ABC Daytime

[Errol]

Wow! That's a lot of shows on one network, especially in the daytime. This is what I'd like to see in the future. Networks programming multiple shows throughout the day like they do primetime but on a five day schedule so we have more variety and don't have to commit too much of our lives to some shows.

For instance, it's one thing to watch a one hour show one time per week, it's another to watch five hours of one show five days in a row. It would be much easier to watch a half hour show five days a week, or a weekend binge that lasts for just 2.5 hours.

Just sayin'

[Contessa Donatella]

I often wish there would be a resurgence of the half hour format as a popular option. I think Claire Labine , Paul Avila Meyer, Agnes Nixon, Susan Flannery & Bill Bell were right that creatively the half hour is perfection, or at least theoretically gives a chance at perfection. Before the expansion also I really enjoyed being able to watch both AW & DAYS & ATWT. 

[JoeCool]

All My Children premiered on January 5, 1970 — 54 years ago today.

[Jdee43]

www.nytimes.com/1991/06/23/archives/television-will-all-my-children-search-for-tomorrow.html

TELEVISION: Will All My Children Search For Tomorrow?

By Connie Passalacqua
June 23, 1991

Are soap operas getting respectable? The question is a perennial. This year, at least, they are getting a little respect. On Thursday night at 9 on CBS, the Daytime Emmy Awards will be presented for the first time in their 18-year history during prime time. The current movie "Soapdish," which pokes daytime programming in the ribs, is a hit at the box office. Today's soap audience -- the 80 million Americans who tune in to the 11 network soaps every week -- is more diverse than ever, thanks to the VCR. The news is not entirely good. For the first time in their nearly 40-year history, soaps are feeling the pinch of the changing economics of the television business.

But over those years, and especially in the last decade, audiences changed. "It sure isn't just housewives in curlers ironing in front of a TV anymore," says Mimi Torchin, editor of Soap Opera Weekly, a leading magazine for soap fans. One continuing phenomenon: group viewing in college dormitories, which started in 1980 when a couple named Luke and Laura on ABC's "General Hospital" caught the national fancy. VCR's make soaps available to full-time workers.

According to research conducted by ABC, 11 percent of its soap viewers have jobs outside the home. And according to A. C. Neilsen, soaps are recorded more than any other genre, with ABC's "All My Children" and CBS's "Young and the Restless" placing third and fifth, respectively, on the list of most taped shows.

As always, people watch for a variety of reasons. Len Berkman, a theater professor at Smith College, says soaps are "just as valid a form of theater as any you're going to see. There are areas of internal and interpersonal character exploration that are remarkable. Like Shakespeare, soaps must appeal to a spectrum of audiences from the intelligent to the least intelligent."

Testifies the novelist Gail Parent, now a writer for NBC's "Golden Girls": "I think the plots are just as good as any on night-time TV. And I'd rather be nervous about the characters than myself."

The novelist and historian Shelby Foote, who became something of a celebrity for his role as commentator in the public television series "The Civil War," has been watching the CBS soap "As the World Turns" since its premiere in 1956. "What makes me watch the soap is that it is highly humorous," he says. "Whether they mean to be is another question. But a novelist can learn something from the way they handle multiple plots."

Their audiences may be more diverse, but soaps are still "geared to the fantasies of women and they're never going to be anything but," says Freeman Gunter, a managing editor of Soap Opera Weekly. "To me, soaps are about a bunch of gorgeous men who pay way too much attention to a bunch of dreadful, manipulative women that real men would have sent packing."

The prime example may be Erica Kane Montgomery, played by Susan Lucci on "All My Children": 21 years, 5 husbands and countless beaux later, soap opera's premiere vixen is still searching for love.

While the basic soap story has stayed the same, the externals have changed dramatically, especially in the past decade. "General Hospital" introduced shorter scenes, extensive outdoor locations and action-adventure stories, and others quickly followed suit. Soap characters played out their romances in Vienna, Venice and Hong Kong, on every island in the Caribbean. Soap towns were threatened by floods and earthquakes, and soap characters even went on "Raiders of the Lost Ark" treks.

But by the end of the 80's, viewers seemed to prefer the basics of home and hearth in their plots. Coincidentally, soaps fell on economic hard times. "One Life to Live," the ABC soap that filmed a wedding on skis in Salzburg in 1989, recently taped the wedding of the original bride's sister on location in New Vernon, N.J.

