Thanks @Paul Raven Interesting that Tartikoff was still toying with primetime soaps this late in the game despite having an alleged disdain for them.
He actually never abandoned this idea, towards the end of his time at NBC in 1991 he actually said this in an NBC interview with the L.A. Times on 5/6/91:
Above all, says Tartikoff, networks “have to back up and start with the viewer. If the viewer wants to watch ‘L.A. Law,’ then you damn well better figure out a way to pay for it.” As an example, he says that CBS may have erred in canceling “Dallas”--which ended Friday--and might have gotten a lot more mileage out of it with some ingenuity. To wit:
“ ‘Dallas’ was getting a 21% audience share. Now why is CBS, which averaged a 21 share, taking it off? Because the costs have gone up, the demographics aren’t great and they can only play it once (soap operas do poorly in reruns). You could reduce the cost by cutting loose some expensive cast members and treating it like they do in daytime when somebody gets too big: Start giving storylines to new characters and grow another generation of characters, like we’re doing on ‘L.A. Law.’
“Also, the audience would watch ‘Dallas’ all year long, but every year ‘Dallas’ and ‘Knots Landing’ have stopped in May and not come back until September. The habit is broken. And you know from daytime serials, that habit should be nurtured. If you can make 265 episodes each year of ‘Days of Our Lives,’ I’ve got to believe you can make 40 to 45 episodes of ‘Knots Landing.’ It’s not that hard. Give the audience what they want. They want to watch it every week.
“Maybe some of the cast doesn’t want to work that hard. So start some of your newer storylines and newer characters when you hit the month of June and build them up. You’ve got to be thinking that way.”
Obviously now I have to wonder if Aaron Spelling and Fox took interest into what Tartikoff was trying say here, because just 2 months later 90210 would go ahead and start airing Season 2 in July ‘91 to considerable success.
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soapfan770 ·
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