Should American soaps rethink their format?

[GoldenDogs]

WORD. No, wait... TRIPLE WORD.

B

[Sylph]

I think they have an illusion that they know, but they don't.

To illustrate a point: you have tons of people on the internet who believe that they're ATWT's (e.g.) next Douglas Marland just because they can write a soap blog or some fan fic or something. But to thump out a, say, 100-page story bible is something completely different.

And HW's job is not just the bible! Contracts, network, managing the staff, editing... You get the picture.

[Sylph]

P. S. You can also write a fabulous bible and still get the denomination unshootable, absolutely the worrrst (I can't emphasise this enough) epithet a piece of dramatic writing can get.

[brimike]

I'll "triple word" that, Sylph.

[MarkH]

Hey...give me one example of "unshootable". Just one...because I'd love to visualize this better.

[nicknack]

Well, hence my example about telenovelas and how many of them actually ended up being backdoor pilots for new shows. In fact a better handled Nightshift might be something like that. Sneak it under the audience, wait for them to get attached to it and then turn it into a new soap. And if it doesn't catch on, end it and claim that it was always the intention to be just a limited experiment. And keep trying on a smaller scale till you hit gold.

[brimike]

That makes sense to me. It's like what Sci-Fi did with Battlestar Galactica. They made it a miniseries, that could act as either a pilot, or the beginning of a series. If it did well - series. If not? It stands alone as a miniseries and nobody looks dumb.

[marceline]

Soaps have too many things working against them right now. Good writing can't compete with the business realities of trying to produce 250+ shows a year on a shoestring budget. My friend who recently became a stay at home mom tried watching soaps but she found herself watching Without a Trace on the picture-in-picture. Guess which show won out?

Writing's the easiest to pick on because everybody thinks they can do it. But to do it five days a week? While you have executives and their focus groups breathing down your neck? And no money to do anything great with? And fighting cable showings of primetime shows like ER and Law & Order which, when shown daily, feel just like a soap only edgier and more modern?

Now throw in fans who bitch about new characters, the implementation of budget saving measures like CGI or product placement and staying true to their (often selective) memory of a character that was created by someone else. Why would a truly visionary writer like a Joss Whedon or JJ Abrams, both of whom have done some of the soapiest writing I've ever seen, even consider doing daytime?

You could dig up Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams and Zora Neale Hurston reanimate them through voodoo and black magic and make them headwriters and people would only complain how the undead don't understand soaps.

[Sylph]

For example, an unshootable scene description? (Because that one is the easiest, and the epithet can apply to anything from story bible to scene descriptions etc.) This one is borrowed from T. Rossio:

INT. WAREHOUSE - NIGHT

A big guy opens the door, comes into the warehouse. Larry is dead, stabbed in the back. The big guy looks at the knife, then turns and stumbles out.

[Sylph]

Abrams with his $50+m deal is not interested. Besides, he wouldn't be a fit for daytime.

Oh, "that fatuous comment that if Dickens were alive today, he'd be writing for EastEnders; a remark that can only be followed by the reflection that if Dickens did write EastEnders, it would be so very much improved in quality as to be unrecognisable."

[nicknack]

The sole question is whether networks really want soaps. Because if they don't then it really is a moot point. I don't think that it really has that much to do with business realities because other countries show that money can be made with soaps. Yes, even soaps that air during the day rather than at 6pm.

[Khan]

Although several people have made very good points in this thread, I, myself, have no qualms with the format of (American) soaps today. Call me a simple-minded optimist, but I truly believe soaps would have no trouble finding audiences if they just went back to basics: good stories, performed by good actors. As Doug Marland said, that's all you need.

[Sylph]

:siren!: Wrong! (Sadly.)

[marceline]

Just to be clear I wasn't referring to the actual JJ Abrams or Joss Whedon. I just used them as examples. And, saying that Abrams wouldn't "be a fit for daytime" is exactly the kind of thinking I'm referring to.

Nothing is a "fit" for daytime anymore because so much has changed. Audience expectations have changed. And I know that someone will jump in here and say "Audience expectations haven't changed we still want family and romance, etc..." but the steady hemorrhage of viewers says otherwise. The leftover viewers want the same thing they were getting 20 years ago but those things are harder to provide in the modern climate. For example, you see people lamenting the fact that we don't get lavish wedding events or location shoots, anymore but those are harder to do now for very practical reasons. Then people complain about CGI even though it's well accepted in primetime.

On the telenovela suggestion, I think the structure might work but I'm not sure about the stories. I believe MyNetworkTV tried that and failed. But MyNetworkTV is pretty much a failure all the way around so who knows, perhaps someone else could make it work. Networks may resist soaps now specifically because its a never-ending money pit. The 13-week format may work. Or just writing them with the expectation that they will end in 2-5 years could be enough.

[august1229]

I think this is true.

One thing they could do: if the supercouple has this huge fanbase, spin off a little show, 1/2 hour, about that couple and their new life somewhere else. If the fanbases are that big, it would work. If they aren't that big, then write them off to live happily ever after as the German soap did.

The reason it is so hard to write good stories appears to be that the couple has to stay frontburner, yet they need drama, so they break up and get back together over and over again, which gets old for everyone not obsessed with the couple. The fanbase doesn't even like it; third parties are forever interfering and threatening to develop new fanbases.

If there were, for example, a Jack and Carly sitcom where they live happily ever after and enjoy the hijinx of their children, their fanbase is happy, and ATWT is not bogged down with the need to put them on all the time; and the newbies can be better liked because they aren't there to create drama and break up Jack and Carly, only to have their hearts broken when Jack and Carly reunite! They can do something more interesting.