Tom Casiello's Blog

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Production falling behind? That had to be squarely on Latham's laziness which reflected on the quality of the show. Y&R never feel behind with Shaughnessy, Scott, and Smith (Hmm, they all had last names starting with S!). Thank goodness that woman was fired. However, the show now looks like the writers spend too much time writing these episodes and overanalyze everything to the point where it doesn't matter anymore. Eh, I guess you can't always win.

[SteveFrame]

I love Tom. He is really good about many things and I love his insights. I love how he plays politician too with writers.

He always talks about things that go on from up above and how they trickle down. He didn't point any fingers at Hogan and again here he didn't point any fingers at Lynn Latham. It all comes from up above.

Good way to keep your relationship open with the writers who will most likely be the ones to hire you.

From this everything at Y&R seemed to be more about those over Lynn and what they wanted Lynn to do with Y&R.

But according to Tom, Latham was given a mandate to change Y&R that evidently they weren't given.

[Soapsuds]

i say get Tom and Sara to Co-HW ATWT. And lets see what happens. Tom has been at ATWT before. I did like some of his ideas when hearing him on air. And Sara sounds like she knows how to write a soap.

[brimike]

He's about as honest as he can be, considering the way the industry is now. All of that stuff about epilepsy and deafness implies where LML's priorities lie. The show definitely felt like a PSA during most of that time.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I get part of that, but Latham was the EP and the one in change of the day to day production duties of the show. The fact that they seemed to delay production severely on a soap opera of all genres seems very stupid. Since she was the one involved with overall production process, I give her most of that blame. Daytime isn't primetime, which is something Lynn was confused with over and over again. She was also the one in charge of the writing team, it's just laziness and the work of a sloppy writer to have a breakdown due in one day. There might have been mandates from above, but the execution rests solely on Latham.

[Chris B]

Oh wow. His latest post confirms EXACTLY what I've been saying! Lynn Latham couldn't care less about the characters, it was all about whatever her agenda was at the time. The unorganized environment is 100% Lynn Latham because I'm sure the other soaps had the same problems and they got their stuff out. Plus, with 80 people on the staff, they shouldn't have any problems. LML simply didn't know what she was doing and this all showed on screen.

I know people from up to wanted to change the show and I blame them along with her. Not only did she change the show (far, far too much btw), but she did a horrible job executing whatever style she was trying to execute. Now every soap, except B&B, has been taken over by idiots hired to change the show and this NEVER works. Now look where Y&R is. I knew LML would start the beginning of the end for Y&R and she has. Of course MAB and Josh Griffith are to blame as well. The ratings were UP post-LML, but while viewers noticed improved structure and writing, how could they stay so long with nothing happening? Then LML's writers came back post-strike and it's uneven again. Ugh!

I enjoyed that blog.

[SteveFrame]

It is still a sympton of bad writers today though.

I mean if a man like Harding Lemay can do the HW, Breakdown, and the Script Writing himself on a 90 minute show like Another World and often produce the entire 90 minute script in less than 24 hours - and even Tom King said he often did - I just don't understand why the writers are paid more today - there are bigger staffs and they often perform only one function within the staff.

Lemay had a short writing staff of which Tom King was part of it, but Tom said that Harding wrote every script of the 90 minute version of AW himself. It wasn't his best stuff, but compared to what many of the writers do today the stuff was very consistent and very well done. The dialogue was miles ahead of what it is today.

I just don't have any sympathy for any of the writers today. They are paid more bucks than the writers of yesterday, yet they complain more and they produce less quality of work.

Douglas Marland one of the best writers in the business often wrote his own scripts as well. And even though he was often interfered with by Allen Potter and Gloria Monty - he did his job and he didn't make excuses for himself because of it. He knew it was part of the business and he went on. He didn't want to write the Luke/Laura stuff the way it was written but he did it. He wanted to go the Scotty/Laura route a little longer.

These writers today are not the first writers in the history of daytime soaps to be interfered with, but yet they act as if they are.

[brimike]

"These kids today..." *shakes fist at sky*

:lol:

Just kidding, Steve.

I see your point. But as for getting paid more... I think that's probably just because of scale going up every year. Most people are getting paid more in their positions than those in the 70's and 80's were.

And as for network interference, I'm sure you're right. I think it's just that fans notice it more now. It's not as subtle. And it's pretty common knowledge that the two strikes in the last thirty years forced the networks to become writers, and therefore brought about a lot more network interference when there wasn't a strike going on. THat's how I understand it at least. But I could be wrong.

[Faulkner]

I want to make sweet sweet love to this post.

We need more writers and fewer whiners in daytime.

[SteveFrame]

Oh no way - it's just the fans know more about it via the Internet than they did back then.

