If this lethargy continues, when will daytime die forever?

[Toups]

Yeah, it was a joint German/Canadian production.

[brimike]

IT'S OFFICIAL!

I NEED COPIES OF THIS!

LIKE, NOW!

That is my goal for the summer. If anyone has info, PM me.

NOW!

:lol:

[TC]

Interesting points, Toups. No , really. When AW, DS, and EDGE had their heydays, they were all 3 pm or later.

Trust me. You DON'T

It wasn't even brilliantly bad, like Strange Paradise or Riverdale. It was incredibly BORING ... except for those HOGAN'S HEROES/ Benny Hill style German accents.

[David V]

The simple, unpalatable fact remains that soaps have seen a continuous, albeit for most part gentle, decline since overall viewership peaked in the mid-1970s when some of the biggest soaps drew as much as 10 million daily. Really only the meteoric rise of ABC Daytime spearheaded by General Hospital disguised this to a degree, or at least temporarily halted the decline. From 1975 (the approximate peak) to 2000 the rate of decline was steady- and the pre-empting for the OJ trial can hardly be used as an excuse when soaps had been pre-empted for numerous events for many years before that (e.g. Oliver North), never mind the writers' strike of 1988.

Even as recently as the late 1990s, the fact that new soaps like Port Charles, Sunset Beach and Passions were created suggested that people still saw viability in soaps. The future didn't seem so gloomy then as it does now, or did it?

No, the simple reason soaps have declined in popularity so much is because the quality of soaps has declined, which has become ever more marked since 2000 which is also why ratings since 2000 have declined far more sharply than they have in any previous decade. Primetime TV still serves up quality drama, and in fact provides many stark lessons for the IIC at Daytime, so therefore the IICs are entirely to blame for the catastrophic decline of an entire genre.

I can trace it back to the "youth movement" of the 1990s when Daytime gained a sudden obsession with going after the youth market with sensationalism and shock value over subtance realism, eye candy instead of proper actors, and I can go on. They have really insulted the intelligence of a whole generation of viewers in the process, in thinking that the youth market are attracted by stupidity on TV. Look at all the successful, long-running Primetime shows- most of them feature middle-aged to older, often less glamourous, figures front and centre. And a show like "Ugly Betty" is diametrically opposed to what Daytime is trying to convey. In short, Daytime have sent out the wrong message and people are simply tuning out.

[MTSRocks]

The PASSIONS/Y&R combo on Global Toronto television Canada was a thing of BEAUTY. You'd watch PASSIONS for the campy, outlandish, and sometimes hilarity of it all, and then you would tune in to Y&R which was like a fine glass of champagne (being the more sophisticated and intellectual soap IMO). Before PASSIONS I believe it used to be DAYS OF OUR LIVES for awhile, and that's when DOOL was fun to watch. Now that PASSIONS is off the air, they have GL airing at 3:00 PM and Y&R at 4:30 PM. I believe Another World used to be a big ratings drawer as well. I know Newfoundland gets the first broadcast of Y&R at 11:00 AM.

[All My Shadows]

Personally, I think the #1 reason for the shows losing viewers is the whole idea of there's an overwhelming number of other things to be watching during daytime. I don't necessarily believe that longtime viewers are tuning out as much as people say they are (I have dozens of relatives who have all been watching soaps since the 1960s and before, and most of them still tune in at least 3 or 4 days a week), but the thing is, the cycle of younger people watching soaps with their parents/grandparents, then watching them themselves as they grow older is dying. Children and teenagers have their own TV sets now, so they don't have to watch what their parents are watching or what grandma is watching, and then, when they decide what they want to watch, 9 times out 10, one of their favorite primetime shows might be in reruns on a cable network, VH1 is probably showing a thousand episodes of "Flavor of Love" all day, SportsCenter is on, cartoons are on, a good movie might be on, etc. Why watch "grandma's stories" when they could watch something that they already know and enjoy?

And so in that regard, I actually don't blame TPTB for trying to get younger viewers. They'd be idiots not to because they need to continue the cycle of new viewers coming in and staying for years. And as sad as it is, especially to me, the easiest way to attract some of the superficial, shallow members of my generation is to throw around half-naked guys in ridiculous love stories that are more BS dialog and stupid sex scenes than meaningful stories with purpose. But of course, the second that stuff stops, the shows turn back into "grandma's stories" and no "hip" teenager wants to be seen watching that.

It's sad and part of the reasons why I hate the majority of my generation.

[JackPeyton]

IMHO, the biggest reason for the ratings dip is how they mark the ratings.

i wish we all were counted.

[All My Shadows]

I think that has a lot to do with it too. I used to think that because "Search for Tomorrow" once had a yearly rating of 16.1, that meant that millions upon millions upon millions were watching, at least 15 million. In truth, however, it was only about two and a half million. If they used the same amount of viewers per Nielson point now, Y&R would be getting 16.1 ratings too.

[David V]

Not sure if I'd be so simplistic on it all. Y&R's character-driven realism continued to have appeal across all demographic groups, a key in its success. The obsession with eye candy on Daytime in the new millennium has contributed, IMHO, to the decline of quality and hence people watching- after all, look at how people were pushed to the limit of their gullibility in the music industry with "image over talent" in the 80s, of which Milli Vanilli was the apex of pushing that limit. And when they were found out (itself a story not relevant to being covered here), there was a backlash against it.

