April 6-10, 2009

[Money]

Rhinohide, I think if Frons is gone OLTL can be salvageable even though RC may still be HW since I've seen him write well before, although for the life of me I cannot seem to recall when that time period was. I do think he showed promise, if not spurts of good writing, however he has gotten progressively worse in the last few moths so I may have to recant my original words.

I think the entire line up can show progress with their current writers but Frons ultimately has to go. There's not even a debate there. GH fans can correct me but maybe the show would not be as bad as it is if Frons wasn't at the helm and Guza remained? Can the same be applied to AMC if Pratt had to report to someone who actually cared about the genre? I dunno.... All I just know is that OLTL is my soap and it totally sucks ASS right now. I blame both Frons and RC.

[rhinohide]

Thanks for clearing things up. As for your last sentence -- I'm on board.

[Ann_SS]

IMO, GH would be worse with no Frons. Guza would be out of control. It would be all mob violence and all the characters not related to the mob would be completely eliminated. Frons may not be the greatest, but I'll keep him over Guza alone or some unknown replacement who may be even worse.

[miche]

Guza would be better with Frons out, just look at from March 1996-October 1996, December 1997 to December 2000 when he was the HW of GH.

[Carolyn1980]

First and foremost, Frons needs to go. But Guza and Pratt need to go, as well. They are a misogynist trio that are somehow inexplicably in charge of a genre that is supposed to appeal primarily to women. And that's killing ABC's ratings. The only viewers left are the self-loathers and masochists who share their vision of women, or the hangers-on who keep hoping (wrongly) that things will improve with the current regime. It won't.

[Scotty]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...Tomlin (IMO) was at his best when he was the EP of OLTL. He sucked as HW during the strike, but he was great as the EP.

[rangethatrover]

I didn't like most of Tomlin's reign, OLTL was a little too light for my taste. Although I really enjoyed Allison's return and anything involving Natalie/Seth/Roxie was really good too. BUT. That Trading Places episode is an underappreciated CLASSIC. It is laugh out loud funny from start to finish, it was produced beautifully, every actor was brilliant. It is funnier today than it was then. The show deserved that emmy.

[Scotty]

There was also the Babes Behind Bars episode and the LIVE week. Plus he helped bring back Dorian, Gabrielle, Mitch, and others. I loved the humor and the campiness of it.

I ran across one the episodes from around that time the other day.

It was very funny....Bo was talking to Dorian about Mitch's murder.

The funniest line...."This water's from Ore-gon, Dori-an. Can't get this stuff in these parts." His accent was priceless....as was RS's face as she tried to keep from laughing.

[Ann_SS]

Sara Bibel gives her take on the recent ratings with some insiders insight. IMO, she is right about ABC viewing the ratings decline as market forces versus quality. http://www.fancast.com/blogs/author/sarabibel/

[MarkH]

Here's the thing. It is market forces.

Bear with me...The state of the 8-soap ratings is market forces. 99% market forces. Seriously. I can show you the analysis...I can explain 99% of the ratings variance without knowing a single thing about what writer, what producer, what...anything. (Now, you could say, "but they're all crap--that's why they're all declining together"...but that really doesn't seem to matter).

Here's where the creative factors might matter: The within-genre ranking. For example, in HH, GH seems to have gone fairly quickly from first to third on ABC. That is a precipitous change in ranking, and if it holds, is probably capable of being put at the feet of Frons/Guza, etc.

Even here, though, I'm losing my confidence. Because I was sure that DOOL was an exception: "Low quality writing but ratings/ranking improvement". But SouthofSoap came in and said, fairly, "You don't watch DOOL. It is not that bad."

So, maybe the theory holds: Writing/creative strength is one of the factors that determines a show's relative ranking...but I continue to maintain -- with evidence -- that it has no effect on long-term decline trajectory.

[Sylph]

The decline also happened — note on also, not just because — the falling quality of writers. From Agnes to Megan, from Bill to Latham, from Harding to Lethal Leah. And so on. Just as there was a gradual fall in quality of writing, there was a gradual fall in ratings. The "doomed" factor comes because people who created daytime never thought that one day women might not stay at home and that cable TV wouldn't exist.

[marceline]

That's it right there.

[MarkH]

I agree with you on the "doomed" factor to some extent. In other words, the audience shifted, and that meant (a) there was less of an audience (my point), but also ( that the writing and production needed to have adapted to a new and changing audience (and maybe a different daypart) if the genre wanted to survive.

I think the resistance, as recently as last year, to even show two men kissing shows that the evolution of this genre, in this daypart, did not happen, and cannot happen in time for the genre to remain relevant in its current form.

However, I am less certain that "the quality of writing" fell. What about "the quality of writing did not evolve"? or "The quality of writing remained inflexible to the changing context"? or "The quality fo writing remained pitched at persons who might be converted into Vaseline purchasers, even though such purchasers existed in dwindling numbers".

There have been moments of utter greatness in the writing. But, from inception, there were also moments of total sh!t. I cannot affirm that the relative proportion of greatness/sh!t has ever really changed. I do not believe that the daytime commercial format, as a rule, allows there to be too much greatness. We look for flashes of it, nothing more.

I think the serial format can be marvellous, but (and here I think I echo Marceline), for that to happen we have to start over. Shorter stories, less often, in a different daypart, ideally with less risk-averse advertisers. But that is a discussion point that is almost entirely orthogonal to the story of these current daytime shows now.

I have ZERO evidence, and I DO NOT BELIEVE that the writing DECLINED at the same rate of the ratings. I don't believe it, no how, no way. I think people are elevating the past into some kind of magical heights that never existed. I think that there were key transition points in the writing (first move to television; first Los Angeles soaps; Gloria Monty's evolution; pacing/production changes due to MTV and the new quick-cut approach), but I can not find any objective data that the quality of the writing "fell". How would we judge or confirm that?

[marceline]

I think that better options simply became more accessible - thanks to cable, web, etc... - which made soap writing look worse.

[MarkH]

Now THAT is a sensible hypothesis! THAT connects with my reality. It's that the soaps DIDN'T change much, and with more/better options, it made soaps look worse.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

For all the ratings wonks around here, I have completed two new analyses.

The first looks at how soap ratings fare in comparison to other parts of daytime (judge shows, talk shows, game shows, etc.). The answer: Not well (bottom of the pack), but the recent 12-month declines for soaps were slower than other aspects of the daypart. Still, I take small comfort in this, because those other aspects of daytime cost so much less. Right now, one should put their money on talk shows, because that is the aspect of daytime that shows real growth.

The second looks at how daytime ratings rise-and-falls have compared to primetime rise-and-falls over the same period. The short answer is that it is complicated. But...most ominous for soaps...it seems that in the 2000s, soaps fell at a faster rate than primetime. That's not good.

I always depress myself with these analyses .