As someone who aspired to be a guest on Alan’s show early on and even posted about it to him in comments – he never shot the possibility down. When I finally did something within the soap bubble that got me on as a guest, my experience with Alan was very positive.

 

In my interview, having written for Casey Hutchison and co.’s Forever and a Day, Alan engaged me, asked me what my earliest memory of soaps were… I got a bit overwhelmed by my own answer because I had SOOO much I wanted to say about it. I got a little stuck in my answer at first, and Alan helped reroute me with a follow up question. I finally got it together and was able to give cogent, well-rounded answers from there on. I had a nice time; I hope to be guest again.

 

Alan’s format works for him; he’s upgraded over time – like I love the little “technical issue” rainbow bars at the beginning that strip away with the sound of a chime/xylophone. I love his casual living room background. I love how he creates a personal introduction for each of his guests. I love how he champions artists – to the revered, to the ones just starting out.

 

What I think might make it easier on Alan, is if he had a technical assistant and in addition someone to field the questions and comments. But that's minor, you can tell for him, it’s a labor of love.

Everything about the 90 min serial was wrong. It was crazy that NBC and P&G agreed to do it.

It was a desperate move with no real consideration for actors, writers and the audience.

3 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Everything about the 90 min serial was wrong. It was crazy that NBC and P&G agreed to do it.

It was a desperate move with no real consideration for actors, writers and the audience.

Although, I have to admit to a little hypocrisy on my end about 90-minute soaps - I LOVED it when Melrose Place had 90-minute episodes, lol

7 minutes ago, Lust4Life76 said:

Although, I have to admit to a little hypocrisy on my end about 90-minute soaps - I LOVED it when Melrose Place had 90-minute episodes, lol

Weekly and seasonally is different from daily year round.

When they raised the idea of the 90 minute version and talked about how cheap it would be to expand the soap at first I struggled to understand why they thought adding a half hour to an existing soap would be cheaper than continuing to produce one one-hour soap and one half-hour soap in the same studio. The space remained the same. They had to increase the salaries of the existing actors but I guess that was cheaper than hiring more actors. (I think it was Jay Morran who convinced the lower-tier cast to threaten to strike unless they got a 50% raise; according to him he got the majority of them to sign a petition which somehow Rauch learned about and immediately gave in -- but Morran says that a lot of the actors had already chickened out and he would not have been able to present the petition if Rauch had waited.)

3 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

It was a desperate move with no real consideration for actors, writers and the audience.

Don't forget about the crew. The actors were split into two shifts so their days were potentially a little shorter, but the crew had to be present for both shifts and it sounds like they might not have had the appropriate breaks.

Before the change they taped scenes in order. After the change they taped out of order in the name of efficiency which the actors found disorienting.

I wonder whether they expected viewers to stick with the 90 minutes or if they imagined them dropping in and out. They certainly seemed to measure the ratings in half hour increments regardless of the length of the show.

11 hours ago, Lust4Life76 said:

What I think might make it easier on Alan, is if he had a technical assistant and in addition someone to field the questions and comments. But that's minor, you can tell for him, it’s a labor of love.

It would be easier on Alan if he either stepped back and had someone else run the interviews.. or he took classes to improve his conversational and interview skills. He worked PR back in the day and that could be why his interviewing skills are not up to par. And while I appreciate his ability to get guests on, it doesn't mean that he knows how to interact with the guests and/or gets the most out of that interaction.

It's why I always direct people to watch Joan Rivers when she had her daytime talk show back in the day... she could be funny, but she really could get into topics deeply with the guest that went beyond the standard talk show conversations.

In terms of soap operas, I think they should have stayed with half hour soaps and only do an hour and/or 90 minute episode once in awhile as a special event. When the hour format worked as a one time event for AW (I believe it was for Steve and Alice's wedding or maybe for their 10th anniversary).. it should have remained 30 minutes and only expanded to an hour if there was a story line climax or a long awaited wedding (i.e the Mac/Janice/Rachel climax could have been a special 60 or 90 minute episode... or the fire that killed John Randolph could have been a special 90 minute episode instead of it just being a typical 90 minute episode).

18 hours ago, Tisy-Lish said:

When Tom Lisanti finally mentioned the Matthews family and Beverly Penberthy, most of the panel began to comment. Obviously the panel members had opinions and memories to share. But Alan almost immediately spoke up and changed the subject.

Yes, I appreciate that no one else but Alan would bring a group like this together to talk about a long-dead soap, but I was crushed that his interjection shut down the conversation about Beverly Penberthy. I think Barnet Kellman was correct in describing her as the lone Bay City matriarch viewers felt like they wanted to take care of, and I think her loss was very damaging to the show because of that.

Some of this era of AW was uploaded back in the soap AOL channel days. I thought the 1980 stuff was a mess, but the show recovered and 1981 wasn't too bad.

In the episodes I saw, I don't think Janice Lynde wore a bra once on the show, and it was highly evident. I guess it was an example of the naturalism of the time and the lax censorship on broadcast TV from the 70s into the early 80s.

Edited October 9Oct 9 by Jdee43

Since most people now days have a short attention span, all soaps should go back to 30 minutes. They could use the extra time slots to create more soaps in the half hour format. Heck, I have suggested this before, but even two 15-minute shows in a half hour would work. For a novelty factor and to keep from actors getting lazy, go back to filming live. People would tune in just to see if everything went off without a hitch or to see mistakes.

