June 6-10, 2011

[quartermainefan]

Neilsen just released a survey and the finding were really easy to guess. People 18-34 watch more and more of their content online, and those people watch less TV than older people. More and more people are watching on the DVR and now more and more people are watching on mobile devices.

Whether GH has Bob Guza writing or Ernest Hemingway, the actual content seems immaterial to the trends.

[Bella20]

I think the telenovela format will eventually replace soaps, but it cannot work with any of the existing soaps that are on the air for a few reasons. First of all, soaps have a bad reputation, it's why many of the nighttime soaps won't call themselves soaps, even if they are blatant ripoffs of the primetime soaps that used to air in the 1980's. So, it would be difficult to get people to watch an existing soap that just has a new format. Secondly, people are just not used to this format, so it's going to be very hard to get existing fans to stick with a show that they love, where the everything keeps changing every four months. This is the problem that PC had. People felt that there was no point in getting invested in a storyline,if whatever happened wouldn't mean anything once the new storyline kicked off.

A great example of this is what ATWT tried to do during 2008-2009. They might have felt that they were copying a telenovela style,but the result was storylines that were poorly developed,characters who were changed to fit plot, storylines that wrapped up before viewers could get invested in them, and ratings that bottomed out.

[JONNYSBRO]

Oltl is only show that has showed any growth and it has beat gh for almost two months. Its just a shame the show didn't deserve to be cancelled. If anything abc should cancel gh a far more expensive show and keep oltl. In fact oltl would be a great half hour show, u try down the cast and u make it more fast moving.

[Cyberologist]

Exactly I don't want years of characters repeating the same dialog. I get bored fairly easily if the story loses momentum for me I'm gone. I'm not waiting around years for a conclusion in bad story it doesn't have to be swift but I got Lisa from 2009 until now. Re: GH Guza wasn't a storyteller, IMO only "story tellers" can pull this off and keep it fresh..if you're hacking along the way the story sucks.

[jfung79]

ABC is looking more and more foolish cancelling OLTL, the only soap to show year to year gains. AMC is stabilizing but still on the low side so the prospects of it being picked up anywhere are dim. GH is in freefall.

I agree that short term stories would *not* work, having seen how they played out with ATWT's villain of the quarter setup for ATWT's last couple years. Soaps do not have an end, that is what a soap is in the American context. You have stories that overlap with other stories and in climaxing set up the seeds of future stories. Destroy that and there's little point trying to keep soaps alive at all, the stories would be unsatisfactory and people wouldn't watch. MyNetworkTV tried American telenovelas too, they didn't catch on.

If anything, a better model than Mexican telenovelas is the Degrassi summer 4-days-a-week soap-style presentation. What makes that work though? Hard to say. I think daytime doesn't have the money/sets/production values/grasp of character/understanding of a show's purpose to pull off a big "summer event" kind of semi self-contained thing as Degrassi does for the summer.

[Bella20]

If you want to see how longterm stories can work, stories that can stretch out for a year or more, try to track down videos from Kat's first storyline on Eastenders, or pretty much anything that Douglas Marland did on ATWT, including the storyline that resulted in Angel shooting her abusive father. The Angel storyline is a perfect example of how to tell a story. The story was rooted in core characters, mainly Holden, Caleb and Seth Snyder, and had its basis in traits that had already been established for all three of these characters. Now, the storyline about someone who has been abused killing their abuser is overused, but it wasn't trite or cliched in this story, because Marland didn't spend a year doing nothing before the invitable happened. The story contained a lot of mini and not so mini other storylines that had a beginning, middle and endings that naturally lead into the next storyline, effected other characters, and most importantly made the ultimate storyline (the killing) make sense and have a bigger emotional impact than it would have had if it had happened a month or so after Angel came on the scene.

This is the problem with current shows, they just waste time to the buildup to the "stunt" by having characters repeat the same things over and over again, which just brings attention to what the stunt will be, and why these things are little more than stunts. A soap is supposed to be about the journey and not the destination, so it makes no sense not to take as much care as possible to build up to the big climax, by having a lot of mini climaxes along the way that will get people invested in the story and the characters.

This meme is getting sad now, and still makes no sense. ABC doesn't look bad by canceling a show that has only grown by a tenth of a point, and that can only muster a 1.8.

[beachbum]

OLTL deserved to be cancelled instead of GH.

GH as always been the crown jewel of ABC, OLTL had good ratings mostly because it was right before GH.

GH is in a slump right now, but this is probably the only show that can jump back at number 2 in a matter of weeks.

Bob Guza outing is the best first step,

[Carolyn1980]

Either they both should have been cancelled, or neither one. I'm thinking both, and GH will surely be gone next year.

Actually....no. AMC was the "crown jewel" in the 70's. Even in the 80's, when GH eclipsed it, it was the more critically acclaimed of the two. And in the 90's, AMC left GH in the dust.

We shall see. But any show after number 1 (Y&R) these days is cancel-worthy.

Bob Guza is gay?

[Bella20]

Honestly, they all deserve to be gone, but the fact is that for the past nine months GH's demo number is three tenths of a point higher than OLTL's. But, I wouldn't call their current slide a slump, because GH's numbers have been crashing for years, just like everybody else's, including OLTL.

[Soapsuds]

Game, set, match!

They will all be gone soon.

No need to go on and on about who should have gotten canceled and not.

There is no point to it.

AMC and OLTL are canceled.

GH remains in name only. The show is canceled but ABC hasnt said yet.

Thanks for listening.

Now back to regular SON posting.

[beachbum]

I'm glad you're not in charge of ABC, last time I checked they were no announcement made.

[GregNYC]

The View is the crown jewel of ABC daytime now.