Let's Be Morbid : The Demise of the U.S. Soap

[juppiter]

Prediction of month and year that the last traditional U.S. soap airs.... and which soap?

 

TBH, if we were predicting ten years ago I would have thought it would have already happened by now. The zombie soaps are surprisingly resilient.

 

For me: Y&R and B&B end on the same day in May 2022.

[Khan]

Bad news: DAYS will be cancelled when their current renewal expires.

 

Good news: DAYS tapes so far ahead, so it'll be about ten years before the final episode airs.

[Faulkner]

It wouldn’t surprise me if Days and GH are both gone before 2022, but Y&R and B&B will probably still be around five years from now. 10 years, with how TV as a whole is trending? No clue.

[Khan]

If any soap has a chance of transitioning to digital/streaming only, it's probably B&B, since it still does well overseas.  Y&R also stands a good chance.  DAYS and GH?  Forget it.  When they're done, they're done.

[Faulkner]

Yeah, I could see B&B figuring out some way to survive, albeit with some big shifts (fewer episodes, etc.). They already have a tiny cast, many of whom are just sitting on the sidelines. Y&R is trickier, but even if DAYS has finally reached its end, I suppose it has shown how low-budget you can go to survive without going to Wheeler-era GL lengths. Not sure if the DAYS model could apply to Y&R. Could Y&R and B&B ever get absorbed into one another if one goes first or both go at the same time? ATWT certainly tried it with AW to an extent, which clearly wasn’t successful.

 

The TV landscape is just so unpredictable right now. Too many things up in the air.

[Franko]

On an equally morbid note, what happens to this site when the last soap airs? Darn it, I'm in a musical mode again.

Please register in order to view this content

 

[j swift]

Given that we're still debating the many plots of Search for Tomorrow on this site, I'm certain there will be something to discuss...

[OldGHFan]

I didn't realize how good we had it in the 80s.  Soaps were so good.  So ahead of their time.  The stories were feel good stories that women could relate to.  Now I just feel like soaps are low-end stories run by men trying fulfill their teenage fantasies.

[Fevuh]

I don't know but you can tell alot of people don't know anything about soaps, and some are writing on websites about them.  I saw an article yesterday on Soaphub?  - spoilers for B&B and it said B&B was late to the soap game, first airing in 1987 and is now one of the longest running (amazing since there's only 4 left), and the first sudsers started airing in the mid to late 60's.  News folks...the first soaps aired in the mid to late 60's.  LOLLLL.  There was no Search, Edge, World Turns, Guiding Light, and keep the list going - no soaps really existed in the 50's, nor on Radio beforehand for many.

 

It's that kind of laziness that's prevalent in the actual writing of soaps today.  How does something like that even get by any editor (there probably are no editors), or how do you not do a simple Google search before writing something that crazy? 

 

Millennials and the generations after.  If they don't find something in 1 millisecond to refute what they're thinking then they must be correct.  No need to look further. 

[Gray Bunny]

 

As long as there are Real Housewives, I'll still be visiting here 

Please register in order to view this content

  It's the modern-day soap opera of over-priced talent, scripted plots you can see a mile away, and glamour from people trying to appear wealthier than they really are. 

[Khan]

 

True, and yet, it's still miles better than B&B.

[Contessa Donatella]

 

I'm curious. What did you see ATWT try to do to merge with AW?

Oh, yeah, there was no Faraway Hill! No Hawkins Falls! Not a single soap on the Dumont network.

We need more to be put out on DVD.

[Contessa Donatella]

I want soaps to be streamed. Let's do away with the broadcast model. It's just dragging us down. We could save money with a streaming model. We could watch every day. I would personally pick GL to put back on the air in a streaming model.

[Paul Raven]

As a production and broadcast model soaps are just not relevant anymore.

 

It's been a long, slow process with various factors involved, beginning with nightime shows turning to serialized formats and multiple networks offering alternativre viewing.

 

They really only existed to provide low cost programming that made the networks huge profits. Once that stopped, the clock started ticking.

 

Will NBC replace Days or just stop programming that time? Same with GH?

[Contessa Donatella]

People I know would say that this economic aesthetic driven model does not have a life, 4 legs, and a tail. The creative aesthetics model of the past had all of that & more. It had auteurs for Directors & Writers. Now the creative folk can have the economic folk, for example, say, "Whatever you are doing at 2:47 in the hour, stop it." No one knows why. Could just be time to go pick up the kids. [shrug]