Jump to content

How Did P&G Lose Its Way?


Max

Recommended Posts

  • Members

I understand what you mean, Neil. However, I respectfully disagree. The problem with Texas, as with Somerset, was that soap spinoffs simply do not work. Not one ever really has. Inevitably, viewers will always compare the spinoff unfavorably to the original, and a soap without its own identity is never able to grow into something unique and special.

As much as I adored Bev McKinsey, and I basically worshipped her, I thought Texas grew considerably once she left, and they tried to cut all ties with Another World. That was the point when it truly grew into its own. What killed it was moving it into that dreadful morning time slot. Texas actually competed fairly well considering that General Hospital had outrageously inflated ratings of double digits, and GL was also performing extremely well. Only a couple of years earlier, Lemay's Lovers and Friends (later For Richer, For Poorer) pulled 3's and 2's when the competition from GH and GL was not as great. The fact that Texas started off in the 4's was fairly amazing. Had NBC left it there, it probably would have succeeded as GH and GL had nowhere to go but down. Even before Pam Long took over, Paul Rader and Gerald Flesher had made drastic improvements in the stories and characters. Quite frankly, when it went off the air in December 1982, I felt it was in the best shape of any of P&G's serials.

The biggest problem with P&G, as well as all the other soaps (save for Y&R until the late 1990s), was the necessity to bring in a younger demographic. When advertisers began to actively market to a very narrow audience, the networks reacted in all the wrong ways. Specifically, they underestimated their viewers. At least this is my view. Somewhere along the way the younger executives decided that plot was more important than character and all audiences wanted campy, over-the-top nonsense. Maybe I am a deluded old fuddy duddy, but I sincerely believe that even a young audience will watch when they are given interesting characters and a solid story. The nets disagree. They feel that attention spans are too short, and everything has to be dumbed down to gratuitous sex and violence, the elimination of family and community, and lots of shallow one-liners. I personally feel that the majority of the viewing audience is smarter than that. Sure, it might appeal to the paltry 2 or 3 million people still watching, but I bet there are at least 6 or 7 million more viewers who would watch if the networks actually produced something of substance.

People can cite GH all they want, but if you watch those old episodes from the 80s, they are not very good. GH zoomed to the top primarily because of Tony Geary and Genie Francis, not because it was a quality series. They managed to generate press, which made it "must see" tv. Eventually people grew tired of the nonsense, and after the dynamic duo left, it was the hoariest, slowest, most conservative traditional soap that supplanted GH as #1: Y&R. The Young and the Restless has remained #1 ever since. And, as long as Bill Bell was in charge, keeping it traditional, it held a large margin over the other soaps. It was only after writers and producers stupidly attempted to make Y&R "hip and edgy" for the young demographic -like every other soap- with its endless parade of psychos and idiot stories of someone being killed onscreen and coming back from the dead six weeks later that Y&R began to seriously falter in the ratings, where it now hovers near collapse. No, executives will never learn, and that is why the genre as we know it is headed into oblivion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 55
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Members

What did you think of Edge of Night in late '82?

I think that worse than appealing to the young demo is, as you mentioned, also assuming viewers are stupid. GL seemed to do a good job of bringing in very appealing young characters while still maintaining some semblance of respect for tradition and history. I'm not really sure why that went to hell in 1984-1985, as the GH trend had peaked by then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Everyone wanted to capitalize on the Dallas mania of the time.

The P&G shows were created as advertising tools. I don't think P&G cared about creating amazing drama series forever, they just wanted to advertise their products. Over the years, they found other/better ways (in their minds) to do that. It was just a business to them although it is sentimental, family, history to all of us. I'm sure there were people around who really cared at one point and maybe till the end, but not with enough power or influence to do anything to save them.

People follow trends and when networks stopped creating new daytime soaps there weren't any new soap hits so they looked at talk shows or other daytime shows with buzz as a model. Once the soaps expanded to an hour, there weren't as many open timeslots to try new shows. Imagine if every soap had stayed 30 minutes. We would have seen SO many other soaps come and go over the years, with some maybe sticking around. I still think the format is viable in the afternoon if someone really told a tight storyline and kept it focused. If anyone ever tries it and it works, we'll see more new soaps. But timeslots are sort of becoming irrelevant anyway with everything on demand.

There are more serialized stories on TV and the web than ever before, just not the kind of daytime soaps that a lot of us grew up loving and wish were still around in full force.

The list of things ABC tried is quite telling. Everyone wants instant success and the daytime soap format works best when there's a long-term vision in effect. No one at the networks seems to have time for that anymore.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I think Frons was worse, especially once he tried to turn AMC into a daytime "Sex and the City" which flopped really bad. I think Frons just didn't care and what he wanted, he got and to hell with what focus groups or anyone else wanted. How else do you explain Cameron Mathison being around the show till the end even though he sucked

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I think that the talent at ABC really wanted to produce good quality programs, but the company that owned ABC (Disney) only wanted to see as much profit as they could. When the shows could not exceed the profits that the Disney Company wanted, they determined to replace what was there with something they thought would acheive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I know it's not simple to create a cable channel but at the same time I have some channels that look like they cost 10 cents to run with programming shot in someone's backyard. I always wanted P&G to do some lower-tier all soap channel and just advertise their products all day. I think it would be profitable and probably not that difficult but, again, someone has to want to do it. At least the value of the soaps on DVD is being recognized.