Soap audiences don't necessarily crave originality, says Mr. Gunter. "Look what happened to 'Twin Peaks.' " He summarizes the basic fail-safe plot: "Couples meet, there's the tension, they get along, they don't get along, finally they get together but they really can't be happy because then there's no conflict, and they separate."

Soaps have been their most creative when they've done socially relevant story lines. This year CBS's glitzy "Bold and the Beautiful" staged a father-son incest story and sent an amnesiac matron to live with the homeless. "As the World Turns" had a right-to-die story line and a father-daughter incest plot. "You have to give viewers something new and different along with the stock ingredients," says Douglass Marland, its head writer.

Says Bill Bell, executive producer and head writer of "The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and the Beautiful," both CBS shows: "Issues work in daytime because it's a way to show characters exist in today's world. They're not off in some never-never land."

Made-for-television movies also cover these areas, "but daytime is the only place where we have the time to most fully explore these problems," says Agnes Nixon, head writer for "All My Children." She began doing issue stories on "Guiding Light" in the early 60's, she says, "because I was angry that soaps got no respect."

Like everything in soaps, socially relevant storylines tend to be copied. "No sooner do you see an incest story on one show than it pops up on two others like a virus," says Mr. Gunter. Repetitiveness is indigenous to the highly incestuous world of soaps, where writers and actors frequently hop from show to show. "To make the soaps new, creative and original, we're trying to bring in new blood," says Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin, senior president for daytime programming at ABC; she just hired Linda Gottlieb, producer of the film "Dirty Dancing," to produce "One Life to Live."

"Soaps have always been the cash cows of networks, funding prime time, and they've been that way since the dawn of time," says Jacqueline Babbin, executive producer of ABC's "Loving." Their main advantage is that they have always been much cheaper to make than prime-time shows. It costs roughly as much to make one episode of a prime-time show as it does a week's worth of episodes of a daytime soap. At the height of the popularity of "General Hospital," in 1981, the soap was earning $1 million a week for ABC.

"But this isn't 1981," says Dennis Swanson, ABC president of daytime, sports and children's programming. "We weren't sharing the screen then with other viewing alternatives as we do now, like cable. And network daytime's share of the total television audience has eroded just as much as night-time, weekend and sports." The three network soap slates had 81 percent of the total television audience in 1981. Today they have 61 percent, with a corresponding loss of advertising revenue.

Mr. Swanson, who took over daytime programming this year, has begun to cut costs at ABC. His first measure, imposing a five percent cap on the salaries of actors who are renegotiating contracts, has shaken up the industry. Several actors have already left their shows, including Fiona Hutchinson from "One Life to Live" and Jack Wagner, who left "General Hospital" for NBC's "Santa Barbara." Ms. Dwyer-Dobbin says that soaps on her network may soon have fewer characters and that episodes will be shot on location less frequently.

While the cutbacks may make economic sense to the financially strapped networks, they could ultimately have an adverse effect on viewership. The cap on actors' salaries is "very foolish," says Mimi Torchin of Soap Opera Weekly. "Soap fans are more loyal to their actors than any other on TV because they come into their living rooms five days a week. When they disappear, so may the fans. When you cut the steak from the bone, you lose the juice."

Will soaps survive? In 1981, there were 12 hours of soaps broadcast each day. Now there are 10. Only NBC has a new soap in development. Soap producers are fearful that the extra hours will be filled with even cheaper-to-make reality programming. NBC recently replaced "Generations," about the relationships between two families, one black and one white, with "A Closer Look," a news/interview show. "Game show and reality shows are cheaper but soap operas are the only form of daytime programming that have legs," says Ms. Dwyer-Dobbin.

The soaps of the 90's may be leaner and more down to earth, but they will probably prevail. "As long as women have romantic fantasies, there will always be soap operas," says Mr. Gunter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[te.]

Even in 1991 they were afraid of reality programming replacing the soaps. Interesting read.

[Jdee43]

It's interesting to read that ABC tried to have a salary cap on their actors in 1991, however modest; actors could get no more that a 5% raise. I wonder if that really did cause anyone to bolt to other networks. 

Edited January 17 by Jdee43

[kalbir]

ABC soap anniversaries in 2024

January 13 - Ryan's Hope finale 35th anniversary

December 28 - The Edge of Night finale 40th anniversary