New blood in daytime: Novelists? Playwrights? Primetime Writers?

[marceline]

This is one of the potentials I've gnashed my teeth at for a long while & it has one problem that is huge & that is that everyone would instantly take a huge cut in pay while the number of people on contract for any given show would still have to be reduced to go back to the age-old status where people were on recurring, not on contract. And, that was a long time ago & I don't see today's economics working out for that many actors. Plus, the money that would pay the entire tech staff would also be in trouble because, say, for ABC's soaps, the East Coast people would work for 2 shows & the West Coast for one, going by what we now have & not knowing what they'd add. One repercussion is that you would probably quickly lose most of your longest-term vets.

Of course, there's no way of knowing if it would lend itself to 2 hour long shows anyway.

And, aside from however one could imagine solving these problems, personally, catch-up shows simply do not make sense to me. Avid fans don't like them because they're a waste of their time. And, so fans who do partake of them likely are simply being relieved of any need to actually watch their shows.

I definitely bow to your argument on the economics. I will simply have to assume that if we reinvent the on-air, things behind the scenes have to change too. Perhaps by consolidating all production on the East or West coast. and given the way a lot of actors seem to want to do other things there might be more flexibility there than you think.

Which leads me to your vets comment. I don't have a problem with losing most of the longest-term vets. I know that's heresy but part of what's killing daytime is simple old age. (The shows, not the actors.) We shouldn't even have to deal with this vet question because no show should be on for 30 or 40 years. The age of one actor playing one character on one show for decades is over.

When I gave my weekly line up I used the names of existing shows only as examples but in my real example they've actually all been canceled so there's no vet issue to worry about. That also addresses the 2-hour format question because I'm not trying to stretch an old show into a new format. I'm actually planning to phase out the old shows.

See when I say "reinvent" daytime, I mean rip it apart and start from scratch.

[MarkH]

Well, for starters, after the NuCoke debacle, the real pre-NuCoke 'classic' drink never existed again. The 'so-called' Classic Coke formula is actually a compromise formula.

And, I think soap fans are savvy enough to know when they're being manipulated in the way you describe.

Last but not least, I think it is far from economically feasible. But, interesting.

And, thank you for noting GL's numbers vis a vis other show numbers at this time.

Well, in my example, I really meant for "old Coke" to stay old Coke (and air MWF) and "New Coke" to be a genuine reinvention OF AN EXISTING SHOW, taking some of the characters, sets, situations, etc. (and air T-Th).

I really didn't mean it as manipulation. But I meant it as a new model for achieving what Ellen Wheeler is trying to do WITHOUT so totally pissing off the nostalgia base.

The nostalgics still get their show three days a week. And, if they can bear it, there is an umbrella story featuring SOME of their favorites on the new show too. In the same time slot, many viewers would watch 5 days a week...and that lets the "new Coke" begin to grow its' base.

To be very concrete, Loving could have continued to run MWF, The City could have run T-Th, and a story could have linked the two shows. (I personally liked the AMC-OLTL baby switch...or the Y&R/B&B Sheila sharing....and that is the kind of thing I'm thinking of).

This way, fans of Loving would have had a more gradual transition.

But the economics is a CRITICAL issue. The two shows would have to share production space, sets, etc...I think. They would have to hold on to some of the old ways of doing things for the MWF shows (moving sets, three camera setup, etc. etc.). So, economically, there would be AT LEAST constant expense, if not elevated expense...at the beginning.

As "new Coke" wins fans and becomes the dominant production model, costs would correspondingly go down. But it would have to be a multi-year investment plan.

[All My Shadows]

This reminds me of something I was thinking about several days ago. People love to say that so-and-so from primetime or so-and-so from cable could come to soaps and be better than half of the writers we already have in daytime, but I honestly don't see how that type of generalized statement makes any sense whatsoever. So-and-so from primetime may be an exquisite writer/EP who does amazing work, but so-and-so writes/produces a show that's only 22 episodes a year, a show that so-and-so probably created themselves, a show that hasn't been around for ten years, much less twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty, a show that doesn't have 25-30 *regular* characters to write for, more dialogue than primetime to look at, smaller budgets, a more tense industry (daytime vs. primetime), immense pressure from the network to do this, do that, and much, much more. You name me one person who is noted for their primetime work and let's see how well they survive in just one year in daytime. I don't think it's as black and white as it seems.

[Contessa Donatella]

When I said vets, or whatever, I was really speaking about the salary issue. If you recall some of the outspoken things that John Callahan said as he left All My Children (ignoring any personal stuff in his life) he spoke rather eloquently, I believe to Mara Lewinsky at SOD, about the fact that most of the people who were hired under the old salary ranges were simply going to have to go because they no longer fit into the current economics. The rates they were hired at, the years when actors got raises - not pay cuts or guarantee cuts - was simply too expensive for now. And, that is so true, and that applies to many actors who are not that killing old!! They're in the prime of their acting careers. Now, since my example, Callahan, left we all know that more & more people have taken pay cuts, period, but still things are stretched too thin overall for the net amount gleaned from ad rates being sold & how much it costs to produce the show.

Nonetheless ideas like yours are interesting. I get that you want to start over from scratch.

There are some random things that one could think about if doing so.

Affiliates like hour long programmed shows because they make more out of the second half than they do out of the first half. This has undoubtedly come into play when networks have wanted to program new half hour soaps around lunchtime. The affiliates know they can sell it locally, with local programming, or they want a full hour so they can get more out of the back half.

Even though creatively the half hour soap was obvious - to me anyway - a better time frame for soaps, and for more soaps too, it doesn't work as well in today's economics. One reason is illustrated above. And, a half hour soap takes more than half the money of an hour soap to produce & that's with cast size constraints already in place.

[Contessa Donatella]

Honestly, I think that all that would be needed to do that would be to have money reinvested into the genre, and in this example into the grand ole dame, Guiding Light.

Nostalgia is great if it's not at the expense of stagnation. This particular new could be better accomplished with more money. And, indeed, the idea of isolating young newbies even more just makes no sense to me. I don't mean to be in any way offensive, which I think you know, but I think isolating newbies to work only with each other, on their own, should be on our list of what not to do. That's the real reason so many teen summer stories have been wretched. And, I suspect it's the reason that they don't draw in the crowd they're meant to.