Members DramatistDreamer Posted February 13, 2021 Members Share Posted February 13, 2021 For years, I have said that soaps needn't be on air five days a week, especially if the quality simply is not there. The soap opera format began as a fifteen minutes serial. There is no law that they must stick with their present format. Except for a general obstinance and lack of imagination, that is. If the format is the problem, change the format. Maybe if some of the soaps had opted for quality over quantity, a few might have averted cancellations. Sometimee it feels like the five days per week explanation had become an excuse to continue to churn out badly written, poorly produced dreck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Paul Raven Posted February 13, 2021 Members Share Posted February 13, 2021 Well the format for daytime TV came from radio where pretty much everything was 5 days a week so it would take a lot to move away from that mindset. How would it work in practice? One soap on 3 days a week - would it be MTW or MWF ? What would it alternate with? Another soap? Or a gameshow? If one format consistently outrated the other, wouldn't it make sense to take that 5 days a week? And it would be more costly to have 2 different shows in that timeslot. When daytime experimented with TV movies and one off specials in the 70's, the ratings and expense put paid to continuing/expanding on that practice, no matter how worthy it may have been from other standpoints. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Manny Posted February 13, 2021 Members Share Posted February 13, 2021 Well UK has this model for their soaps. I believe Eastenders airs 4 days a week, Corrie 3 days a week (although with 5 episodes) and Emmerdale 5 days a week (with 6 episodes). So possibilities are endless Please register in order to view this content Also I always thought that networks should have cut down the soaps in US (GL, AMC, OLTL etc) to half an hour before completely cancelling them. That might have worked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DramatistDreamer Posted February 13, 2021 Members Share Posted February 13, 2021 For years before GL and ATWT were cancelled, I said the same thing. These soaps weren't started as 60 minute serials, so why should they stay that way when it's clear that model no longer worked? It just seems like when execs' minds are already made up, there is a lack of will to do otherwise. If networks could juggle two different versions of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?", surely they had the mental faculties and imagination to figure this one out too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mikelyons Posted February 13, 2021 Author Members Share Posted February 13, 2021 Third-ing making soaps a half hour. The hour hasn't worked very well. Half an hour is great; you're in and out. I also support mixing up the number of weekly episodes. The Archers produced six episodes a week pre-COVID and now they're doing four. Hollyoaks is five a week; EastEnders varies. It's doable. Your audience doesn't care. Just don't waste their time with crap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DramatistDreamer Posted February 13, 2021 Members Share Posted February 13, 2021 It makes sense. So, of course, American daytime dramas won't do it. Just think of how much money, acclaim and talent CBS, NBC and ABC daytime has lost due to their inflexibility. Actors who were being ground down by the rigorous schedule asked for time off and couldn't get it and elected to leave. Productiom companies that left incompetent people in charge for way too long rather than make a concerted effort to search for fresh production talent. Refusing to even entertain the notion of merchandising products for the consumer marketplace because they'd have to *gasps* profit-share with the talent. The 60 minute episodes werr successful for about a decade and then they should have switched, just like they switched in the early 80s. Explain to viewers that, in order to be able to continue to make quality shows that are sustainable, they needed to revert to th "classic television soap model". Viewers might have grumbled at first, in which case they can level with the viewers that , if they keep going along this unsustainable route, many of their favorite soaps will inevitably be cancelled. TPTB never tried. