Jeff Probst on why Soaps are OVER

[dragonflies]

LOL weird he'd comment on something like this:

http://www.jeffprobs...ras-are-over-3/

Here's a snippet:

The reason nobody is watching the few remaining day-time Soap Opera's is because there is a much better, modernized soap opera playing out 24 hours a day, seven days a week on television, internet, mobile phones, terrestrial radio, satellite radio and magazines.

It's called CELEBRITY.

Today's celebrities are the stars of a soap opera that not only do we watch all day every day, but we also help program the storylines. It's the perfect situation. We are the programmers and the audience.

[ER Tosh]

So am I the only one that would rather read the New Yorker than People?

[DRW50]

Apparently Jeff doesn't realize that CELEBRITY has been around for many years and has little to do with the demise of soaps. If you go look at the covers of TV and movie magazines in the 60s and 70s, you will see wall-to-wall coverage of Jackie Kennedy. What did she have to do with TV or movies? Not a whole lot. Most of the photos were of her in dark glasses trying to get away from the camera. The public certainly didn't "program" her story.

If we did "program" the story, it would probably be a lot more entertaining than yet another cover telling us about whether or not Bennifer are going to reunite.

[Sylph]

Carl, you are again spinning things to suit your views.

[All My Shadows]

I think he's right. Hell, forget celebrity. If I want to see what soaps can't give me, I can just sit on my porch and watch the goings-on. It's lovely.

And besides, that's basically what soaps are. I'm nosy as hell and like to get in people's business, but when you do that in real life? That's a no-no. So I'll get all up in fictional characters' business instead. That's why reality TV is so big, especially stuff like Teen Mom. Now you CAN get all up in real people's business without being called nosy.

[DRW50]

Sort of like everyone does...

Celebrity has been around for a long time and actually was more prevalent at one time than it is now. Soaps failed all on their own.

[Michael]

I don't know that there's a DIRECT correlation, but the type of day-to-day, year-to-year, decade-to-decade storytelling that you can get from soaps, you can also sorta get from following the tabloids. There are obviously differences, but now more than ever, there's a 24/7 narrative being told. The Britney Spears meltdown and redemption of a few years ago was one of the best soap stories never told, and we had round-the-clock access to it. The more privacy diminishes, the more access we have, the easier it is to get lost in that stuff.

[DRW50]

I think there's pretty much always been that type of narrative, at least since movie magazines began. People like Liz Taylor and Debbie Reynolds dominated headlines for years because of their personal lives and rarely because of their films.

The Internet has made it even more accessible, but that hasn't changed the public's desire for interesting fictional characters. Primetime faces and characters hang on forever, while reality pops up somebody like Speidi who have to pull any stunt to remain known for more than five minutes. Fictional characters have motivations and lives that we can only guess at, while today's pseudo-celebrities tell you how many dumps they take a day.

Soaps stopped trying to entertain, or to make viewers care, and viewers had no reason to stay involved.

[Vee]

Okay, I've had just about enough of this; I don't have much time for the board anymore and I don't really care what happens to my account, so let's just get this out of the way, shall we?

Sylph, you can't get through a single thread without making a personal attack or condescending generalization about someone you barely know and often have never before directly interacted with. All the way through, you sniff through your septum about how put-upon and persecuted you are, but we both know that's a joke. This passive-aggressive attitude may make you feel like Duchess Turd of [!@#$%^&*] Mountain on a tiny little soap opera message board, but all it really makes you is a small, petty little troll who doesn't have the balls or the courage of his convictions to actually say anything you really want to to someone's face. But I do, so here you go: Your behavior is the longest, saddest cry for help that I have ever seen on the Internet. No one is impressed and no one is hiring. Sit down and shut the [!@#$%^&*] up, you tired old queen.

[marceline]

LOL at him making this pronouncement like people hadn't already figured this out. I can't wait for the breaking news on what color the sky is. Bottom line, he's right but that's not the only reason. Yes, the marketplace has changed but the product also sucks.

[All My Shadows]

Pretty much.

Something has screwed up as the daytime industry can not be explained away in simple terms, no matter how much we wish it was that easy. I've said it before and I'll keep on saying it...a soap can be perfectly written, produced, and acted but it will not have good ratings today. Not if it's stuck wearing the soap stigma in the daytime ghetto.

[Sylph]

I don't really think it's some mystical, inexplicable thing. You have Coca-Cola and other junk which people will drink and eat until the world ends, but then you have products in which people just loose interest. Soaps have have always been a niche product, but now so much so that they look pathetic and ridiculous.

[marceline]

True but I consider that part of the changing marketplace. There's also the financial factors. It's become cost prohibitive to do a quality show every day all year long and the attempts to keep costs under control results in the type of television that invites ridicule.

[SFK]

I agree with a combination of Probst's and Carl's points, soaps failed themselves, Reality filled a void for the melodramatic and OTT without even trying to steal the soaps' thunder. As Carl said, Celebrity is nothing new, people have been fascinated with the lives of the rich and famous/infamous long before any of us here were born. But that curiosity, both healthy and sick, just got fed... overfed. We have much more insight into the lives of celebrities, and the crazy thing is, we don't *really* have insight into the lives of the BIG stars, just what they'll slice off on their own terms to People, so we've stooped and created Reality stars who are often just the lowest of the low. I LOVED Flavor of Love for what it was. When these girls start smelling theirselves (oh my God, as I typed that Shirley just said "smell ourselves" on the partridge Family, weird, anyway) and making star demands, it's like, "Oh no no no honey, know your role, we don't love you like that." That's when it gets even grosser with all the greed and avarice and you long for your soap characters who are content to live in their little soap bubble.

[Vee]

Soaps work. They have always been with us and always will be in some form - cave paintings, literature, opera, radio, TV, Internet, film, scripted, unscripted. Strains of soap opera run through the primetime shows soaps are now desperate to emulate: The Sopranos (will Tony get it together?), CSI (will William Petersen and Jorja Fox [!@#$%^&*]?). They're the reason an umpteenth Jane Eyre is coming out. They're the reason Luchino Visconti and Douglas Sirk films are worshipped as art.

The only thing about soaps today that doesn't work are the people making them, who hold contempt for the product, the audience, and the genre. They're so busy trying to transmute it into other forms that they don't understand that those other products are built on soap. Soaps can survive and thrive; they might not, but they can. It's a matter of celebrating the product, embracing its humble roots in family drama and the simple building blocks of how the genre always worked Monday through Friday while also updating the trappings for today.