@EricMontreal22 Peggy O'Shea speaks! Judging by what followed, Rauch and the network were probably pushing for more out there plots and O'Shea resisted. $700, 000 a year! That's about 2 million today.
In a 1973 article-David Opatoshu of the Yiddish Theater's 'Yoshe Kalb " at the Eden Theater is living his own Abie' s Irish Rose role : his wife is TV writer Peggy O'Shea
Wikipedia- David Opatoshu was survived by his wife, Lillian Weinberg, a psychiatric social worker, whom he married on June 10, 1941.
Confusing.. edit did more checking and found he was married 3 times, Lillian, Peggy and Nancy Rigler.
THE JOURNAL-NEWS, THURSDAV, JUNE 2, I987
Soap writer throws in the towel
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 headwrite again,” says O’Shea, who was earning $13,500 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 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 videocassette recorders are stealing away a good-size chunk of the audience the major networks once held captive. And network executives are rushing in frantically to save them. “Ten or fifteen years ago the. three major networks had 80 to 95 percent of the audience,” says Michael Brockman, the vice-president of daytime programming for CBS "Now that’s closer to 70 or 75 Please see Writers on page 20
By
Paul Raven ·
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