Some Soaps to Axe Previews to Cut Costs!

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I'm guessing its DAYS and the P&G soaps. P&G soaps for obvious reasons, and DAYS is going through a budger crisis it seems. You know its bad when you have to do a Midol ad-placement on your show...

[EricMontreal22]

But AMC did it first Oh well I won't be too upset--still is it really so expensive?

[y&r_fan]

No, they never have, but they do have video previews for the next day on boldandbeautiful.com. I think that's what all soaps should do - just have the previews on their websites.

But they should NEVER cut opening credits. I love watching the opening credits. Y&R and B&B both have great openings.

[AddictedToSoaps]

Yes they have - but they have only done it for special episodes and cliffhangers and such.

[DaytimeFan]

I think it's a good idea. Most of the 'previews' are actually let downs...particularly Y&R. Whoever picks the clips for their previews should be fired...B&B has never done them so for me I know that I have to watch B&B to see what's going to happen.

When it comes to opening credits...I think the ABC soaps, ATWT, and GL would all be well served to cut them down to the bare minimum, B&B should go back to it's old opening that had that fabulous 80s jazzy theme with the Vogue style headshots. Y&R should go back to the more classic version. DAYS has the most classic opening, Mac's voice is the best!

That being said, I am willing to bet that Susan Lucci has her placement in the opening credits in her contract. She's been at the end of the photo album for decades, I don't think she'd give that up. In AMC's case I think they are well served with having Lucci so closely identified with it. To many fans she IS AMC.

[Jess]

How much could those previews possibly cost? Maybe they are planning on selling the 30 seconds they use for previews on advertising.

[Toups]

I love this idea. I hate previews!

[All My Shadows]

That's what I'm thinking. It's more about adding in more commercials than cutting out the previews.

[JackPeyton]

i love opening with actors in them.

i love previews.

but im sure they cost tons more than any of think.

[TC]

For me it's mostly what MarkH. said. My formative soap years were the 70's and I remember the older, shorter themes, like DAYS has now. Another World had interlocking rings and a beautiful piece of music. (we called the rings "bums" as kids, how we tried to draw behinds) ATWT had the globe, EON had the Cincinatti skyline, Love of Life had the "Window"...

I think Y&R was the first to do "characters" but they were rather crude line drawings at first.

And AMC had that DAMN BOOK! For about a year it seemed, my sister Tracey (aka Spacey Tracey) ran around the house, opening every book she could find, humming, "Da da da, da da, da da da da, Da da DAAAAH, Da da da da da da"

I can still hear her doing it.

[Skin]

I have to say that I am not a fan. There are some times when previews are really needed. I remember one time on AMC that had a preview of Josh being hung up in a meat locker and had they not shown the preview for that episode I most likely wouldn't have watched it. There was no build up at all and it was completely random (on a Wednesday of all days) to have such action and interesting plot point. Sometimes Previews are the deciding factors for watching certaint shows.

[All My Shadows]

That's the point. Without previews, if people don't want to miss something, they have to tune in everyday. The ratings were a lot higher when there weren't previews than they are now.

[bandbfan]

Doesn't some soap, maybe ATWT? , preview the second half of the show? Something like, "coming up on _______" that plays when it's half over.

I remember when Shelia/Kimberlin Brown came back to B&B in 01 or 02, and they had to keep her hidden from everybody on set so nobody would know she was there. Seems extreme just to keep a secret.

[Skin]

That could easily back fire and have ratings drop. Soaps are very repetitive and monotonous often repeating and harping on the same plot issues daily for months on end. I know the very reason I tune into soaps is either because I am excited about what's happening on the said day or because I am aware of spoilers or because I am bored and I need something in the background. Spoilers and Day aheads are a deciding factor to why I watch I know the shows are definetly not that interesting to watch daily without prior knowledge. Especially shows like Days, ATWT, Y and R, AMC and GH which are all decidedly lacking in quality. I could easily catch the meaty stuff on youtube and not even bother watching live. Unless the soaps are going to get better in terms of writing this is going to serve a very moot point. Isolating the veiwer by cutting out pseudo interesting upcoming clip scenes is a bad move, especially since the writing is so horrid. You need something to entice the viewers into choosing to watch consistently.

[RoseVioletDaisy]

The ratings were higher years ago because the shows were a lot better than they are now and alot of the shows were either doing new things or old things in a new way. Nowadays, every show is just throwing every ultra-cliched plot point in the book on the screen for shock value to see if anything will stick with audiences. Almost nothing has for any show in years and since there is always so much needless shock, nobody takes most of these developments seriously anyway, so the notion that people will just be dying to tune in tomorrow if there suddenly wer no previews is kind of silly IMO. Same thing with spoilers.

Another big factor is that people who watched soaps in the past had more of a luxury of watching everyday to see what would happen. That's just not as true today. The number of stay-at-home moms and students who don't have to work their way through school is way down, the number of people working 2-3 jobs just to make is up, and our lifestyles are generally pretty hectic. If people can fit their soaps in now, it's usually only via DVR or tape, with them FFing whatever looks boring or whatever characters they don't like so they can fit it into their lives. The lack of 20 snippet clips isn't gonna change that. Like I watched GL on Wednesay and they showed a preview for Thursday's show and it was all Ava, Remy, and Grady. So I didn't watch because I couldn't care less about those characters if I tried and the writing isn't good enough to make them interesting.

Previews and spoilers definitely help me decide which days I'll watch and which days I won't even bother with. If they do away with previews completely and eventually spoilers, it'll kill what little is left of this industry. Most people are simply not gonna be willing or able to watch 5 episodes a week, every week to make sure they don't miss anything. They'll give their shows up rather than sit through 80% garbage they don't care about just to see 20% they do when they have alot of other things to do and with so many of the shows sucking, it'll be easy for most to walk away.