100% yes. The heart, the soul, the essence, TPTB's understanding of, and the quality of many/most soaps disappeared in the early 1980s.
That's not to say that all soaps withered away at the same time. ATWT saw a resurgence under Douglas Marland and Robert Calhoun in the mid-1980s. TGL rebounded in the early 1990s under Robert Calhoun and Nancy Curlee. And even General Hospital, which had inflicted the sci-fi dreck on us to begin with, made a glorious comeback under Wendy Riche and Claire Labine in the 1990s.
Alas, as writers and producers who understood the genre departed for various reasons, TPTB who were left to taken over, continued on with destructive habits which left soaps a hollow shell of what they once had been.
I'd counter that ratings are a different matter. Popular culture is littered with poorly-done, shallow, often stupid material which nevertheless appeals to the masses.
I think it took soaps' rating years to decline after the advent of the sci-fi/camp/shock and awe stuff because the longterm audience members are a hardy, stubborn bunch who were determined to wait out the hard years and see the shows return to their hearts, roots and glory days
When that never happened, and hope started to dwindle, so did the ratings.
If daytime TV had been fulfilling the needs of its core audience, we would have found a way to watch. The hackneyed plots and poorly-written characters just didn't matter to us any more.
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vetsoapfan ·
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