Members LoyaltoAMC Posted March 12, 2011 Members Share Posted March 12, 2011 True about OLTL. During the 80s, someone, forgot who, described it as an "experimental soap," and I think that's still valid. It always seemed to be playing around with different tones and different stylistic elements. During the Rauch era, it was doing things and going places where no other soap would dare go, and quite successfully. It was just brilliantly executed high-camp and satire. In the 90s, under Malone and Gottlieb, it returned to its socially relevant Nixonish roots and became a showcase for more some really well-written realistic, topical storylines and experimented with short-term arcs. In the 2000s, it did a 180 again and returned to a more campy style, with RC having some very innovative ideas, at least IMO. I think the one consistent thing through all its previous different formats has been heart. I don't sense that now with the show. There's just something very cold and lacking about it. It's all shock and insanity for the sake of shock and insanity. That heart is gone IMO...which, sadly enough, can probably be said about all of these shows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jess Posted March 12, 2011 Members Share Posted March 12, 2011 OLTL and AMC have both been contestants in the stinker bowl for some time. In my opinion, OLTL wins the Stinker Bowl hands down, but that is another topic. What I find interesting right now is Young and the Restless. For a very long time it has been superior to the other soaps. Now, I do not know. Is Y&R better than the rest right now, or is its advantage strictly time slot and people who turn on the TV or DRV at that time out of habit? I look forward to hearing from the SON community who seem to look at these type things more as consumers of daytime rather than consumers of individual characters or couples. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted March 12, 2011 Members Share Posted March 12, 2011 Y&R hasn't been superior to any other soaps in quality for about six or seven years, and in the last few years has been some of the worst trash I've ever seen anywhere. They are just lucky because of stunts, timeslot, the reputation of Bill Bell (which MAB exploited in interview after interview), and lack of competition. MAB and Sheffer and Rauch managed to squander even that. The sad thing is there were many people at Y&R who could have kept the show going in the Bell style, but Sony/CBS allowed them all to be run off by Smith or LML or whoever. And now what do they have? Hogan Sheffer, who hates soaps, and who is the anti-Bell in every way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members quartermainefan Posted March 12, 2011 Members Share Posted March 12, 2011 Probably since the day it debuted. I never understood the appeal. Year after year of people staring at each other so the music can play uninterrupted. Then Peter Bergman and his overly mannered delivery, Melody Thomas Scott and decades of soap hair that seemed to serve as the template for the whole network, and Eric Braden and his mumbling calmness because to yell is to lose status. They all suck. Cristian Leblanc and that mummified face...it's just all too much and always has been. The staring was something I always noticed. They would just stare at each other so the opening note of Nadia's theme could segue into the credits. I guess they dropped that a long time ago, I wouldn't know because I would sooner not watch TV than watch Y&R regularly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DaytimeFan Posted March 12, 2011 Members Share Posted March 12, 2011 WHOA those are some atrocious numbers for Y&R. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members marceline Posted March 12, 2011 Members Share Posted March 12, 2011 I ran across this article from the WSJ on TGW board. It doesn't directly address soaps but it touches on a lot of things that we talk about here: older characters, the coveted demo, its the writing stupid!, etc... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559604576174983272665032.html#article Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted March 12, 2011 Members Share Posted March 12, 2011 Thanks for finding that, marceline. It was very interesting. I personally think that the problem with nostalgia is that sometimes people don't want certain types of nostalgia. I don't believe there was a big demand for a new Hawaii 5. The original was a classic and was very well cast and unique. Why mess with that? If something was going to be a remake then I would remake projects that were forgotten. Just retool them. Or why not have shows that are set in the past but are new projects? I don't mean Westerns, necessarily, but something that is genuinely set in the past, with no winking to present day. I guess Y&R might be an example of this mess. Over at DC, Jamey Giddens loves Y&R again and says that their ratings are fine because they went up in 18-49. Yet no soap out there is more resistant to teens than Y&R. They either ignore teenagers (Daniel), de-age them (Kyle) or overage them (Abby). They prefer to write people in their 30s and 40s as being teenagers. Is this an example of the "new" 18-49? Is that why Y&R has better numbers in that genre than some of the other soaps or is it just they have so many more total viewers that they have to have more 18-49? GH, which is closest to/sometimes beats Y&R, is the same way. The only teenagers they have are Kristina, who exists solely to prop older characters, and Michael, who interacts entirely with people who are twice his age. