CBS: Whole Network is in trouble.

[aMLCproduction]

Ur post wa dead on Kub, esp about Hogan

[EricMontreal22]

Well and that, despite some changes, more or less the writing and style has been consistant since the 60s there

[TC]

And they've consistently been about the people who watch them (aside from Betty Windsor -waiting for lightning bolt), mostly working class and middle class people. No hopping on private jets at a moment's notice for this bunch. Almost no SORASING, almost no recasts. no one EVER comes back from the dead unless it's acknowledged as a huge mistake and quickly rectified.

And also a lot less pandering to religious interrests. They have more gay and transgendered people. We have more guns.

Onward Christian Soldiers....!

[All My Shadows]

If ATWT or GL have aired in primetime three or four nights a week for the last 40 years, I'm sure their ratings would be incredible too. Daytime has had an incredibly bad wrap for ages, and TPTB seem to be constantly trying to change that (modeling shows after primetime shows isn't anything new; how many Ewing/Carrington rip-offs were there in the 80s?). If our shows were in primetime, their audience wouldn't be constantly changing/expanding/evolving. The audience would be the same audience from 30, 40, 50 years ago. But nope, 50 years ago, mainly housewives watched our soaps. Then men started to watch some shows, then college students, then high school students, and the audience has expanded to include all types of people, and the shows, instead of trying to appeal to the whole audience, choose to try to appeal to just a certain demographic. And I'm not saying that being in daytime is such a horrible thing. "The Price is Right" was able to appeal to everyone and their grandmother for over 30 years. Instead of everybody winning ranges, trips to Bermuda, fur coats, and groceries, people started winning computers, video game systems, speedboats, etc. But the old school prizes didn't disappear...they're just in the company of prizes that would appeal to a wider range of contestants and viewers.

And I'm not trying to down the UK soaps at all. There's no doubt a major difference in their shows and our shows, but at the same time, I'm almost positive that TPTB at the UK shows haven't had nearly as much pressure to make changes at the drop of a hat, get the ratings up up up, win Emmys, etc. Creatively, I think primetime is a much, much safer environment than daytime.

This goes into what I'm saying. Since the beginning of "EastEnders," it's been aimed towards the average person without going out of its way to appeal to a certain demographic. Take "The Bold and the Beautiful," on the other hand, a show that first aired two years later, and it came into an environment where you're supposed to appeal a certain audience without even trying to appeal to everybody. Yeah, there's gonna be millions of people out of the demographic who tune in to watch, but TPTB only care about women, ages 18 to 49.

~~~

Just clearing it up that I'm NOT trying to defend the talentless hacks who write ridiculous crap (like musical proms) to appeal to one audience while making the rest of the audience sport hardcore WTF faces.

[TC]

Great post AllMyShadows,

I think the point lies somewhere between what American Soaps and British Serials set out to accmplish. Make no mistake, they call them SOAPS in the UK, even though laundry detergents were never their initial sponsors. UK soaps were merely a low rent, televised version of their radio fiction, which in turn had grown out of their long tradition of serials in the newspapers. Dickens' stories were originally serialized in the papers before they were published as novels. There was a long tradition in both England and France of newspaper serials, sometimes paid by the line - which is why we have sections of The Three Musketeers with pages of "Yes!" "No!" dialgue.

I have almost no knowlwdge of the radio perion, but it isn't hard to see the differences in the TV period in the 50's, following the WWII. The USA went though a boom while the UK was still on food rations and utility furniture well into the 50's. The upwardly mobile middle class was the majority in the white US. Oakdale was "good enough" and close enough to reality. The UK was still quite poor, or working poor, working class.

Somewhere between then and now, one model stayed *somewhat* true to itself, while the other blew itself into the stratosphere.

Blame Dynasty, blame Dallas, whatever. The fact is, it happened.

[DaytimeFan]

I blame OJ. Just because it's convenient. Also because I'd NEVER blame anything associated with Joan Collins.

But seriously, British soaps are a different kind of animal. So are British viewers. As are British people. It's a whole different mindset. The demographics are different too. The young set has a specific soap, Hollyoaks...Emmerdale, Coronation Street and Eastenders tend to appeal across the board.