All the way back to the days of radio the networks interfered with the shows. Irna Phillips wrote about it many times how she fought the network execs to get stuff she wanted. OFten times she had more balls than half these so called hacks today though because she went ahead and did what she wanted. And she had the balls that even when fans yelled she did what needed to be done. She was stormed with letters when she killed off Kathy Roberts on GL in 1958. She had to make a special letter to be aired on the show. Then the same when she killed off Jeff Baker on ATWT in the early 60's. Today both of these deaths would have been undone because the writers don't have the balls to stick with anything.

Battles among the writers and producers go way back - often they worked things out but sometimes they didn't. For instance it was Lucy Ferri who got Irna Phillips fired at GL when she returned to the show in teh late 60s.

The more and more things have come out over the years there was some semblence of interference among all the producers. Douglas Marland of all the years he worked in daytime said that he only had 2 Producers who didn't interfere with his work - Joe Stuart and Robert Calhoun. Stuart was with him at The Doctors and Calhoun at ATWT. The rest he said interfered. But he still produced quality work. Monty and Potter were the worst 2 he worked with but GH and GL was some of the best stuff of his career.

And the strikes are just par for the course. It is the 3rd in the history since daytime started. They were interrupted by a writers strike back in the late 60's too.

[Toups]

I don't believe Harding Lemay or Douglas Marland could've written in today's climate with a small team like they had in the 70's. Back then, things were a lot slower and you could take your time developing story. Daytime was a totally different beast back then, wasn't it?

[TC]

I wonder how the assembly process from tape to air, and the time difference, plays into it as well. 6 weeks sounds like a protracted opportunity to interfere even after most has been committed to tape. Compare that to shows airing live up until the 70's or so, it must have been easier for someone like Irna Phillips to get it done, over with, and on the air, and to hell with what the suits think. Surely we didn't go from airing live to a six week delay; it must have been a gradual process - the way things are now evolved along with it.

[SteveFrame]

It was to some degree Toups, but stories weren't really as slow as some people want to make them out to be. They didn't do nearly as much of the flashbacks and stuff that some do today.

The biggest difference was that scenes were longer and they hit big beats with characters and stuff. A big main story might go on for years, but overall it had all these little bumps along the way that got played out.

I think for instance the Mac/Rachel/Janice/Mitch quad lasted about 2 years, well from November 1978 to March 1980. It was pretty much all written by Harding Lemay. Most of it was an hour show but a huge part of it took place during the 90 minute format in which he wrote every script. I think Tom King wrote the climax of the story.

The story had so many things going on that kept it fresh and it didn't seem long at all. The strange thing was that it ended with the big ST. Croix island shoot after sweeps had ended - in March at that. It was one of AW's really big last stories.

So no I think they could very well write today. They worked very closely with the scripts and pretty much didn't even use breakdown writers. They did theri own breakdowns.

And the thing is they had a whole lot more characters on to work with too, and they didn't feature a story hardly ever over 2 to 3 days a week - mostly 2 days unless the story was in a big climax part. I think when the story got to the St. Croix part - they were on everyday. It was rare for an actor to be on everyday or even 4 days a week.

When things were live they often had spies on the set everyday. The censors were there everyday - I do remember reading that.

[brimike]

Steve, you said a mouthful here.

Head writers wrote their own breakdowns - which means you weren't dealing with FIVE sets of personalities, FIVE egos to note in a weekly meeting, FIVE different people trying to all be on the same page when a note in one breakdown affects EVERYONE'S breakdowns.

So when the network interfered with a note, the head writer could EASILY just carry it through, because s/he was the only person writing the breakdowns. (They also weren't twenty pages, but only six or seven pages, so a "heavy rewrite" wasn't nearly as heavy because there was less to revise).

If you DON'T have a breakdown team that thinks like one person (and they do exist out there... they're rare, but they do exist), then you have a lot of dissonant voices. And network interference takes on the illusion of being much worse because five different people are experiencing the same note five different ways.

Great debate. It's certainly making ME think. Thanks for posting, man! :-)

[Chris B]

I always hear that older soaps were slow, but I don't see that in my experience. They're more character driven, with the emotions and effect the action has on the entire canvas. It wasn't about big stunts and if they did have an event, it would tie into months and months of story. I've seen Ryan's Hope, Dark Shadows and Peyton Place (albeit the last is primetime) and none seemed slow to me. Yes, there were slow periods, but overall when the show was on it was on. Even Y&R, I have a lot of weeks from 1997-2000 and over the span of each week so much happened and it didn't feel slow at all. I could pretty instantly jump into the story and there were no filler weeks.

With Bill Bell in particular, he built his stories to the point where I thought I was going to have a heart attack at the end. And apparently 1997 wasn't his best work (or close)! When the Kay Alden episodes began airing you could immediately tell he was gone, although I still enjoyed her stuff. I'm going way off topic, but basically Toups--no soaps weren't slower then. Just better structured and character driven.