All: Why do most soaps suck monkeyba----?

[All My Shadows]

But you see, there are lots of people who don't want/need soaps to change or become something more respectable. Soaps have always been full of retcons, bad production values, etc, but they must be doing something right if they've survived for over 60 years on television. Many people don't want to and will not migrate from what we know as soaps in daytime to something like Nip/Tuck or Breaking Bad or Mad Men or any of those other cable/premium shows. They're completely different things for completely different audiences, and I think it's terribly unfortunate that the cards are stacked against the audience that still desires daytime drama the way it's been done for decades. It's not our fault that what we like to watch is falling out of style like a bad jheri curl.

* Let me just say that when I say "the way it's been done for decades," I mean the traditional soap set-up of three cameras, loaded with videotape, on a three-walled set, with tight close-ups, dramatic music, stilted dialogue, etc. Those things are hideously tacky to some, but for others, it's exactly what we want to see.

[DRW50]

Most radio and TV were designed to sell something. The old Burns & Allen episodes had the announcer come sit in their living room and talk to George and Gracie about the wonders of Carnation Milk and contented cows. I still think that show is much funnier than any sitcom I've seen in the past 15 years.

You can say that almost any genre is mostly poor. Most films are drek. Most primetime TV is drek. Even most cable is drek. Even the great of greats, like HBO and Showtime, have junk shows, or shows that fell apart long before their reputations did. FX had The Shield, but to get to that you had to wade through extremely trashy, regressive macho nightmares like Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me.

The reason people made fun of soaps is because they were an easy target, not because of the quality. There was often a great deal of quality to be found, especially in the 60s and the 70s, and even some of the 80s. Many primetime shows which were taken seriously by the same climate which lampooned soaps are probably now as dated and ridiculous as anything ever on daytime.

I do believe most of the soaps were superior years ago to what is on daytime now. Even in the cheesy, horrible early years, at least they knew who their market was, whereas now most soaps seem to think their market is some random guy with little brain power who hates women and loves violence.

There's been too much good, and I would say good for extended periods of time, not just brief bursts, for me to feel that soaps have always been bad. I think all the soaps lost their identity and lost most of the people who knew what soap viewers wanted and who loved daytime, and the ratings have fallen as a result.