First post here in a long time. But I've felt obliged to share my thoughts on the matter.
I love daytime soaps and always will, because they had been part of my life growing up. I love the history of soaps and love talking about it as much as anything. But as far as today's shows go, I've more or less given it away and evidently more people have.
In fact, this past decade alone has seen the state of Daytime worsen far more dramatically, and proportionately more people have left soaps in the past 10 years than any time in history. It's less to do with changing socioeconomic trends and more to do with the fact that the quality of soaps overall has been allowed to deteriorate so badly.
I will be brutally honest here: TIIC at virtually all soaps have nobody to blame but themselves. They've dug their own grave and I'll give out my reasons why.
They've ceased striving for respectability There was once a time when Daytime strove to better itself, for the best of soaps to achieve greater respectability in terms of quality of writing and acting. But in the last 15 years, this has gone down the toilet in spectacular fashion.
Y&R once won acclaim, and rightly so, for sticking to its realism and social relevance when many soaps (especially Days) were doing the exact opposite. And the negative influence of Days' over the top and ridiculous storylines in the 90s spread through Daytime like cancer as soaps became increasingly obsessed with chasing instant ratings instead of long-term betterment through real storytelling.
They're insulting our intelligence Part of this has been Daytime's "youth obsession" since the 90s where eye candy is preferred to real talent, and where they assume the much-desired younger demographic enjoy stupidity with a slew of dull teen storylines, or just stupidly unrealistic, sensationalistic ones.
Hello, many of us in those desired demographics had/have no time for this tripe.
They've insulted fans' intelligence in many other ways too. Soap fans tend(ed) to be long term and have memories of elephants. So what do they do? The constant rewriting of history (with certain writers even rewriting their own history), constant returns from the dead, and the catering to rabid fanbases who watch only for their own favourite characters or couples.
So there you have it. What is such a fascinating and appealing genre of television, has been completely destroyed in the minds of many, through years of laziness, ignorance and catering to the lowest common denominator.
I know some here will disagree, but these are my brutally honest feelings.
Posts: 347 | Location: Sydney, Australia | Registered: December 05, 2005
Originally posted by Everton4Life: First post here in a long time. But I've felt obliged to share my thoughts on the matter.
I love daytime soaps and always will, because they had been part of my life growing up. I love the history of soaps and love talking about it as much as anything. But as far as today's shows go, I've more or less given it away and evidently more people have.
In fact, this past decade alone has seen the state of Daytime worsen far more dramatically, and proportionately more people have left soaps in the past 10 years than any time in history. It's less to do with changing socioeconomic trends and more to do with the fact that the quality of soaps overall has been allowed to deteriorate so badly.
I will be brutally honest here: TIIC at virtually all soaps have nobody to blame but themselves. They've dug their own grave and I'll give out my reasons why.
They've ceased striving for respectability There was once a time when Daytime strove to better itself, for the best of soaps to achieve greater respectability in terms of quality of writing and acting. But in the last 15 years, this has gone down the toilet in spectacular fashion.
Y&R once won acclaim, and rightly so, for sticking to its realism and social relevance when many soaps (especially Days) were doing the exact opposite. And the negative influence of Days' over the top and ridiculous storylines in the 90s spread through Daytime like cancer as soaps became increasingly obsessed with chasing instant ratings instead of long-term betterment through real storytelling.
They're insulting our intelligence Part of this has been Daytime's "youth obsession" since the 90s where eye candy is preferred to real talent, and where they assume the much-desired younger demographic enjoy stupidity with a slew of dull teen storylines, or just stupidly unrealistic, sensationalistic ones.
Hello, many of us in those desired demographics had/have no time for this tripe.
They've insulted fans' intelligence in many other ways too. Soap fans tend(ed) to be long term and have memories of elephants. So what do they do? The constant rewriting of history (with certain writers even rewriting their own history), constant returns from the dead, and the catering to rabid fanbases who watch only for their own favourite characters or couples.
So there you have it. What is such a fascinating and appealing genre of television, has been completely destroyed in the minds of many, through years of laziness, ignorance and catering to the lowest common denominator.
I know some here will disagree, but these are my brutally honest feelings.
Ridiculous and over the top IN YOUR OPINION!
------- FYC: 2008 Primetime Emmys
Bill Paxton, Michael C. Hall and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Lead Actor in a Drama Series)
THE TUDORS, DEXTER and BIG LOVE (Drama Series, Directing & Writing)
Originally posted by Everton4Life: First post here in a long time. But I've felt obliged to share my thoughts on the matter.
