All: In 5 years how many soaps will still be on the air?

[Southofnowhere]

In 5 years how many soaps will still be on the air?

My guess is CBS will still be airing Y&R and B&B and GH and maybe Days will be airing on Soapnet or the internet.

GL: will end this Fall

AMC:Will end in Early 2010 shorty after it's 40th b-day.

OLTL:Will last a year or 2 after AMC

ATWT: Will be gone by 2011

Days: If the ratings an ABC can get it cheap may stay around.

There may be a bunch of new internet soaps if a workable model can be created.

[y&r_fan]

I think all of the current soaps will still be around in 5 years. All the "daytime is dying" talk is nonsense. Sure the ratings are declining (except for Y&R, which is actually gaining viewers), but the same goes for primetime.

[DavidEvanSmith]

I hate threads like this. And there have been so many.

It's like "vote on which soaps should be canceled!"

It is almost as morbid as voting on which aunts and uncles will be dead in five years. Is it really necessary?

I feel like since we do gather here out of a common love for the genre, that we should spend our time celebrating what we love about it, hoping for its resurgence, and not watching and speculating on the when and how of its death.

[MarkH]

I have done these "dead pools" (Marceline's reference), and I have done linear projections to estimate dates-of-death from current trends.

But I am coming around to your opinion, DES!

Just remember, though, that this death-speculation is not always mean spirited. Sometimes it is anticipatory socialization...something like throwing your arms up to brace against being hit. We visualize and speculate about the death, because we fear it, and it helps us to expect it, so we will not be so shocked and hurt. It is actually a fairly natural human response.

That said, I agree. Maybe we are putting too much of the "death" out there (I have been a perpetrator!), and thereby contributing to the larger "soaps are doomed" narrative. Maybe if we hold on to the positivity you describe, in some small way it will help others to see that there is still life and love in the fandom.

[DavidEvanSmith]

Thanks for seeing my point. After my post, I was tempted to look back at how many of these kinds of threads I actively partcipated in, because I'm sure I have. But there's a thread on this board "the decline of soap operas" which I have yet to open because it's just becoming too much. I don't want to delude myself into thinking more soaps won't be canceled, it is what it is. But if that's ALL we talk about, if we want to put deadlines and death dates on soaps before the networks do, I feel we are encouraging them to do so. I personally can't do it anymore. I don't want to contribute to the death of the genre and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For all my complaints and disappointments (mostly about GH, LOL), they are because I DO love soaps and think they are a valuable and underappreciated medium, and hope they are around for a long time to come. I wish the executives would spend more time revitalizing the industry than suffocating it. So I wish we would stop doing our part to suffocate it as well.

[All My Shadows]

Word. One can know and accept that ratings are down and that it's crunch time for TPTB at the shows, but when you're reduced to just shrugging whenever there's good news of any kind, and blowing it all off with a "Well, it doesn't matter anyway, in a couple of years it'll all be gone..," I think it's just sad.

And honestly, again, five years ago, the same question was asked. "In five years what soaps do you think we'll have left?" And then someone, thinking they're Miss Cleo, busts in with a "Well, they'll all be gone except for Y&R and B&B in primetime or cable or whatever." If anything changes within the next five years, the most it'll be is the ends of GL and DAYS, and maybe ATWT, but that depends on how much you believe ATWT and GL are a package deal.

[marceline]

We all deal with these things differently. I respect that some people want to believe that soaps will go on forever. My fondest wish is that by some miracle someone will try a new soap. But I don't see anything wrong with acknowledging the facts in front of us like falling ratings, tanking economy and budget cuts and not just for soaps. People aren't pulling this negativity out of some paranoid dream. There's a reason people are asking these questions. I think those of us who can handle realistic discussions about cancellation should be allowed to have them and those who are upset by the topic need to find a way to deal with it.

[CassieFan]

GL will be the first one to go. Then AMC. Then ATWT. Then OLTL.

The others will stay. Although GH needs to be cancelled before AMC and OLTL. That's not even the same show anymore as it was a couple of years ago.

