Zynga And Facebook Are Killing Soap Operas

[JackPeyton]

Absolutely.

[DRW50]

It takes more than just TV or Internet/cable/etc. The UK has continued to have radio soaps even with television a dominant force.

If the industry or the networks make the effort, then things can happen. No one cares about making the effort and they haven't for a while now. I think you could see that they had given up when they stopped bringing new producers in. They want the genre to die because they think they can find something else. My guess is even if soaps were getting better ratings, they would still want the genre to die off. Why not? A very inexpensive game show and a vehicle for the CBS CEO's wife -- this type of thing is irresistible unless a soap is some big name.

[JackPeyton]

If the networks wanted soaps dead they would be dead.

Id love to compare us to uk soaps, but it cant be done. too much is different. it is like apples and oranges, sure both are fruits and they grow on trees, but other than that they are soooo different.

no one thing can be blamed, the way the networks are run, the time slots, the bad quality, the growing competition, etc, etc, etc... all add up and equal the end of american daytime soap operas.

it isnt the first time a genre has died, and it wont be the last. perhaps it will make a return, but prob not.

[remos]

LOL.... Okay then....

As someone who does all three, I think the thesis is a little light on empirical data and a little heavy on assumption.

[remos]

I obviously have the wrong friends.

The only "melt down" I see daily is my sister's whining for attention, and I just want to slap that with a frozen cod.

[DRW50]

They pretty much are dead. They are just hanging on with smaller and smaller budgets until even cheaper programming can be found. It's a very slow, painful death, and I think in many ways a deliberate one.

I hesitate to call soaps just another genre because they were a success for 40 years, through many demographic changes. They always adapted to the times and many viewers were brought in by those adaptations. Part of that was because the networks still cared and made an effort. It's when the networks and the affiliates stopped caring that things went past the point of no return, and when soaps began trying to appeal to what amounts to a world where gangsters and sociopaths rule all, women are shackled and minorities are banished.

I wasn't comparing TV as much as radio. British radio, soaps but also dramas and comedies of all kinds, continues to thrive. They made an effort and the effort has paid off. It's just that in the US, there was no real interest in that. If you make the effort then you are more likely to get a result.

[Sylph]

[remos]

There's a great deal of truth in this. It seems the British broadcasters banded together to create story. Here in North America it's still all about competition with the other guy and how much money we can save. With those as your gods, good story isn't going to be created - at least not regularly. The UK also trusts their audience to be bright, articulate, educated and quirky. The US just seems to aim at the lowest common denominator and keeps going downward from there.

[DRW50]

Sylph, you don't have a different reaction to a show you only saw every once in a while years ago but now see more often?

There are some shows I enjoyed seeing weekly but can't watch more often than that, like old Facts of Life reruns.

[DRW50]

There's a lot of talk about how there are so many options now but I really don't think there are, I think that if you look at most cable you will find homogenized crap, the same types of shows duplicated and cloned like old VHS copies. There's a real fear of anything which does not appeal to the masses -- I remember that we heard a lot about how Soapnet was smart to do this too because then they'd survive (which didn't even end up happening).

The UK tends to let people make up their own mind and has a much wider variety of programming and channels which really do have their own identities and outlooks. The UK has trash and I'm sure a lot of viewers there feel like there is too much trash but there is still something of a full palate.

[remos]

Reruns just remind me of how cheesy the shows really were in the 70's/80's. About the only rerun I will personally watch is M*A*S*H, and even that not all the time. Even the soaps of the day were hard on the head.

I think it's on par with delivering a baby - you don't realize how bad it was until you do it again.

[remos]

I think there are many options, but much like a small child with too many toys, the abundance means we really can't find what we enjoy and want to spend our time playing with. Fewer and better quality options are always better.

I also think SoapNet as envisioned would have survived with a few bumps and bruises along the way, but again TPTB dickered with it to get more money out of it than they put in it. Look, if Golf can have a channel that survives along with all the sports channels, Soaps definitely can have at least one. I think the BIGGEST Act of Omission SN and the networks in general have made is keeping all of this to US soil alone. They could have done so much with the soap universe, and would have been able to pull in larger numbers with those of us internationally having an opportunity to watch and compare. The soap nation is huge - Brit Soaps, US Soaps and Latino Soaps all have big followings and are well known yet distinctive styles of dramatic story telling. The opportunities are/were endless from where I sit.

The problem is not the show themselves, the problem is the lack of imagination and the obsession about the bottom line by those on top.

[Sylph]

Keep telling yourself that. Let's rewind. No one is saying: Put a billion dollars into GH, keep Guza & Phelps together with Michele 'I'm Chewin' a Gum at the Emmys' Val Jean, improve the production values and miraculously the viewers will follow. The whole of daytime needs to be burnt to the ground and about 90% of people who work in it need to go. Permanently.

But are you saying that today's kid is going to buy B&B as a fashion show? With that cheap beach house and plastic grass around it? The "mansion" Stephanie lives in? The horrid clothes the models wear on the catwalk? Ridge as a designer? They don't even buy GG, just look at its viewership.

A believable suspension of disbelief is a necessary condition for someone to "buy" a show or a concept.

[JackPeyton]

Actually, i am saying the same thing as you. lol.

american daytime soap operas are dead. and there is no saving them.

GG brings up an intersting point tho, ratings suck but online viewer ship is rather high, as with most cw shows. Why? I dont know when its direct competition, ABC Family, has high ratings (and high online viewership)

But you have to stop looking at the content and start looking at the amount of options. a rerun of law and order vs a rerun of law and order svu is basically the same thing, however they are on usa and tnt and the are TWO other networks airing things against soap operas. so regardless of how much the content is duplicated and cloned, 500 chans are still 500 more than the 3 networks there use to be.

and i think your are marginalizing cable much more than it should be. at any given time there are at least 50 different types of shows on. sitcoms, oldies, drama, legal, makeover, reality, family, teen, kid, movies, docu, etc...

and the ratings fall of the early-mid 90's matches up pretty much exactly with cable subscriptions hitting highs and becoming widespread.

[remos]

I don't think we even need things to be that drastic - unfortunately TV audiences have been sold a different bill of goods and that is that "Reality Shows" are actually reality and so much more "soapy" than soap operas.

I think most people know soaps aren't trying to represent real life and they aren't marketed to do that. The writers have to stop looking at the numbers who will watch Real Housewives, and start looking at the number of folks who want to indulge in familiar characters who's lives will never be mundane. Viewers have been trained to expect less - so just imagine what would happen if writers started training viewers to expect more? That BTW was what Frons was talking about the other year - training the viewers. Unfortunately there was an overreaction without listening to what he was truly saying. Soaps CAN provide - they just have to believe in their ability to tell good story and live up to those expectations.