I've never seen Hollyoaks but for some reason I always pronounce it "holy oaks". (as he breaks his middle finger pressing the h button with all his might)

Sut up! It is so damn annoying to type a post then look up and see that all te 's are missing like I'm cockney or someting! <--SEE! Or Jamaican.

SFK is typing with a lisp.

SFK is typing with a lisp.

The Cindy Brady of SON.

Getting back to AMS's earlier post, do you all think Americans have the discipline to follow a serial that airs two or three times a week? Is it once or five times, and that's it? "Break" days too much to wrap our brains around?

I have no clue how US Skins did. I never watched it, and most people I know watched the first episode or two and didn't tune in for the rest.

TV by the Numbers (by way of Wiki) says that it was a colossal failure. Well, I'd say it was a colossal failure. The premiere got 3.26 million viewers, and it was basically downhill from there, usually hovering around the million mark. So yay, it was less popular than soaps. I seem to remember some of us talking in the US Skins thread about how it might have done better on Thursdays following Jersey Shore.

Just for comparison's sake, both Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2 usually get over 3.5 million an episode, with Teen Mom 2 sometimes hitting over 4 million. On the other hand, The Hard Times of RJ Berger is a scripted show that usually got less than a million each episode last season. You'd think that means teens and 20somethings don't want scripted shows, but then you have Pretty Little Liars and The Secret Life on ABC Family getting 2.5 to 3 million an episode. And those are definitely shows that would gain from DVR/online/encore numbers.

I've never seen Hollyoaks but for some reason I always pronounce it "holy oaks". (as he breaks his middle finger pressing the h button with all his might)

Hell, they're Brits. It ends up sounding like "Holy Oaks" anyway

Interesting. Should the target audience for scripted teen angst programming really be tweens and pre-tweens opposed to full-fledged teens?

Getting back to AMS's earlier post, do you all think Americans have the discipline to follow a serial that airs two or three times a week? Is it once or five times, and that's it? "Break" days too much to wrap our brains around?

I think soaps have a place & an audience, just not an hour long show 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year in the middle of the day. The Telenova's are doing great on Telemundo & Univision, sometimes even beat primetime network shows, and they are in spanish. Degrassi on TeenNick went to a telenova-esk format last season, aired 4 times a week for about a month and half straight & doing it again this upcoming season. So I think a soap in primetime cable could work. I think it would either have to be 30 minutes long (and maybe take summers off like nearly every other primetime show) or go more like a Telenova & air in 2-4 month long seasons.

Edited April 20, 201114 yr by wingwalker

Telenovelas didn't really make thier big push till Thalia's "Marimar" came out. A good soap on a primetime slot, could do major damage. The daytime audience is nearly a thing of the past, b/c mid day, you're talking about college, work, at night it's a better chance of multiplying your audience. But it all really starts w/ marketing, you have weak couples, no one watches, you have weak plotlines, no one cares, especially that new audience american soaps tries to grab so badly. If your lead actors are in weak pairings, or just a core he/she doesn't mesh well with, it's the difference from someone staying on the channel or not. Atleast that's JMO. And the worst thing you can do is ignore history.

Edited April 20, 201114 yr by Clear Drama

Getting back to AMS's earlier post, do you all think Americans have the discipline to follow a serial that airs two or three times a week? Is it once or five times, and that's it? "Break" days too much to wrap our brains around?

Well I want to say yes automatically, but then you think about how game shows like Millionaire and Deal or No Deal got REEEEEAL old reeeeeeal quickly. Soaps and game shows are different, but I think if someone made a real serious effort (i.e. not on an experimental network, not with model actors), they'd have to keep the pot boiling (like they wanna kill Al Green) continuously with no opportunity for people to get bored or tired of the show. Daytime soaps can be slow and take their time because they are five-a-week and also because I think daytime is still less competitive than primetime. In primetime, it can easily go like this: "Okay, time to watch *soap*. Okay, wow, nothing terribly exciting is happening. *changes channel* Oh look, this guy on CSI was killed by a rocking horse." And you lose a viewer. I would guess that daytime viewers who watch a soap usually know what they're getting into and they want to get into it, so there's no channel surfing when things get "too soap-like."

But yeah, I think a general appeal 2/3-a-week soap done in primetime runs the risk of being a fad, like Peyton Place and Twin Peaks were. When they're hot, they're HOT. Once the next thing comes along, they're old news. It happened with once-a-week shows like Desperate Housewives, Gossip Girl, Heroes, etc. I think airing multiple episodes a week would probably hasten the downfall.

Interesting. Should the target audience for scripted teen angst programming really be tweens and pre-tweens opposed to full-fledged teens?

I've read this many many times, and I think it's true to an extent. The example I always see people use is Boy Meets World, even though it's a sitcom. Me and my peeps watched the best seasons of that show in reruns when we were middle school age even though they were high school characters. Disney's all over the tween market, but their shows all center on teens. Go to a high school and find me one person who lurves them some Hannah Montana in the most serious, fangirl way. Not happening.

It's different for dramas, though, I think. If anything, I think they might skew older. Degrassi TNG was popular when I was in high school, but we stilll watch that sh!t in college, and on a lotta boards, many posters are 30somethings.

Northeast Ohio man behind Hoover's efforts to save soaps

http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/northeast-ohio-man-behind-hoover%27s-efforts-to-save-soaps

Sigh....one way or another the "mainstream" media manages to screw up a report about soaps.

Apparently NPR played GH's theme music while talking about the cancellation of AMC and OLTL.

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/18/135519635/correction-soap-opera-theme-music

(Soundbite of music)

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

We owe our listeners one correction.