I don't think short attention spans is the real problem. A lot of people watch BL shows or K-Dramas for example and those are usually between forty minutes and 90 minutes. Granted, those are usually 8 to 16 episodes, but I think people would watch a one hour soap per day or they would binge them on the weekends. I think the problem is they have to be entertained. When was the last time the soaps did anything that had viewers saying, "I need to see this?

1 hour ago, chrisml said:

I don't think short attention spans is the real problem. A lot of people watch BL shows or K-Dramas for example and those are usually between forty minutes and 90 minutes. Granted, those are usually 8 to 16 episodes, but I think people would watch a one hour soap per day or they would binge them on the weekends. I think the problem is they have to be entertained. When was the last time the soaps did anything that had viewers saying, "I need to see this?

I think short attention spans are a real problem now. I read some article where college professors said their students can't even watch full-length films anymore, let alone read a book.

I do agree that entertainment is a big factor, but by and large I think soaps were better at this with a half-hour. I think they were better with leaner, stronger casts and more in-depth relationships. At least the good soaps were.

I've read through to the end of the Another World book (although I skipped some of the earlier sections that I will need to go back to) and these are some things that stood out to me:

Sean O'Connor who played Deke, an actor in the storyline about Jamie's movie, had auditioned for Greg Nelson on AMC. He says that Kyra Sedgwick did not like him and hints at negativity that sounds like it was a big deal that everyone noticed but as described could also just be that she wasn't sufficiently friendly (and in fairness she was extremely young at the time).

Vana (rhymes with Lana as in Turner, not Vanna as in White) Tribbey believes she was fired because she rejected Paul Rauch's advances. But she also heard that Victoria Wyndham didn't like her as Alice because she looked younger than Rachel and that she prevented Alice from having a relationship with Mitch.

Laura Malone liked Chris Rich and hated Nancy Frangione who she says was aggressively mean and nasty to her from day one. Nancy was determined to stake her claim on Chris. I feel like in other versions I have read it was described as Laura and her husband were friendly with Nancy and Chris until after Laura had her baby and then suddenly both Nancy and Chris froze her out and started the campaign to get rid of her.

The book does not cover the part where Laura was eventually fired for not losing baby weight (which would have been under Allen Potter), but she does describe an earlier incident where Rauch insisted on her being weighed daily and the results posted publicly until she went from 117 lbs to 110.

The pairing of Rachel and Steve in his back from the dead era was not due to Victoria Wyndham using her influence to be the star of everything. She didn't like the idea and thought that Rachel should be back with Mac.

Richard Bekins preferred the characterization of Jamie in the L Virginia Browne era to the Corinne Jacker era, but he adapted and came to like some of what he was given to perform.

Everyone was upset and disappointed when Beverly Penberthy was fired.

59 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I think short attention spans are a real problem now. I read some article where college professors said their students can't even watch full-length films anymore, let alone read a book.

I do agree that entertainment is a big factor, but by and large I think soaps were better at this with a half-hour. I think they were better with leaner, stronger casts and more in-depth relationships. At least the good soaps were.

I think there's some truth to the short attention problem now. However, I also think it's complicated and a bit overblown by politicians/administrators because it's easier to blame everything on short attention spans/the use of phones rather than fixing the underlying problems students and people face in their lives. As an example. the same students and adults who can't pay attention (in class or at work) are watching a live stream of a court case for hours on end day after day. The Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial was treated like a soap opera for many people. The Karen Read case is another one.

I think the problem is that the way we watch soap operas has changed. We don't sit around with our grandparents and parents and watch the soap operas. Most parents are working to survive, or if they are home, they are not watching the remaining soap operas so we have lost the generational aspect. Even then, who's going to want to sit for 90 minutes for one soap opera? That's way too long of a chunk of time. It reminds me of reading a book. A book can have the same number of pages, but if it's divided into shorter chapters, it somehow feels less daunting than if it only has five chapters. (Feels like I'm babbling)

TV seasons are shorter now. Back in the 50's and 60's a series had about 35-40 episodes a season. By the 70's and 80's is dropped to about 25-26 episodes. Now you're lucky a season has 8 episodes.

Dallas was must see TV and viewers held on the entire season to see the cliffhanger. People will not sit through a series like that now. If something exciting isn't happening every 5 to 10 minutes they fast forward and then eventually give up on it after a short time. They will not invest in something that takes 25 episodes of people having scenes of dialogue etc...to get to the major plot point. They will just go online and see if anyone posts what happened in places like Reddit etc...

I was talking to someone (a Millennial) several years ago about Dallas, they thought it sounded boring as hell and couldn't believe people ate that up.

And in regards to attention spans, I worked with a bunch of Gen Z until 2025.. and they admitted that when they read books.. they only read dialogue and skipped everything else.. or when watching shows, they would watch the highlights that were posted for each episode. So attention span is a big factor, plus the lack of critical thinking and analysis is down as well.

Even if you could get a Gen Z individual to watch a 60 minute soap opera from the 1970s, or even 1980s, they would might be interested in what is going on.. but they'd not be able to understand the subtext and/or hidden meanings. They would need it simplify for their eyes and ears.

Did we know that Beverly Penberthy was living with Ahlzeimers before Dorothy Lyman mentioned it in the book?

I didn’t watch TLR.