October 4-8, 2010

[MontyB]

I'm guessing it has more to do with selfishness than business. They wouldn't sell The Edge of Night to ABC who wanted to keep the show all those years ago, so I'm not surprised at all that they wouldn't give up Guiding Light.

[KLN]

I think most people were complaining that the teens were boring and written shiteously -- not that the show was teen-heavy. Age bracket doesn't matter much as long as the writing is there.

Viewers complained about Nighttime Hope because it was a dumb story. Simply putting Kristian on the screen isn't enough to make us happy. If that was the case, I'd just go online and stare at pictures of her all day long and make myself happy that way.

As for putting more focus on Sami, that's the last thing this show needs.

Alice's memorial was well received by most fans. I didn't see alot of complaints about that (minus the fact that we didn't get an actual funeral/church service), nor have I seen any complaints about Victor and Maggie, so your argument that nothing satisfies viewers is invalid. People will always have different opinions, of course, but that doesn't mean the writers should shy from telling an engaging story just because they're afraid a portion of the audience might not like it.

I think you're confusing general Days fans with fanbase psychos.

Most people in fanbases are crazy and logic doesn't apply to them. The rest of us just want to be entertained.

I, personally, have never stopped watching just because someone was fired. There have been two or three times in the past where I've stopped watching and that was because the writing was so bad that I just couldn't stomach it anymore. Being pissed about Deidre and Drake (or anyone else) getting the axe has never been enough to make me tune out, and I think most other viewers are the same way. We just want to be entertained. We want good stories. When TPTB stop delivering, we tune out -- and rightfully so.

I have no obligation to watch this show when it's bad, so how can my lack of viewership be blamed for the show's current woes?

Give me entertaining stories and I won't tune out. Simple as that. If the writers don't deliver (their fault -- not mine), I'm not going to watch. What is wrong with that?

"One thing pisses them off so they stop watching."

Nope.

As a Days fan, I've put up with many things that have pissed me off over the years and I've continued watching, but there does come a point where the straw finally breaks the camel's back.

[beebs]

I was gonna say, no one I've met has ever been invested in a show then tuned out the moment ONE thing they don't like happens, it's just a chain of questionable decisions compounded over many many years that build up into a spiral of anger and rage until you're verging on aneurysm and decide to watch Oprah instead.

The problem is that Days for me already had a strike or two against them when I came back to watch it last year in that I have to have a mental break to accept the current situation where Sami is living/in love/having babies with a man who is two years younger than her oldest son, but appears to be 30, just as an example. Compound that with the fact that the young crowd are dull as dishwater (why should I care about Melanie and Nathan? I know nothing about Nathan other than he's non-threatening and shouldn't have graduated Med School yet, and Melanie giggles a lot and has trouble completing sentences often), and you have a good case for tuning out.

I don't think the problem is that "the fans are never happy" it's "the fans remember when stories were complicated and the scenes would play out for more than 30 seconds, thus allowing something more than the most basic of conversations to play out, maybe a bit of SUSPENSE to happen?

[Jane1978]

I think you are not fair. For example, I love Shelley Hennig as Stephanie. She was introduced in 2007, she is in her second contract cycle now and she still didn´t have even one successfull romance or a story people could remember as something special. Her whole "story" for this year can be sumarized by one line. Or look at Arianna who was introduced in 2009 and spend year and half just wandering around Salem with very little direction and purpose. Will and Mia were introduced as a new teen couple two years ago and DAYS teen scene is still unexistant. As I already wrote on DR, I really liked Taylor Spreitler as Mia, but just watching 10 episodes of her new sitcom I saw her more and know more about the character she plays than by watching approx. 350 episodes of DAYS when she was playing Mia. That´s problem. Chad was just wandering around Salem for year, finally they introduced him as Stefano´s DiMera son, even made a big mystery around it for a while, but we already know it for few months now and nothing happened. Gabby had nothing to do, was recasted, and has nothing to do once again.

I saw many new viewers getting interested in these characters and into the show as whole, I saw twitter post and new website and fan youtube accounts created, but all of the interest eventually died because the characters they liked were either not shown at all, their story had no movement, or the writers decided to rewrite them and put them into a different couples thus killing everything what initially made them work.

It´s nice people can theoretically catch their favorite characters 260 times per year, but who cares when they can get 10times more romance and 100times more story movement just from one 45 minutes long episode of Vampire Diaries. That´s the reason nobody new wants to watch. Primetime had always advantage in the plot and execution, but daytime was the clear winner in the romance and character development. They had the luxury to show all these emotional heart to hearts, lingering looks and slow dances. They had the ability to make the characters really get under your skin so you didn´t mind to watch them doing anything, even reading papers for a whole hour.

I have no idea why they are not able to do it anymore, especially when so many names in the credits are still the same.

[Sylph]

Hmm... You make it sound as if people need 45 minutes of drama a day (or a week) the same way balanced nutrition calls for 57 mg of vitamin C a day. Are things really like that? I don't know, which is why I'm asking. Everyone keeps mentioning these "fixes": "daily fix of drama", "fix of comedy", "fix of controversy and intrigue", how someone will dump a soap and replace it with a "CSI or L&O rerun fix" and so on, but I find that rather bizarre in a way. It should be pretty simple: if a person's interests and taste click with a particular show or a storyline, he or she will watch, as much as their free time allows it (and sometimes even more than that). If they sought "fixes", they'd pick any drama and get their "drama fix".

People don't just migrate to a "CSI fix" or Vampire Diaries "fix" once their soap dies. It's all rather random, accidental, haphazard.

[MontyB]

I certainly don't buy people are tuning out of soaps to watch re-runs of CSI, et al.