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MontyB Posted March 12, 2011 Members Share Posted March 12, 2011 (insert none emoticon here) I think it's the latter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bella1974 Posted March 13, 2011 Members Share Posted March 13, 2011 I don't know what Jamey is looking at, but last week, Y&R's 18-49 rating was down .4 from last year, and I predict that by the end of the year, the year to year loss will be at least .2. I don't care what Y&R is doing compared to other shows, for the first time the show is consistently coming drawing fewer than 1 million viewers in the coveted demo, that's a problem. The show has a large potential audience, but as it becomes obvious that it is no longer going to be the show that people loved, or grew-up watching, that audience will find other things to do, and stop watching Y&R out of habit. The same thing happened with both GL and ATWT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LoyaltoAMC Posted March 13, 2011 Members Share Posted March 13, 2011 I do have to give Y&R credit. Unlike all the other shows, they still keep their vets pretty active and try to tell stories from the show's history. Yeah, the execution of the stories may be questionable, but at least the show feels familiar to long-time viewers in those regards. There's really no other show that still has so many of its legacy characters. No, many are probably not being served well by the current crop of stories, but at the end of the day, they're still on the canvass, and that is why people continue to watch IMO. The story is secondary. The show's obviously trying to strike some sort of balance between the old and the new...to ring familiar to long-time older fans, yet be attractive to younger viewers who enjoy a faster pace and shock value. If they even had to do that in the first place...essentially fix what wasn't broken...is a whole other question. No, they haven't been entirely successful in creative terms, but at least there's an attempt to fuse the old with the new in logical ways. The other shows never even tried to strike that balance. They've ignored their history and cut many of their legacy characters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted March 13, 2011 Members Share Posted March 13, 2011 It doesn't feel that familiar to me. The show's open contempt for longtime characters - aside from Katharine and Victor - reeks, and they don't know how to write for Katharine or Victor. I think their real intentions were clear back in 2009, when they spent months humiliating Jack, Nikki, and Jill non-stop. I think they would love to dump all these characters and only extenuating circumstances stopped them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LoyaltoAMC Posted March 13, 2011 Members Share Posted March 13, 2011 I get what you're saying. But at least they make an attempt to keep the vets active in story...for good and for bad, I guess. The show also uses a bunch of the same sets they've had for years, and stuff like that enriches the viewing experience I think. It's probably different if you're a daily viewer, but to an occasional viewer like me, the show doesn't seem THAT different than it did 10 years ago. I actually watched religiously during LML and thought Y&R then was heads and tails better than what they're doing now. I just don't care for the MAB-Hogan approach to "storytelling" (the whole Adam debacle is the one thing that made me tune out on a daily basis), but it's hard to deny that the basic elements that made this show so successful in the first place aren't still there. No other show can really say that. Just my 2 cents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted March 13, 2011 Members Share Posted March 13, 2011 I guess to me the show's basic foundation was more the style than the characters. I still see some old faces but I don't recognize them. Y&R had a very specific style which was lost when many of those behind the scenes who still understood it were chased off. To a casual viewer I can see where it seems the same, but I also feel the show does not want the viewer who would see it as the same. They want a viewer who just likes stunts and they want a viewer who doesn't watch soaps. Sheffer hates soaps and I would also assume he hates soap viewers, and he often makes that clear in his material. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LoyaltoAMC Posted March 13, 2011 Members Share Posted March 13, 2011 Yeah, they definitely wanted a different show, and that was obvious when they hired LML and gave her the okay to dismantle a writing staff that had been with the show for eons. They obviously felt the show was stale and needed a major shake-up. I'm not sure that was really valid on their part. As a long-term viewer, did you feel that the show under Alden and Smith was that bad and needed a major overhaul? Or would some tweaking here and there been have enough to keep the show contemporary while still preserving the basic tone? I wasn't really watching during Alden and Smith, but I remember the synopses were all about Victor and his sperm. Definitely agree about Sheffer et al hating what soap opera is all about. They're embarrassed by what soaps represent. Their contempt for the basic soap opera format, and for the viewers who enjoyed that "old fashioned" format, is pretty evident. Guza and Frons are also in that league. These shows have all been dumbed down beyond belief, though when you think about it, what in this culture nowadays hasn't been dumbed down? It's all about immediate gratification and being trendy. It's very sad. Geez, I'm only 43, and I sound like an old fogey! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members CCCapwell Posted March 13, 2011 Members Share Posted March 13, 2011 Well I think a good question is what are the SoapNet ratings for these shows? If ABC is actually thinking about canceling AMC or OLTL one would think they would consider the fact SoapNet is going off the air in less than a year, and those SoapNet viewers would start watching on ABC when that happened, so ABC shouldn't just be concerned with ABC-TV soap ratings, but the amount of viewers AMC and OLTL gets on SoapNet as well in determining which one stays or gets canceled. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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