Great discussion. Here's what Peggy O'Shea had to say
Peggy O'Shea left her job as the headwriter for the soap “One Life to Live” last month. After 12 grueling years in the business, she says she’ll never go back “I’ll never headwite again,” says O’Shea, who was earning $113,500 a week devising plots for ABC’s popular afternoon drama. “They can't pay me enough to keep doing it How can I say it more dramatically?” Her point, she adds, is not that she feels underpaid, but that she won’t put up with increasing network interference — even for $702,000 a year.
Other headwriters share her complaint, and voice it as quickly. With the competition heating up for a share of the daytime airwaves, they say, network executives have taken to second guessing the writers who once had total control over the turns and twists of the steamy daytime plots. “The joke in the industry is that the networks discovered that writing the soaps was too important a job to be left in the hands of the writers says O’Shea. The headwriters devise the intricate plots on the shows, and direct breakdown and dialogue writers, who turn the action into scenes and words. Ten or fifteen years ago, the headwriter was the dictator of the daytime drama, choosing the writers and giving the final word on the plots, O’Shea says. And the soaps were snugly in the favor of the networks. Daytime television, which attracts a fanatically dedicated audience, was a staple in the networks’ programming, providing profits as surely as soap opera characters had affairs. But those golden days are gone. Cable television, independent networks and videcassette recorders are stealing away a good-size chunk of the audience the major networks once held captive.
By
Paul Raven ·
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