Soaps on Late Night?

[Cashton]

There was a Dark Shadows pilot on the WB but it never aired and wasn't picked up. it was horrible. I saw it online a few years ago.

[AllAboutAngst]

[Paul Raven]

CBS aired a short lived late night soap titled"Behind The Screen" in 1981

This from Wikipedia

Behind The Screen is a short-lived late-night weekly serial which aired on CBS (Fridays, 11:30 PM EST) from October 9, 1981 to January 8, 1982. It was created by David Jacobs (Dallas, Knots Landing} for CBS, which wanted to experiment with late night programming as a counterpoint to ABC and NBC's more successful efforts at that time of night. Drawing upon his experience with the prime-time serials, Behind The Screen was a dramatization of the goings-on at a fictional TV soap opera called Generations. This was not the first attempt to explore the concept of a "soap within a soap" as radio soaps had used the idea as far as back as the 1940's (A Woman To Remember), and Ryan's Hope had used the idea for a story in the early 1980s.[1]

It premiered as an hour-long special, and regular episodes were 30 minutes. The show focused on the beautiful young star of Generations, Janie-Claire Willow (Janine Turner), who was a pawn in a power struggle between her wheelchair-bound mother Zina (Joanne Linville), her powerful agent Evan (Mel Ferrer), and her show's leading man, Brian (Michael Sabatino). The show's early pacing was a bit meandering[2] and had problems finding an audience. The show seemed to be finding its focus, helped by stronger writing by Ronnie Wencker-Konner, when it was canceled after only 3 months on the air. The last episode concerned a backstage party where starlet Joyce Daniels was poisoned. Suspicion quickly fell on Lynette Porter (Debbi Morgan). In a bit of levity, Michele Lee (a star on Jacobs' Knots Landing) appeared as herself, playing a guest at the party; when questioned by police, she was mistakenly identified by the cops as Mary Tyler Moore.[3]

The lasting effect of the show lays in the wonderful cast. Mel Ferrer and Joanne Linville added a touch of class to the proceedings, and other cast members made impact on other shows. Janine Turner gained notice when she appeared as a Laura lookalike on General Hospital and eventually found fame in movies and on the quirky series Northern Exposure. Michael Sabatino appeared on Knots Landing as the unhinged Chip Roberts and later appeared on several daytime soaps. After Behind The Screen, Debbi Morgan was cast as Angie Baxter on All My Children. Coincidentally, she later appeared on a different soap actually called Generations as Chantal

[MarkH]

Well, what would you feel is appropriate to discuss on one of these message boards? These boards are like "fantasy football" for some of us.

Exactly. Globally, the most well rated soaps in other countries air in early prime. It is not a coincidence that Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, and even Entertainment Tonight, which air in early prime, top the syndicated lists. But that is why soaps have no hope of going there in the US--because the affiliates have sewn up those slots and make most of their $ there.

Even Soapnet, which has put Y&R on in early prime, earns its highest ratings there. THE SECRET is early prime...but there seems to be no way to get that slot.

Exactly. With a new timeslot, they need to reinvent. Indeed, these days the only way to start a show is with HUGE buzz...and that would require an envelope-pushing "next big thing".

In my market, back in the day, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" aired at 11 or 11:30 pm or something like that. For a time, that was huge. But it was not sustainable.

[Khan]

It wasn't sustainable for three reasons: 1) it was a parody of soaps, not an actual soap itself, so at some point, the plotlines were bound to become too over-the-top even for the ones who generally disliked "real" soaps; 2) Louise Lasser quit, b/c she could no longer take the grind of five half-hour episodes every week; and 3) once she left, as did the original writers, they tried to revamp the show into "Forever Fernwood", but the satire wasn't as sharp, and no one even came close to LL in terms of capturing the audience's attention.

[Rakesh]

Khan will be the only one watching LIVE. lol

[All My Shadows]

*sigh* I ache for a lineup of soaps in that early evening time slot. I think it says so, so, so much that since the 70s, game shows have basically migrated from network daytime to that syndication block. Even the shows that were massive hits in daytime (Family Feud, Price is Right, Match Game, etc) had supplemental syndicated versions that aired in the early evenings. That [!@#$%^&*] WORKS. It just does!

Any time between 4pm CT and 7pm would be awesome, but it would never happen. Newscasts at 5 and/or 6, the game shows and/or entertainment shows at 6:30. 4PM would be the only truly open slot.

[jfung79]

Great idea. Anything but daytime is a great idea.

[DemetriKane]

I think it could work my reasons why:

~more people are home from work

~home from school

~kids doing homework

~parents cooking dinner.

~some waiting on their prime-time show to come on.

~or the news.

~more families watching tv together means more fans to grow up with the show!

[bellcurve]

B&B airs after Ferguson in Tulsa.

I loved "Sunset Beach" in late-night because if I missed an episode during the usual airshow, I could tape the late-night airing. Or stay up during the Friday weekend or the summer to watch it again.

I read a SOD article back when "The City" was still on the air that stated several local affiliates pushed the show to late night and got better numbers for the show in that timeslot. If/when one watches the show, it's not hard to see why.

[Khan]

You're from Tulsa? TULSANS SUCK!

As I see it, the networks always have had difficulties programming during the late night hours; so, why not bring "daytime to the nighttime," so to speak, and give night-owls (yes, rakesh, like this one, lol) something worthwhile and entertaining to follow while keeping alive the genre of daily, serialized drama? Of course, the more I think about this concept, the more I agree with Y&RWorldTurner that it might be better to begin from scratch, with new soaps, rather than transfer and update any existing ones. Still, as business propositions go, it's a low-risk one (lower, I think, than NBC's eliminating an hour of each night's programming for Jay Leno's new variety show this fall), so why not give it a try? As they say, "It's just crazy enough to work!"

[Rakesh]

^lol

I've always wanted my soaps to be 30 minutes(that's like 19 mins without commercials), and for them to air around 6PM - 8PM.

[Khan]

I'll take 'em wherever I can, I guess, but I really do agree about keeping them at 30 minutes. An hour always requires far too much padding.

[Faulkner]

I dunno...has anything other than comedy programming or news worked on a large scale during late night? It could very well be a missed opportunity by the networks, but maybe there's a reason why ABC/CBS/NBC don't program the early morning hours. The obvious reason is that most people are sleeping during that time. There are probably fewer available viewers in the early morning than in daytime - although I would like to see the numbers. Would advertisers actually want to sell during those hours and would they want to sell to "those" kinds of viewers? How far into the morning would you program these shows? And even late at night, what kind of content could networks really show?

[MarkH]

I remember in the mid-70s, CBS did some kind of late night drama programming...maybe on the thriller side. Like, I remember a videotaped two hour movie (shown in two parts) starring Lynn Redgrave, a version of "Turn of the Screw". I guess it wasn't a huge success, because it went away--but I loved watching it after Mary Hartman.