With Disney/ABC they were growing their SOAPnet ratings every quarter and then someone decided they wanted to change direction and become another Lifetime network with movies and other non-soap programs. I would have loved to seen them stick with the original plan with perhaps some better versions of Soap Center and Soap Talk.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

The main problem at ABC was what they didn't try. They tried gimmicks, but the basics - interesting female characters, likeable male characters, the end of glorifying rape and violence, a diverse canvas - were never even though of, apparently.

I agree with you there there are ways to make very cheap soaps. No one wants to try. I get that it's cheapier to make a reality show but ultimately when you just have a lot of cheap stuff you sink in it, because nothing ever builds. The amount of successful reality shows, on cable or the networks, is not all that long. More often you are left with a lot of old dust, like Lifetime paying through the nose for Project Runway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

We named the unabortion the biggest blunder in daytime history. There were so many we had trouble narrowing our list down to the Top 25. The shows/networks did a lot to destroy themselves and drive away fans. It's easy to blame OJ, the number of cable channels, the internet or any number of things but rarely does the mainstream press call out the shows themselves for making their audience flee. Having Erica's historic aborted fetus turn up alive was really a sign they just didn't care anymore. I can't imagine a primetime show, a web series or even reality TV disrespecting their loyal fans that much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Very interesting thread here. At the end of the day, good soap opera is facilitated by excellent writing, character, and story..and in the past 20 years I had been watching P&G soaps (particularly ANOTHER WORLD, GUIDING LIGHT, and AS THE WORLD TURNS), the writing was not very good to say the least. History was ignored, storylines were contrived, forced, and didn't make much sense; characters were "out of character" etc etc.

The writers were too recycled and not enough "new blood" was permitted to start writing these soaps. They may have survived with fresh new writers (revisionist history probably)...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Not only that, but I think it is the sign of a trend. Many companies are closing or selling of parts of their business that don't deem "core" to their business. For example, General Motors used to make trains, own Frigidaire, and Directv, all have since been sold & they now only make cars. GE sold off it's controlling stake in NBC Universal to concentrate on it's "core business" of consumer electronics/appliances, aviation, energy, etc. CBS/Viacom sold off it's amusement park division, same for Anheuser-Busch who sold off their amusement parks as well. I think the same happened to P&G. P&G's core business is selling consumer products, not tv shows and likely as time went on,not only did the ratings drop, but the soaps became less and less essential for marketing of their products, so became harder to justify keeping the soap operas around and investing in them .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I have to say I really disagree with the commonly asserted opinion that soaps went wrong when they started to attempt to be "hip and edgy" and recruit younger demographics. The fact is, soaps didn't used to have to try to recruit younger demographics. People watched because their parents and grandparents watched, which is probably why 90% of us are here -- myself included. 3 generations of my family were ATWT and GL fans which I think is pretty awesome, and I hate that there won't be a fourth generation. The problem isn't that soaps became too "hip and edgy," the problem is that they got stale and repetitive while the rest of society change. Why did teenage girls embrace Passions? Because it was the true 21st century soap. Why did Lynn Marie Latham's Y&R crash and burn, and why did she permanently ruin Y&R? Not cause she was being hip and edgy... she did the same cutesy [!@#$%^&*] she did on Knots Landing 20 years earlier. It was because it was bad writing -- which is what killed all soaps.

And you are correct that Y&R, the #1 soap of the 90s, was the most conservative and traditional soap of them all. But it too saw its ratings shrink, just not by as much as the others (and while it was the most conservative soap of them all, it had a large black cast, which IMO was instrumental in keeping it at the top in the 90s). Meanwhile, the soap that broke all the rules, the DEFINITIVE soap of the 90s, was DAYS, which saw its ratings go UP (the last time a soap has ever seen its ratings consistently go up.) DAYS both abandoned soap cliches and embraced them and took them to new heights simultaneously, to huge success.

So I say, screw the argument "soaps were fine til they decided to be 'hip and edgy.'" They never did. They are dying because the same storylines from the 60s are not relevant in the 21st century.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Also I don't know what to think about P&G deliberately killing its soaps. It makes sense that P&G would want out of soaps -- it did NOT need to fear Pert Plus sales going down if Jack and Carly didn't get back together. But I ALWAYS wonder -- why did they not simply accept Viacom's offer to buy ATWT and GL in the early 2000s?

Would ATWT and GL still be on if Viacom's offer had been accepted?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

They haven't really been telling any of those stories in a long time. 60's stories weren't about women deserving to be raped, endless promiscuity, depressing, violent murder mysteries that go nowhere, endless baby switches and back from the dead, et al.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Endless promiscuity has been a part of soaps from the very beginning though; that is why Eileen Fulton got assaulted for showing her face in public way back when. Old ladies claim they do not enjoy clutching their pearls, but they do. And endless promiscuity is one thing that still appeals to this day -- a trope that will never get old. Look at the huge popularity and cultural impact of Jersey Shore.

And I agree the violence quota has gone WAY up from non-existent in the olden days -- from what I have seen on YouTube since I certainly wasn't alive in the 60s -- to overbearing and overplayed now. But the general ideas -- that pregnant women are oh so delicate, that men will bend over backwards for a baby mama, the love triangles, those tropes have not died and they really should have long ago.

And the main thing that olden days soaps loved that I would still like to see today -- class conflict-- is something American society at large prefers to shun now. Soaps are actually going with pop culture in general by having everyone rich so I cannot fault them there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy