"As the World Turns" is Canceled!

[C.E. Evans]

I've probably only seen a few hours of As The World Turns in my lifetime (Another World and Guiding Light were my favorites when I was younger), but I do think it's sad that soap operas may be slowly dying off, if nothing else because their likely replacement will probably be more talk shows talking about the same thing everyone else is talking about.

But I do agree that it's always been en vogue to bash soap opera actors and storylines, even though there's not much difference to their nighttime counterparts, IMO. Soap operas do follow certain predictable forumulas, but what genre doesn't?

 

[RobertScorpio]

I've probably only seen a few hours of As The World Turns in my lifetime (Another World and Guiding Light were my favorites when I was younger), but I do think it's sad that soap operas may be slowly dying off, if nothing else because their likely replacement will probably be more talk shows talking about the same thing everyone else is talking about.

But I do agree that it's always been en vogue to bash soap opera actors and storylines, even though there's not much difference to their nighttime counterparts, IMO. Soap operas do follow certain predictable forumulas, but what genre doesn't?

Exactly..I mean, hasn't TREK been following the ole 'crew on a ship with an outsider to poke fun at us' formula since 1960s? Soaps, if they do end, had a magnificent run. NO OTHER genre has produced as many hours of programing, it doesn't even come close. Sure, some of it was bad, but some of it was good for the fans a given show catered to.

Rob

 

[KB24]

I'm not a major fan of modern soaps, but I agree these long standing programs should at least be sent out with more respect. A lot of these shows really set some of the standards and benchmarks for early tv. I have to say, as bad as the stories and acting sometimes are, where are young writers and actors to earn their chops if soaps go away? And frankly, what the heck else will be on in the afternoons? The older ladies at home don't care about more reality and game show repeats.

I much preferred night time soaps when they had their day in the eighties. I don't wonder if soaps might be better off by being on tv earlier or later. SoapNet does well with its late night repeats. If the 10 and 11 talk shows were swapped with the 1 and 2 p.m. soaps, would that make a difference? What if they all dropped to a half hour in the early morning? I just think its sad that modern executives are looking at the ratings and ad dollars and not considering the house creative control and farming that can be done through soaps.

Oh well. I hate reality programming and wish it would go away.

 

[KB24]

I also meant to say, while yes the stay at home mom demographic is fading, the old lady demographic is growing. Women are living longer than men. I've worked in the assisted living arena for many years, and when you've got a particular group of ladies who are obsessed with a certain show or channel, there's no activity to be had! I was at one place where between 12 and 5 the TV could not be changed from 6 ABC for anything. Wii? No. Baking? No. One Life to Live, General Hospital, Oprah, yes.

I hated it. But of course, one group home probably doesn't technically give the numbers networks want, either.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

Bye bye soup operas, now if we could just get rid of "reality" TV....

Agreed. Good riddance to both.

The thing that bugs me most about soaps is that the characters are all evil. Since when did we actually see a genuinely good, upstanding, honest, decent, moral character on a soap? They couldn't allow that, of course, since soaps are all about pain. Lots of tragedy, downers, plots, schemes. Everyone is nasty. Everyone stabs everyone else in the back. No one is good. That's what really pisses me off.

Although a SOUP opera might be good. Delicious!

There are good people in soaps...those are the ones whom shit happens to, though, just like real life (Christine Blair being raped twice on The Young & The Restless comes to mind.)

is this because the key demographic is dying off?

Could be, honestly. The actual demographic just doesn't exist anymore. These are geared almost entirely to the 'stay at home mom', a role that has shrunk significantly in the past 20 years. Not that there still aren't some, but more and more mothers are going back to work, so the available group to sit around at 1pm and watch these things every day is shrinking rapidly as the loyal fans age.

Add in that the storylines get more and more ridiculous every episode, and you kinda have to watch regularly, or else the show will be so messed up that they'll lose you. Easier to just mindlessly watch Oprah or a Judge show for a few minutes, no commitment.

The "modern" soap operas are reality tv shows, or things like Grey's Anatomy, prime-time shows.

As I said before here and here, American soaps are dying because of unrealistic scripts and storylines, not to forget super-beautiful people who are almost all rich and powerful, that nobody can relate to them anymore. If P&G
and Coraday were willing to do soaps like Coronation Street, Emmerdale, & East Enders, they might get people to watch despite the factor of women not being at home, because they will willfuly set their recording devices to record the shows. But they don't seem to want to learn, so...

is this because the key demographic is dying off?