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Paul Raven Posted February 13, 2021 Members Share Posted February 13, 2021 I agree re half hour. That would have allowed for more flexibility in the schedules and meant soaps weren't competing with one another as much. But economics have always ruled daytime so when it was established 60 min was cheaper than 30 ... We can point the finger at Lin Bolen/Paul Rauch for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mikelyons Posted February 13, 2021 Author Members Share Posted February 13, 2021 I'm TOTALLY with you on this one! People forget that two of the highest rated scripted shows of our time, DOWNTON ABBEY and THIS IS US, are steeped in realism. And, guess what? They were runaway hits! Imagine, telling stories about real people who don't have memories implanted in their pinkie. Wasn't there an article that came out in the late-70s (maybe 78) that said the cost savings of an hour and a slight increase in ad rates really didn't seem to justify an hour? I believe one of the arguments was that by restricting ad revenue to a few half hour slots made the show more valuable in the long term. If Lever Bros. couldn't advertise on a P&G show, but could in the next half hour slot, it would be more money than them being locked out entirely from a 60 minute P&G show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members titan1978 Posted February 13, 2021 Members Share Posted February 13, 2021 I will forever hate ABC (Frons) for canceling AMC and OLTL, let alone at the same time. I truly wish they would have tried what many fans wants them to try- to make them both half hour shows and see if they could make a go on ABC in that format. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RavenWhitney Posted February 14, 2021 Members Share Posted February 14, 2021 Days of Our Lives is the most realistic soap on the air right now........for MAGA and conspiracy theorists! Please register in order to view this content Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Planet Soap Posted February 16, 2021 Members Share Posted February 16, 2021 (edited) I agree that soaps shouldn't be five days a week, and should be kept to a 1/2 hour. 22 minutes though, not 18 watered down with commercials. For example, if it were CBS, (keeping soaps at 60 mins), I'd do: Mon-Wed Thu-Fri Y&R 1-2pm GL 1-2pm B&B 2-3pm ATWT 2-3pm (OR) Ideal Scenario (30 min soaps) Mon-Wed Thu-Fri Y&R 1-1:30pm GL 1-1:30p B&B 1:30-2pm ATWT 1:30-2p Less extra characters, less fluff and more matter. Fewer episodes, so more reason to tune in for every episode, every week. I'd opt for a Mon-Wed; Thu-Fri split. I think a Mon/Wed/Fri; Tue/Thu split might be too confusing to the layman audience. Y&R and B&B would get 3 days as they've had the higher ratings. As for the most realistic soaps, I'd say B&B and Y&R. Riche era GH in the 90s (minus the Cassedines) was a good realist period. I like a balance, some realistic and some over the top soaps. Just not DAYS and PASSIONS over the top. Edited February 17, 2021 by ironlion Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members beebs Posted February 16, 2021 Members Share Posted February 16, 2021 Not totally against this, though I'd argue you could do M-W (say Y&R/B&B), then T-T (GL/ATWT, for example) with the watered down 18 minutes (purely for ad revenue reasons), then do a Friday (or Saturday?) Omnibus edition like they do in the UK for anyone that's behind. I honestly think the omnibus could be the key to making it work, as that gives folks an easy way to catch up, and it wouldn't be especially overwhelming, since it only amounts to a one-hour show a week. If it's successful, you can always expand from there, but I just think that leaving folks wanting more and giving the writers the time to breathe a bit might stop things from getting too bloated or messy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members All My Shadows Posted February 16, 2021 Members Share Posted February 16, 2021 I was in favor of all soaps going back to thirty minutes in the mid-2000s when I still watched regularly, but I've never really agreed with the idea that they would benefit from cutting down the number of episodes per week. The UK soaps don't all air five times a week, but they're in primetime. US daytime television is stripped, especially on the networks, and if a person is going to be there to watch a show on MWF, then they'll be there on the Tuesday and Thursday, too. If I had my way, instead of GL/ATWT/AMC/OLTL being cancelled, they would have been scaled down to 30 minutes, with each network being left with one hour-long soap. If the return to the half-hour was successful, then those hour-longs might have been reduced at some point, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members amybrickwallace Posted July 9, 2021 Members Share Posted July 9, 2021 During lockdown, I found RH (on YouTube) very comforting. Though mine is an essential job, it was so relaxing watching the Ryans, Coleridges, etc. while winding down after a tough day. That little Irish bar, the Ryans' living quarters upstairs from the bar and the Coleridge brownstone were so cozy to me. The family dynamics - especially when they faced adversity - rang a deeper chord when going through such challenges in real life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DemetriKane Posted July 10, 2021 Members Share Posted July 10, 2021 Me too! I haven’t watched a full year of any of the remaining soaps since 2011. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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