(Soundbite of music, "All My Children" theme)

NORRIS: This is the theme to the long-running soap opera, "All My Children," and you should have heard it at the start of our story Friday, when we reported that both "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" are getting axed by the network ABC. But instead, some of you heard this.

(Soundbite of music, "General Hospital" theme)

NORRIS: Most soap fans will tell you that's the theme for "General Hospital." Some of you wrote in to correct us, including Richard Burkheart(ph) of Columbus, Georgia, who begged: Don't make Erica Kane sob again.

(Soundbite of music, "General Hospital" theme)

NORRIS: You're listening to NPR.

I haven't always liked what she said - she embarrassed herself tweeting at Scott Clifton for using profanity - but pray tell, what exactly makes Cat Hickland a bitch? Coming out now as opposed to before? Didn't they all play that game, any number of them decent people who needed to work? And weren't the few that did - of any gender, ethnicity or age - often labeled crazy by many of us?

If it makes these people bitches for speaking out against Brian Frons when they could and not when they couldn't, I suspect we're going to have a lot more of that. I'm not going to side with a backwards-assed, incompetent network regime just for some feeble grasp at hipster cred (which, I might add, is already impossible to obtain once you browse a board entitled "Soap Opera Network") or because a show got rid of a single character or couple.

+1 and I have to that she's a bitch cause she speaks out

Not when they can have endless marathons of Being Erica!

Im fine with that. I love that show and with soapnet sticking around I hope i get to see season 4 on it instead of downloading it.

Besides, if they were to rerun amc/oltl i bet it would start at least in 2000, if not 2009.

If it were changes in society I think it would have started much earlier, and more severely - things got worse and worse in the last 15 years, last 10 years, with ratings, and I don't think society has changed that seriously in this timeframe.

There are also some primetime shows that can still command a fairly hefty audience, even if it's not what it used to be. Soaps are totally unable, IMO because of souring of the brand, thanks to the awful product.

But it did start much sooner than the 90's. The decline has been steady. The mid-late 80's got a boot, mostly due to the super couple, but it was short lived and made the drop seem sudden and big, when really it just ent back to the steady decline. The issue with it becoming more rapid in the 90's can honestly be seen in connection with the amount of home that got cable. While cable had been around for a long time before the mid 90's, the cable subscriptions went up in the 90's. Then in the 2000's you add in online watching and what not and the damage was done and there is no rebound. I know you post about how you dont think a mass audience wants to watch one of few things in different formats spread over 200 channels, but i think they do.

A few primetime shows can pull in a nice ratings, true. but its very few and typically only for big events. If you look at primetime network ratings you will see a similar decline in ratings over time, esp from the 2000's on much like daytime.

Getting back to AMS's earlier post, do you all think Americans have the discipline to follow a serial that airs two or three times a week? Is it once or five times, and that's it? "Break" days too much to wrap our brains around?

No, the break would cause people to stop watching. The genre is not dead, the american daytime soap opera is. That said, id love to see NBC go for broke since they have nothing left to lose and air Days in primetime over the summer. See what it does.

The format of what a soap opera is just does not work in mass in america. The only way to produce them now and reflect the amount they bring in is honestly to do something like Days, and soap fans on here complain about the look and lack of sets more than the stories. Same with what happened at GL. We cant get 80's production with 2011 ratings. Soaps are also not met to pay for themselves, they are met to turn a profit. Hell, back in the day daytime would pay for a good chunk of primetime shows.

Yes, these new shows will prob get lower ratings, but if it is much cheaper to produce and brings in even slightly less then it is worth it at a network stand point. And to be honest, for ABC to have three hours dedicated to soaps when the competition had 2 and half hours combined i am not surprised at all they dropped two.

I'm going out on a limb here and saying I do not believe OLTL was loosing money for ABC. Firstly, Days--not owned by NBC--was recently renewed with close to similiar numbers. Also, TeleNext may have been loosing money but CBS never lost a cent on ATWT or GL. Why would ABC allow a money loosing show to go on a hiring spree and contract Peck, Zimmer, Howarth and Conn while maintaining an already huge cast? Why would ABC go through the cost of giving OLTL a larger studio while loosing money? Wow...GH must ave been loosing a ton of cash before the 50% budget cut. If this were the case, OLTL would have been off air one year ago as opposed to January 2012. I don't really believe that AMC was doing any worse than break even or we would have seen massive cast/set cuts on par with Days.

ABC will make a lot more cash off a talk show and I get that the network is not a soap charity; however, I really wish they would just be honest as to the true situation. For the network to say they were loosing money is just a lame lie.

I'm going out on a limb here and saying I do not believe OLTL was loosing money for ABC. Firstly, Days--not owned by NBC--was recently renewed with close to similiar numbers. Also, TeleNext may have been loosing money but CBS never lost a cent on ATWT or GL. Why would ABC allow a money loosing show to go on a hiring spree and contract Peck, Zimmer, Howarth and Conn while maintaining an already huge cast? Why would ABC go through the cost of giving OLTL a larger studio while loosing money? Wow...GH must ave been loosing a ton of cash before the 50% budget cut. If this were the case, OLTL would have been off air one year ago as opposed to January 2012. I don't really believe that AMC was doing any worse than break even or we would have seen massive cast/set cuts on par with Days.

ABC will make a lot more cash off a talk show and I get that the network is not a soap charity; however, I really wish they would just be honest as to the true situation. For the network to say they were loosing money is just a lame lie.

Did i miss something? Who claimed OLTL was losing ABC money? I dont think it was costing them, it made a profit. But is that profit as big as ABC thought a cheaper replacement could bring in? If they can make a bigger profit, then i guess in a way they could be right in that OLTL was losing them income. ABC could also see the ratings loss across soaps and be more woried about down the road and decided now was the time to cast them away and move on.