Perhaps not in a literal sense. The key demographic is housewives, and these days there are a lot more women in the workforce, a lot more two-income households. Maybe there just aren't enough people staying home all day five days a week to sustain the genre.

Strange that many British citizens still watch all of the three popular soaps in Britain despite having the same domestic set-up as the USA.

As the American soaps die off the spanish ones, called Novelas, are going strong. They have a key difference though - they last six to eight months and then end. Then a new one with different characters and story lines start (well different name characters and new locales on the story lines).

As we've seen with Ugly Betty. But maybe they can also adapt one of the British soaps as well, and make one of them work in America (perhaps EastEnders?)

Another major part of it is you can't sell soaps on DVD. At least not like regular television series.

All of Dark Shadows is on DVD, isn't it? And I think there's at least one other soap that is starting to come out on disc.[/QUOTE]

It's Peyton Place that's on DVD-the first night time soap.

I'm not a fan of soap operas, but frankly I'd rather have them on than another Dr. Phil or Oprah clone. I mean, seriously, are soaps really doing any harm to anyone? They're a great training ground for actors, and have themselves attracted quite a few names of note, too.

Plus you have to respect a show that has managed to run for 50 years. Daily. With no reruns. Any show that has managed to maintain storylines for that long (or for 72 years in the case of the late Guiding Light) deserves all the respect we can give it, regardless if we watch or not. And sometimes the plotlines got weird (yes, there have been aliens in a few shows, and there was a soap opera about 10 years back that was a crossover with Bewitched and featured characters like Dr. Bombay. And I don't believe we'd have Twilight if it weren't for the ground broken by a little soap called Dark Shadows 40 years ago).

There are people who have literally spent their entire lives watching these shows. It's sad to see them taken away. And anyone who turns their noses up at soap operas not being complex or having storylines worth following ... read that earlier sentence again. "50 years. Daily. With no reruns." Nothing in any genre can compare to it.

And it's not as if there's a new soap waiting to take its place. This will either be replaced by another talk show, or the space might just be sold for infomercials. An actual GENRE is dying, people. And piss on soaps all you want. For all we know science fiction might be the next to go.

Alex

If soaps want to survive, then they have to change, or they will die-it's that simple.

As for infomercials taking over daytime TV? Pshaw! They can show reruns of classic shows, or they can always do what they used to do in England half a century ago and shut down TV until 5:00 PM (they still do that in Barbados, IIRC.)

EDIT: ....or they can give TV over in those hours to local programming, like they used to in the '70's and '80's.

 

[Anna Yolei]

I'm not a fan of soap operas, but frankly I'd rather have them on than another Dr. Phil or Oprah clone. I mean, seriously, are soaps really doing any harm to anyone? They're a great training ground for actors, and have themselves attracted quite a few names of note, too.
...

And it's not as if there's a new soap waiting to take its place. This will either be replaced by another talk show, or the space might just be sold for informercials. And actual GENRE is dying, people. And piss on soaps all you want. For all we know science fiction might be the next to go.

Alex

You know, I've had my disagreements with you in the past over Trek, but I heart you so much for this.

Current ATWT viewer here. I've watched daily for four years and followed it through the summer for six years before that. While I'm glad my main soap is safe (for now, at least), it's a shame it's going away.

At the same time, it's also a well-deserved euthanasia. Soaps have always pushed the point of credibility (SORAS, anyone?), but some of the things I've seen happen so some characters in just the short amount of times I've been a full time viewer have made me want to bang my head against a wall. I can only imagine what it must be look for those who grew up on this show with their mothers and grandmothers and, in some cases, great-grandmothers to see the insulting crap that passes for a story now.

I've read interviews where the writers and producers have all but came out and said they don't give a fuck what the fans think of the storylines, especially on the issue of Luke and Noah (a gay couple introduced two years ago) being treated like monks who can't even so much as hold hands where every other couple gets to fuck all over Oakdale.

I could site from character-specific examples, but I don't know how many of you reading this actually follow the show. But this show is plot driven like crazy, bending characters to suit a need without any real change or development. That has helped killed this show quite a bit.

There are good people in soaps...those are the ones whom shit happens to, though, just like real life (Christine Blair being raped twice on The Young & The Restless comes to mind.)