[marceline]

If people quit watching when one thing pissed them off, then how have these dinosaurs managed to stay on the air for 30, 40, 50 years?

All I see is someone making excuses for the fact that soaps are no longer competitive. Sorry but you'll never "save" soaps by blaming the customer for not buying the product. "If people stop watching, then revenue drops..." Oh noes! Daytime TV has to function by the same economic rules as...gasp...every other tv show on the air.

I know! Let's set up an alternate universe where people can put something on television with low quality storytelling that spits in the face of its audience, ignores the realities of 21st century living (we have birth control now, you know) and ignores or dismisses the feedback it gets from said audience and then reward them with decades of loyalty! Oh wait...we did.

I think that's precisely the problem. Experience gave way to stagnation while the people who were open to new ideas just gave the hell up and washed their hands of the genre. In a perfect world, the Agnes Nixons and Nance Curlees would've been able to pass their expertise on to proteges who would've taken these shows to satisfying conclusions then created new shows to replace them. Instead we have these permahacks who go from show to show accomplishing nothing all while they try to coast on - or worst - redo the work of real innovators.

[TeamEric]

Exactly my point. That's the only way I really broke free for years.

[Saving ATWT]

Yeah but P&G is a major company responsible to shareholders for profit. I get that TV is only a small but of their business but even an extra million dollars must mean something to someone at the company. I think PGP may be afriad that older viewers might not be aware of a sale and hold the company responsible for stoex., Luke and Noah get naked. Also, I think PGP may want to sell all of their old soaps as a library because the repeats do have value abroad. I'm still stunned that people in China are watching Marland's ATWT right now.

I agree with the poster who wrote about the lack of progress with the genre. It has no way evolved over the past 20 years. Bell was Irma's student and, when the time came, he innovated and created Y&R--the youngest, most sexual and most modern looking soap ever. Maybe a few new shows would have been good for the genre. I refuse to count SB and Passions as examples. Santa Barbara was great but had AW as a lead and was up against power house GH and GL. Had SB been on CBS, the show might have thrived. B&B is the youngest show and, from a ratings standpoint, has thrived.

[PhoenixRising05]

Another good post.

Just want to say too that the show can do better. Any of these soaps can. I won't disagree with that. However, even if they did do better, it would only please most people for a few months before people are complaining again. I've seen it too many times. That is why these shows shouldn't even bother looking at message boards or most fan letters. What people want one day changes the next day and that issue has gotten progressively worse over the years. Not to mention, it's not just in regards to daytime anymore. I've seen people doing the same thing about primetime too. It's like nobody likes much of anything anymore. It's gotten to the point where going on nearly any message board is depressing. I don't think most people would know what to do with themselves if they liked something anymore.

[Jane1978]

I´m not sure what´s so weird about it. Certain people prefer certain genres. If someone likes sci-fi and the sci-fi show he watches is canceled/gets boring, he will very likely try another show of the same genre. Soaps are the same. They have certain functions in the society and people expect from them certain things. When they are no longer able to provide them or are doing it poorly, the fans of the genre will try to find their fix (as you called it) elsewhere. The amount of airtime daytime provide was once it´s main advantage, because when people fall in love with characters they want to see them as much as possible and know everything about them. Only daytime soaps were able to provide all these little nunances and literally daily progresses all other media (except novells) always has to gloss over. In feature movie it usually takes a few crafty written scenes to make two people fall in love, on primetime soap it´s a few episodes, but on daytime soap it´s a few months or even a year. That´s what IMO once made daily soaps so uniq and attractive for its audience.

Unfortunatelly, for some reason daytime soaps lost that ability. Or maybe the producers even think the viewers would not care. They still have all the time, but usually show as little as primetime does, only repeat it at nauseum. That of course brings the question why even watch?

[DRW50]

I agree. Soaps started dying out when they started trying to be like primetime and stopped taking advantage of the best of their format, seeing stories slowly unfold, grow and change over time.

Now people get that elsewhere as they really have little choice in the matter, even if they wanted to watch a soap. It's about emotional investment in characters and stories.

[marceline]

Funny I've seen plenty of message boards where people like their shows. That doesn't mean they adore everything but if you visit a True Blood, The Good Wife or Leverage board you see people who love their show but feel perfectly free to discuss what they don't like without the guilt trip of being told they THEY are the problem. You know what else you see? You see TPTB visit those boards from time to time to interact with their audience. Imagine that. Instead of longing for some mythical halcyon days long ago then everybody liked everything (read: when the audience knew their place) look at the product their putting out without the nostalgia glasses.

If TPTB are following your advice on how to produce these shows then I will gladly padlock the door on every last one of them without a second thought. Then I would wait for 15 people who would show up for the the pathetic, yet inevitable, "Save our Soap" rally, grab my paintball gun and fire away.

[Sylph]

That's OK, I don't disagree with that. I do, however, disagree with the fact that just because someone has a bit of spare time at 1 PM he or she will watch All My Children or The Young and the Restless. Or, when those get cancelled, a rerun of Law & Order or Charmed or whatever. People don't watch for the sake of watching, and I thought your previous post implied that. Something about it has to intrigue them. So if they just dropped Days, they might migrate to a rerun of a primetime show or just plain find something else completely to do at the time, and that something won't involve television.

[marceline]

I agree. I think that the one trait soap fans share is an attraction to storytelling but that's really it. It's not like it HAS to be a procedural (L&O, CSI, Cold Case, etc..) or a supernatural/sci fi show (BtVS, Vampire Diaries, Smallville, etc..) they just want the something that draws them in, something they can connect to. My favorite shows right now are The Good Wife, Leverage, Mad Men and Fringe. And not because I have a need for "a" political/crime/historical and scifi show but because I love the characters and stories each of those shows provide. When soaps provided that, I loved them too.