I remember reading an article in 1999 which showed the viewer numbers for all the soaps. They were at the time:

Y&R- 8 million

B&B- 5.6 million

Days- 5.4 million

GH- 4.9 million

ATWT- 4.7 million

GL- 4.6 million

AMC- 4.3 million

OLTL- 3.9 million

AW- 2.7-3 million (approx.)

PC- 2.5 million

SB- 2 million

Some of these soaps, especially Days, have lost at least half of those numbers since 1999.

[JackPeyton]

from

Y&R-

B&B-

Days-

GH-

ATWT-

GL-

AMC-

OLTL-

AW-

PC-

SB-

to

Y&R-

B&B-

Days-

GH-

ATWT-

GL-

AMC-

OLTL-

in less than 10 years.

sad.

[y&r_fan]

As long as Y&R and B&B stay on the air, I'm happy.

I disagree. Y&R is very well-written and has been consistently for the last several years. B&B is much better than it was a year ago, but could be better.

[Sindacco]

European soaps are very different from american soaps. American soaps are more unreal, because alot of viewers want as they put it, escap from real life. European soaps are much more realistic and they are character-driven, not couple-driven or plot-driven. On european soaps the shows are about normal persons that we can relate to. American soaps are so superficial compared to ours. That's why american soaps aren't popular here in Europe, well they are popular from us that watch it and they have good ratings but they are extremely disliked in the mainstream media and television.

But the american viewers really confuse me, one second you say that soaps are about escaping real life and you want to see a world you don't really live in, but the next second you complain about unrealistic things. And you complain about the producers and writers changing the shows formula, but how are they supposed to stick with one formula when you complain no matter what. Make up your damn mind of what you want to see and maybe the soaps can survive. But you viewers are just as much guilty for killing the soaps as TPTB.

[Ben]

I think it all boils down to one thing: Commitment. If the networks aren't committed to nurturing and sustaining the genre's longevity, then soaps will die. They'll start to peter out (which in some cases that's already happening), and will slowly cease to exist. OK, so that's a little grim, but with little or no effort put into marketing, or canvasing for new viewer-ship, combined with the lack of commitment to producing new shows, that's exactly what will happen. The future of Daytime can't rest on the current soaps, because GL is struggling as it is, and DAYS has only just managed to dodge the ax, again - they're drowning, and no one really seems that bothered by it. But this isn't just an issue that affects the US soaps; it's something that is notable in England, and Australia, where every single new soap that has appeared over the last 10 years, hasn't failed to catch on - either through lack of network commitment, or because they were dire.

I will definitely agree that moving soaps to 4pm and onwards is a good idea. I think over here, had Eastenders or Coronation Street, been solely for a daytime audience, they would have crashed out a long time ago. Daytime would thrive from the expanding audience that a later slot would bring. All it needs is someone who actually cares about the genre, to give it some creative attention.

The UK is kinda funny when it comes to US soaps - they tend to go up and down. Sunset Beach has been the most successful Daytime soap out of all that has aired here. It was constantly in Five's top 30, sometimes even making it into the network's top 10. If NBC hadn't of axed it, then it would of still be airing today, along with B&B, which grew in popularity thanks to BEACH. B&B is now broadcast on Diva TV, and does really well, considering it's only available on Sky; DAYS, GL and Y&R air on Zone Romantica, and are slowly building in audience.

DaytimeFan: Do you know how well Sunset Beach did in Canada? I'm just wondering if it's popularity was solely a European thing, or if it was just the American audience that it failed to gel with.

[All My Shadows]

There's a line that needs to be drawn. Escapism, to me, is larger-than-life characters and settings, almost fairy tale-ish. It gets unrealistic when certain characters die ten times, aborted fetuses are living and breathing, characters that you've seen "in heaven" many times are now suddenly alive, children go to camp today and come back tomorrow with a Social Security check, five serial killers strike the same damn town, when people "die," they go to a magical island, etc. Some soaps are made for the supernatural, the bizarre. As far as I know, the only American soap that was created with that in mind was "Passions." Even "Dark Shadows" started as just a Gothic soap, with the ghosts, vampires and other things coming up a year or two into its run.

I just want each soap to stay true to what it was created as. I want GH to be about the hospital, not spies and the mob. I want ATWT to be the quintessential grandmother's soap, with characters agonizing about their problems all the time. I want GL to be a soap about unity and hope. I want Y&R to be *young* and *restless*, for goodness sake. I love Y&R's vets and I wouldn't trade them for the world, but it's ridiculous that a soap once known for having realistic, younger characters hasn't had a real good younger set since I watched it when my grandparents in the 1990s!

I think so, too. I honestly think that if soaps aired in the time between the networks' nightly newscasts and primetime (timeslots that have historically been game show slots), they'd see incredibly high ratings. But before they're exposed to a diverse new audience, they'd have to clean their acts up and stop going for sensationalism to get ratings and go back to the way things used to be.

The only problem I'd personally have with soaps airing later in the day is that I wonder what the people who actually watched live in the daytime would do. For fifty years, my grandmother watched her shows during the daytime while washing dishes, doing laundry, etc. What are all these types of people going to do now? Watch VH1's "Flavor of Love" marathons?

[Ben]

ITA. There's a big difference between escapism and absurdity, and one that seems to have been muddied over the last few years. Escapism can still be realistic and plausible, and house larger-than-life sets, scenarios etc.

Maybe instead of moving them to 4pm, they should rerun them in that time slot. This way they go out "live" in the daytime for the current, older audience, and repeat in the later time, attracting a newer viewer. It's the best of both worlds, but the Nets would have to be willing to take the chance, and nurture them at the time.