Ah, someone once told me of this era of Y&R. It was dubbed "All Roads Lead To Cricket," where the show revolved around her even more than it revolves around Victor Newman today.

I'll bet the fact that Lauralee Bell was the creator's daughter was just a coincidence.

That's another problem. shows don't know how to write a good character without making her a complete boring wet sack, or heaping crisis after unbearably boring crisis upon them. Or, you have some, like B&B's Bridget Forrester who are too forgiving for their own damn good and bring upon bad things upon themselves.

You can have a good moral character with a backbone. ATWT stuck gold with Gwen Munson who stood up against those that looked down upon her. TIIC ruined the character by giving everything to her on a sivler platter following her marriage to Will, but even at the worst of that writing, I could still tolerate her as a heroine more so than, say, Allison Stewart or Meg Snyder.

 

[Technobuilder]

Sweet... 2 down, 6 to go.

 

[Kira Nerys]

bigdaddy wrote:
Bye bye soup operas, now if we could just get rid of "reality" TV....
Second it good riddence to both soap operas and reality tv.

 

[Broccoli]

DooL had some really great actors and characters--Deidre Hall as Marlena Evans, Louise Sorel as Vivian Alamain, Kristian Alfonso as Hope Brady, Joseph Mascolo as Stefano DiMera who to this day is up there in my pantheon of favorite villians with Dallas' JR Ewing and Melrose Place's Dr. Kimberly Shaw & Amanda Woodward.

What? No love for Dr. Drake Ramoray?

Not since he died like a punk falling down an elevator shaft.

 

[RobertScorpio]

bigdaddy wrote:
Bye bye soup operas, now if we could just get rid of "reality" TV....
Second it good riddence to both soap operas and reality tv.

So trendy, aren't you? Everybody loves to bash those reality shows, and yet, Prime-time TV is awashed with idiot scripted tv too. I mean, TV is so lost of ideas they have the same show (how man CSIs how many Law in Orders) cloned because they have no original ideas.

I'll take Chef Ramsey over HOUSE or NSCI or whatever it is, anyday of the week...some of the best shows on TV are reality shows, and guess what, they are among the most watched too.

Rob

 

[KB24]

I do agree soaps need to change if they intend to survive. Yes do mini arcs. I think Dark Shadows did well because it brought back the same summer stock cast over and over in new story lines. Perhaps a half hour soap earlier in the morning or late at night would be a good way for networks to still earn a few million viewers while farming their next cast and crew pool.

As much as I don't really like soaps, I do alos dread to see what would be in the daytime instead. The networks won't show their classics unfortunately, there's too much in dvd and streaming options there I think. Of course, it might also be neat if they streamed packages of the old soaps, or even carried them on as internet television. There's a need for a network to take the next step there and have the first serialized internet based show. In the nend it's all about the money. I suppose the networks would rather buy out cheap reality or purchase other pilots and then take creative control then work on their own house brand of quality tv.

Again I say, how is soapnet thriving and the networks aren't in the daytime? Of course, not like soapnet is showing the classic soaps anymore. Portions of Ryan's Hope at 6 am. Thanks. Of course, now that there's some of thsoe multiple HD signals why can't the networks boradcast the daytime soaps on an alternative signlal? New talk show on flagship, but tune to 3.2 for soaps?

Done rambling. If I made any sense, good. If not, no matter.

 

[Aragorn]

A soap that got canceled a few years back -- Port Charles -- did mini-arcs toward the end of its run.

 

[drychlick]

all good thing come to a end that life!

 

[Warp Coil]

I think that the soap opera genre could be saved, but only if it abandoned all of the soap cliches, rules and ideas that they have followed for decades. I admit to watching soaps back in the late '90s. The ABC soaps were my thing (All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital and, at the time, Port Charles). If you watch a soap long enough, you begin to see all of the problems with the genre. Soaps do nothing but recycle actors, characters, storylines, writers and producers. Rarely, if ever, do things radically change on a soap. Dramatic storylines that threaten to "shake things up" rarely do much, except sit spinning in neutral for six months to a year while characters keep having the same conversations about secrets that are never revealed, and lots of big things keep almost-happening. A soap might do something "shocking" like kill off a major character, but there's a 50/50 chance that the actor (or character) will resurface later down the road. New characters are introduced constantly, and writers love to revise history by making them long-lost siblings or offspring that character never knew about.

