dorian defiant on Death Row. We watched for the older people, doing things older people do, and we watched for the families, and we watched for the memories and the history, like the Victor Lord story, that wrapped us in it without asking, sucking us in, making us part of the tapestry, and we didn't complain - we loved it. We still do. We watched for these characters and these things, we stayed for them, and yet here, today, in 2007, we are essentially being told, in deed if not word by the powers that be in daytime television, that even though we are the key demographic, we don't really want to watch these things, this isn't really what's interesting to us, these people don't really matter to us, and we should keep watching these shows even as they turn inside out into some of the worst, most unrecognizable crap I have ever forced myself to sit through. And now, Ms. Hinsey, in your condoning the recent daytime business practices, you're essentially telling us that too - of course, I'm sure it was "only [your] opinion" and Soap Opera Digest has a totally independent editorial stance, right? Right.

To read the rest go here: The Wreck Center: AN OPEN LETTER TO CAROLYN HINSEY & DAYTIME TELEVISION

[billyjill]

That is so weird, I read it JUST before coming to the board ... nice letter, well articulated.

[ATWTCarOn4Ever]

Interesting she does bring up a lot of truths. However I watch for the younger crowd too. I'm sorry but watching Asa hobble around Llanview screaming about Buchanan this and Buchanan that isn't entertaining to me. Bob and Kim are cute but if I don't see them on ATWT, I don't really care or notice. Some vets are crucial and I'm all for them staying as long as they serve a purpose. That being said I completely agree with about these arrogant Daytime executives. They do NOT know me. They don't know what I want and they can't presume to know what any of us want to see on our screens.

[Keith]

That was unsurprisingly brilliant.

[applcin]

It's not the event itself that makes something tabloid journalism, it's the way it's reported. Domestic abuse is reported all the time on the news. Not reporting something because the abuser is an actor is not professional journalism either. It's pretty laughable how the soap mags take themselves sooooooo seriously while their style is more tabloid than not.

[Cat]

There's avoiding becoming a tabloid rag, and then there's printing what the networks pay you to print and becoming their mouthpiece for their spin. Between the fromer and the latter is a HUGE middle ground which the soap rages REFUSE to move into because they are so afraid of losing their officially-mandated "scoops."

Darn, Jase, i went over to your site to read the whole open letter. It was magnificence. Good on you for pointing out Hinley's many inconsisitencies over this issue. In a perfect world, SOD would reprint your letter. In full.

In a perfect world, our soaps would feature a wide range of characters and age groups and take turns in rotating their SLs cyclically so that every fanbase would get a little sugar.

[juniorz1]

Incredibly well articulated letter Jase. I'm proud to have you speaking on behalf of all of us. The networks and the rags need a good reality check, and you served it up hot and covered in chocolate. Magnificent! And I must say I absolutely adored the ending.

You should have her position. But Hey.

It's only MY opinion.

[daysboy]

Amen brother! Keep on preaching!

[Q Steph]

My opinion too.

As far as I'm concerned, her column is for spin. SOW long ago disinegrated into tabloid fodder.

When all the soaps are a long ago remembrance, she and others will share in the blame for their steadfast refusal to critically challenge what the execs present to the audience and pass off as superior drama. It's quite inferior and has been for many years. Fluff articles designed to suggest otherwise are just part of the symptom.

[scuba]

Wonderful letter. You are so right about kids not tuning in for kids. I started watching American soaps when I was 12, and the adults and their adult lives are what drew me in.

[rsmith2k2]

Brava!

And, no I don't want them to keep secret to save a career of any domestic abuser. Jesus. If it was primetime, that would be covered. I don't want to know everything that goes on in actor's lives...sometimes, I'd rather know less. No reason to go out the way and call somone a drunk even if they are...but crimes, involving violence? Against women? While being held up as an object of fantasy by women across America? No thanks and they ought to be reporting it, if arrests, court proceedings, etc take place.

The mags are so beholden to the network shills as to be almost ineffectual. They start to speak out then you'll see a sudden, stark pull back or reversal (See: Cady McClain & Dixie). I don't see how hard copy soap mag spoilers will be an incentive for viewers to buy much longer...especially since they're often redundant to what we read online.

But they still have to maintain access to the actors for interviews and pictures, that's probably their bread and butter.

I hope and actually believe that the freedom of the Internet and the explosion of soap sites and blogs with so many serious-minded, well-reasoned, intelligent soap fans who offer straight-from-the-hip criticism in the hope of hopes soaps will come back to quality story-telling and great ratings, excitement, fun and LOVE! Not guns and science experiences and evil always wins and Doc-in-a-Box and few, if any truly rootable, non-hypocritical characters (can you tell I watch AMC?).

I cannot fathom that a demo like that, like the membership at SON, like US has no attraction to advertisers. But we lose out to random focus groups (who may or may not even watch the show they critique in a one or a few eppys) and executives crushing on annointed actors to the point of allowing an entire show to crumble on behalf pimping The *It" Factor Actor du Jour. It seems still lost on TPTB that CHARACTER INTEGRITY MATTERS more to the longterm success of the show than one hot (maybe), but off-the-rack actor. If the actor is annointed...the character must be the winner! Always!

*glares at AMC's Hobilly Babe*

[Ponz]

This letter should be compulsory reading for every network executive, producer & writer in daytime.

[billyjill]

That is the only reason I buy soap mags, on the occasions that I even do.

[Dr. Jay S.W.]

This is a very good letter. Question? Is this the Jase that everyone thought, I was?

[bleu]

This was an amazingly-written, well-articulated letter. If every fan could put their feelings into words like Jase did, maybe we would be in a different position right now. Maybe not, but it's sure hard to ignore such an amazing, thorough letter. I'm REALLY impressed by this. The sentiment goes way beyond ABC shows too. We have struggled with the same short-sightedness from the Days brass too, and they never seem to get it. Teens don't drive soaps. Period.

Beautiful, awesome letter. Kudos. Seriously.