More than two daytime soaps surviving on borrowed time?

[Errol]

 

GH is not cheaper than DAYS. Not sure where you got that from. Whether NBC pays a license fee for DAYS and ABC doesn't for GH since they own it has nothing to do with production budget. DAYS' budget is peanuts compared to GH's. With that said, I don't know who he spoke with or when, but that doesn't mean GH is safe because he said so. The person he spoke with could work for GH and have been told by some executive the show is safe, doesn't mean it is. Susan Lucci went on national television (Good Morning America) and told Robin Roberts her show was safe, both financially and creatively. Where is All My Children today? How long after she said that did she learn she was misinformed?

 

I'd rather someone with fresh ideas who doesn't cater to doppelgangers, who's the daddy or back from the dead type bull shit storylines be in charge of a soap's writing. Right now, Hollyoaks has a storyline where five men are possibly at fault for the death of a woman. Four of them are gay or bi-sexual. Soaps are lucky to have two gay characters and under no circumstances are willing to make them bad people since they fear a backlash. I hate how writers try to appease fans because they fear they'll alienate a fan base. They forget that 95% of the time the fan base exists because they (the writers) themselves created that character or coupling based on a storyline they concocted. I'm not saying for them to ignore the fans, but write to write and not because of fear.

 

Kill off a character and mean it. I don't care how popular an actor is, you are telling a story. Your show existed before that actor and will survive well past him/her. 

 

Right now no one has balls in daytime to do any of that. No writer. No producer and no executive. Daytime needs new life breathed into it. Sadly, no one who wants to do any of that will be given the chance. 

[cassadine1991]

@Errol problem is when soaps kill off a character, people have a [!@#$%^&*] attack and riot

[Errol]

 

Yes, and that's understandable. My problem is when they retcon the decision to appease the vocally loud. 

 

Todd Manning is one of the most popular characters in the history of soaps. But he's a sadistic rapist. Regardless of how he changed his life around with both Blair and Tea and the birth of his daughter, Starr and later Jack, Todd is still a rapist who along with his friends took the innocence of Marty Saybrook. Should the soap have brought him back and redeemed him? Hell no. By letting characters come back to life and characters who have done the worst ever to human kind be the show's star or lead romantic, soaps are letting themselves fall to the wayside and die. People want fantasy, sure, but when you give in to a select group who have the loudest voices you are giving credence to those who laugh at the genre and don't take anything that happens seriously. When a primetime show does this, it's sporadic. Daytime, it's a plot point.

[Bright Eyes]

 

Correct. It's kind of sad that the most complex male characters DAYS has ever had are Bill Horton and Jack Deveraux, having that sickeningly distinct commonality among them. A double edged sword for me is that they are my personal two favourite male characters as well, and the situation with Bill is very much due to being from a different time period (just look at The Doctors re-runs for proof of that). So, though Bill would probably be my very first return if I were in power, in spite of my love for Jack and Matthew Ashford, I would continue to let the character rest in peace until, at the very least, the canvas rehabilitates itself significantly.

[KMan101]

SO much truth from Errol in this thread!

[Gray Bunny]

I wonder how overseas soaps, those in the U.K., Australia, Mexico etc do in relationship to their other daytime shows and prime time. 

 

The artform of soaps - 1 hour long, 5 days a week, every week all year with no hiatus or reruns - just aren't enticing to the U.S. culture anymore. Once the remaining four are gone, the genre won't come back. The hours will either be used for cheap talk shows, entertainment gossip, Dr. Whomever, or a game show.... OR handed back over to the local affiliates so they can air infomercials of Courtney Thorne-Smith revealing how she got rid of her turkey neck with a miracle cream. 

[edgeofnik]

It would be interesting to know how soaps are streamed. One advantage soaps have is a huge inventory of back episodes. Unlike the past, if a new viewer starts watching, depending on the show, there are plenty of full episodes available online. 

 

Im actually surprised that P&G hasn't licensed it's huge library to Netflix, Hulu or CBS All Access. 

[Soapsuds]

That would great if that ever happened!

[Faulkner]

The huge number of episodes soaps have is probably a blessing and a curse. Lots of episodes means they are potentially sticky (and all streamers want to keep viewers in their ecosystems), but it also means that those episodes need to be edited, music licensing issues need to be dealt with, etc. Maybe from a cost-benefit analysis it doesn't work in PGP's favor. It's not like putting up a few hundred episodes of St. Elsewhere.

 

I know Britbox has most of the U.K. soaps, but they are only streaming new episodes, not going back in time.

[mango]

 

Even the thought of that fills my heart with joy. If only! 

[edgeofnik]

 

I agree that there are issues - particularly the music licensing, but that's been overcome by prime time shows (they replace the original song with a similar genre song that's been licensed). The thing is that a lot of shows like TEON, which was sort of licensed through AOL years ago, could instantly go up (that show never used music and probably has only has 7 years of episodes (1800 or so). Most soaps only started keeping episodes starting in late-1970s. 

 

Because there is such as wealth of material, they could release existing shows going back a couple of years and add or for all the dead show, start from a certain point and add forward. I just don't get why all that material show sit in an archive - the beauty of streaming is that it is DEMO-PROOF - it doesn't matter whether you are 18 or 80 - your subscription fee counts the same. And since 'older' viewers are more likely to watch soaps or pick it up as a hobby during retirement, I bet the audience is there.

[Faulkner]

Maybe they will in the future if the economics work out. It's tough: just using St. Elsewhere as an example, there were fewer episodes produced of that show in the entirety of its run than a soap produces in a year. So the sheer volume of content that would need to be reviewed/edited is daunting. And most primetime shows have been in syndication at some point, so they've already dealt with at least some of the licensing/editing/versioning issues that could impact streaming. Some of the soap production companies and networks may figure that it's all more trouble than it's ultimately worth, especially as streamers like Netflix and Hulu are focusing more on original content and lowballing studios and production companies for licensed content (especially if it's old and not seen as valuable).

 

You would think that Sony at least would be interested, given how protective they are against pirated Y&R and DAYS content on YouTube. 

[YRBB]

It's true, the volume of episodes is massive, and if it's one of the soaps that used a lot of music, you don't just have to replace music for 15 episodes in season 1. It might be 230 episodes just for that first year. More! 

 

That being said, the soaps that already streamed before could easily go back up again, and they can always release each year in increments. Nothing's stopping them from putting Y&R's 1973 up and every six months (or whatever) updating with the next year.

 

In any case, I always thought the streaming services could get soaps for free and it would provide them with TONS of content for their viewers.

[Faulkner]

This article explains why many major iconic classic shows made pre-1980s don't make it to streaming. 

http://www.vulture.com/2016/11/why-cant-these-shows-be-found-on-streaming.html

[Errol]

Hollyoaks and Coronation Street are still available with relatively new episodes (2-week delay) on Hulu. Or, if you are wanting to watch same-day as Europe does...you can always utilize other methods.