[DavidEvanSmith]

There is a distinct difference between optimism and denial, and a distinct difference between acknowledging the reality of falling ratings and actively "dead pooling" every two weeks to guess which soaps will die first. I think people can tell the difference between the point of this thread and the point of other threads that want to talk seriously about business models, cost efficiency, and relevance to the viewership.

Failing to acknowledge those differences is what's delusional. The world is not black and white. But I do believe that optimism and pessimism have power unto themselves and that's my point.

[ReddFoxx]

I think all except GL and there's a good possibility that it will still be around. Daytime isn't going anywhere, as long as the networks can get some revenue, they will keep them on. If they axe them, that's around 1-4 hours of ad revenue the network itself loses, because the hours in daytime would surely go to syndication, plus the internet revenue from streaming the soaps would disappear.

[marceline]

I think it's still up in the air who'll go first after GL. Given the economy, if the wrong sponsor pulls out or goes under that could change everything.

[SOAPSFOREVER]

I agree. This drum banging about the death of soaps in premature. Having said that, I don't think GL will be around in five years. The numbers are just too low. If DAYS can't make it work financially, NBC may hang on to it; if not, it will be gone too. I think Y&R and B&B are safe, unless their number start to tumble, which seems unlikely, especially for Y&R which is on such an upswing creatively. The rest, who knows?

[alexisfan07]

I think DAYS will be gone and that's it. When you let go of Drake and Deidre, your show is dead. Sorry. Besides, there's no strong soap base on that network.

[MarkH]

No, DES has a point.

Look, if you know when the contracts expire, and you do the linear projections on the current ratings trends, it really is simple math to see when they will go. There might be some variance around specific dates, but it's kind of straightforward to figure out the dates and the order of death.

The unknown here is that the whole financials of network television are changing, and so that might alter the viability of soaps if we move (soon) to a new cost model. That's basically what J. Bernard said at Daytime Confidential.

But let's combine DavidEvanSmith and Marceline's points. Marceline says she'd like to see a NEW soap. Indeed, that (more than anything) would argue that genre still has life...because people are still investing in it. A new soap, I think, can't plan to live 70 years. It would be better for it to plan on five years, and really tell a rip-roaring story with a defined conclusion. But that kind of talk is not about hopelessness and death. It is about the evolution and rebirth of the genre. Very different...

I wrote a positive blog piece about Nuke's sex (ATWT). I can't TELL you how many people have emailed me and commented to me and on boards with -- strangely -- an expression of GRATITUDE that finally someone said something positive .

What I take from that is that we (as "internet fandom"), as a group, may have developed into too negative a culture. In general, all good things require moderation and balance...a blend of lightness and dark. So too it is with fandom.

If every thread about about the 'death of soaps' were matched with a thread about 'new hope', I don't think we'd feel so unbalanced.

This isn't just theoretical. If people KEEP trashing the genre, it becomes more and more and more uncool. How many people have tuned out in disgust, in part, because their anger and negativity was fueled by internet fan environments? I don't know...but you KNOW this "contagious negativity" problem exists! Look at Tom Cruise's career! Mel Gibson's!

Doesn't it seem odd to find so much of this negativity within fan environments that ostensibly exist to CELEBRATE the genre? It does to me. It suggests that, instead, we may often have formed communities of Schadenfreude. Why did that happen? Is it truly healthy for the genre?

[All My Shadows]

I get where this is coming from, because I've seen the people who stick cotton in their ears and shout out "La! La! La! La! La! La!" to ignore what's really going on and to pretend like nothing is happening. And I can't speak for everyone, but for me, it's not necessarily about thinking that soaps will go on forever. I liken it to having a relative with terminal illness (which, I know, is a worn-out analogy, but I still think it has value). When you visit this relative, are you going to sit there and talk about how their body is shutting down, they're losing all of their strength, and it's only a matter of time before they pass away? And even further, are you going to sit there and talk about those things with everyone EXCEPT for the person who is dying? I know that soaps are not people, they don't have feelings, but still, the genre is something that most of us here and really passionate about. We all wish that someone would hop in with a miracle cure to make them vibrant again. People like me don't want to be bogged down, worried about what's going to canceled and who's going to be fired every time we turn on a soap. We just want to enjoy them while we can, before they're gone.