The way I see it, the only way to save soap operas is to completely re-vamp the genre. Dump all of the talentless hack writers who keep jumping from one soap to the next. Why not bring in fresh blood to run the writers room? Why not pluck people who have experience in primetime television to give the shows a new energy, new pacing and new direction? Par down the size of the casts of the soaps. Why do you need 30-40 characters on the canvas at one time? Cut it down to 20 and then you can give each of your characters something to do, instead of focusing on the same 10 people while the other 20 chew the scenery and wait for someone to give them a storyline. Ramp up the drama and the pacing by making things actually happen and push stories to have a beginning, middle and end instead of drawing plots out for a year with little to no momentum. Abandon the cliches of dead characters returning from the dead, long-lost evil twins and baby-swapping stories in favor of something a little more rooted in reality. Maybe even change the way soaps are filmed so that they don't look like they're filmed on a cheap, three-walled soundstage.

At this point, it's worth a shot, right?

 

[RobertScorpio]

I think that the soap opera genre could be saved, but only if it abandoned all of the soap cliches, rules and ideas that they have followed for decades. I admit to watching soaps back in the late '90s. The ABC soaps were my thing (All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital and, at the time, Port Charles). If you watch a soap long enough, you begin to see all of the problems with the genre. Soaps do nothing but recycle actors, characters, storylines, writers and producers. Rarely, if ever, do things radically change on a soap. Dramatic storylines that threaten to "shake things up" rarely do much, except sit spinning in neutral for six months to a year while characters keep having the same conversations about secrets that are never revealed, and lots of big things keep almost-happening. A soap might do something "shocking" like kill off a major character, but there's a 50/50 chance that the actor (or character) will resurface later down the road. New characters are introduced constantly, and writers love to revise history by making them long-lost siblings or offspring that character never knew about.

The way I see it, the only way to save soap operas is to completely re-vamp the genre. Dump all of the talentless hack writers who keep jumping from one soap to the next. Why not bring in fresh blood to run the writers room? Why not pluck people who have experience in primetime television to give the shows a new energy, new pacing and new direction? Par down the size of the casts of the soaps. Why do you need 30-40 characters on the canvas at one time? Cut it down to 20 and then you can give each of your characters something to do, instead of focusing on the same 10 people while the other 20 chew the scenery and wait for someone to give them a storyline. Ramp up the drama and the pacing by making things actually happen and push stories to have a beginning, middle and end instead of drawing plots out for a year with little to no momentum. Abandon the cliches of dead characters returning from the dead, long-lost evil twins and baby-swapping stories in favor of something a little more rooted in reality. Maybe even change the way soaps are filmed so that they don't look like they're filmed on a cheap, three-walled soundstage.

At this point, it's worth a shot, right?

Great post..and i agree...

I actually wrote a fan-fac sometime back that jumped GH ahead a hundred years and put a scifi-twist on it....it lasted about a year and i thought it was unique..

but i agree about the repeating plots...here is my least favorite....the thug dude (Luke--Sonny--Jason) that these idiot women ruin their lives for....I do hate sonny/jason. For me, they ruined that show when it became a mob infested lovefest show...

rob

 

[Nerys Myk]

Ah yes, General Mobster. How I wish Jason would take another blow to the head and revert. As for Sonny, ship him back to Bensonhurst in a box.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Ah yes, General Mobster. How I wish Jason would take another blow to the head and revert. As for Sonny, ship him back to Bensonhurst in a box.

i so agree...I know I'm getting old and my heroes on that show (Robert--Sean--Anna) are getting old..but with the 'cold war' between the usa/russia seeming to come back at times in reality, i wouldn't mind a spy adventure maybe with Robert's long lost son...enough of this dark and dreary mobstuff...

Rob

 

[Aragorn]

Ah yes, General Mobster. How I wish Jason would take another blow to the head and revert. As for Sonny, ship him back to Bensonhurst in a box.

They were interesting back when they were anti-heroes, but now the two male headwriters seem to be masturbating whenever they write about Sonny and Jason and the show is all about them. And what exactly makes them big bad big time mobsters if they don't deal in drugs, weapons or human trafficking? What's left? Knockoff jeans? Bootleg DVDs? Illegal cable?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Well I'm not sure General Espionage would be better. I'm thinking doctor characters would be a good match for a show called "General Hospital". But I'm funny that way.