I love daytime soaps and always will, because they had been part of my life growing up. I love the history of soaps and love talking about it as much as anything. But as far as today's shows go, I've more or less given it away and evidently more people have.
In fact, this past decade alone has seen the state of Daytime worsen far more dramatically, and proportionately more people have left soaps in the past 10 years than any time in history. It's less to do with changing socioeconomic trends and more to do with the fact that the quality of soaps overall has been allowed to deteriorate so badly.
I will be brutally honest here: TIIC at virtually all soaps have nobody to blame but themselves. They've dug their own grave and I'll give out my reasons why.
They've ceased striving for respectability There was once a time when Daytime strove to better itself, for the best of soaps to achieve greater respectability in terms of quality of writing and acting. But in the last 15 years, this has gone down the toilet in spectacular fashion.
Y&R once won acclaim, and rightly so, for sticking to its realism and social relevance when many soaps (especially Days) were doing the exact opposite. And the negative influence of Days' over the top and ridiculous storylines in the 90s spread through Daytime like cancer as soaps became increasingly obsessed with chasing instant ratings instead of long-term betterment through real storytelling.
They're insulting our intelligence Part of this has been Daytime's "youth obsession" since the 90s where eye candy is preferred to real talent, and where they assume the much-desired younger demographic enjoy stupidity with a slew of dull teen storylines, or just stupidly unrealistic, sensationalistic ones.
Hello, many of us in those desired demographics had/have no time for this tripe.
They've insulted fans' intelligence in many other ways too. Soap fans tend(ed) to be long term and have memories of elephants. So what do they do? The constant rewriting of history (with certain writers even rewriting their own history), constant returns from the dead, and the catering to rabid fanbases who watch only for their own favourite characters or couples.
So there you have it. What is such a fascinating and appealing genre of television, has been completely destroyed in the minds of many, through years of laziness, ignorance and catering to the lowest common denominator.
I know some here will disagree, but these are my brutally honest feelings.
I agree completley. couldn't have said it better myself.
Praying The Daytime Emmys air on TV in 2010!
Posts: 20069 | Location: just outside Providence, Rhode Island | Registered: July 28, 2002
You're not alone. With the exception of Y&R and OLTL, none of other shows strive for excellence anymore. It's sad because there is so much potential.
I know I am in the minority here, but what I like about soaps are classic soap storytelling. I don't mind a long-lost evil twin, returns from the dead or babies be switched at birth because, when done correctly, are great drama.
I am sick and tired of writers and producers trying to keep up with primetime. Primetime television and daytime television have always been, and will always be, different genres. If only the powers that be would realize that.
Now, I'm not saying that I do not advocate a chaning of times type makeover, but there is no need to fix what was already working.
GIVE MERYL #3!!!!
Posts: 3668 | Location: Atlanta, GA | Registered: December 15, 2002
I agree with Everton, Grace and Boidiva. Soaps nowadays are medicore and it has been that way for the last 7 years. Ane now most soaps will settle for mediocre It pains me to say but almost every soap with the exception of Y&R and OLTL are boring and repetitive. The same thing happens day after day on AMC, and GH. The originality is gone and so have the fans. Even Days is now boring. Days has never been accused of being boring, maybe ridiculous or wacky, but never boring. And it certainly hasn't helped matters when all the soaps with the exception of the Bell soaps get rid of their veterans for lesser talents that often times can't act, have no fan support, and have never been proven ratings winners. When was the last time Johnny and Lulu at GH got big ratings. The answer NEVER! Jackie Zeman, Jane Elliot, Stuart Damon, and Nancy Lee Grahn on the other hand all at one time or another brought in the big ratings, but of course they now can qualify for AARP so out with them.
I'm of the belief that Primetime has got many things right where Daytime has wrong.
Daytime has a misguided view of "youth", in that you need young beautiful characters played by talentless eye candy. They think younger viewers like that and like stupid storylines.
Primetime has older and sometimes less than glamourous actors left right and centre. All long-running Primetime series do. In fact, a show like Ugly Betty is the exact opposite of what Daytime has beeen pursuing for a while now. Even a youth-oriented show like The OC had a nice balance of kids and parents in storylines.
And "in my opinion"? To that I say that people need to wake up and smell the coffee- because what happened on Days in the 90s really did damage the credibility and viability of Daytime.
Posts: 347 | Location: Sydney, Australia | Registered: December 05, 2005
I have not posted on here, save my post about Victoria Wyndham, as I cannot comment on shows I no longer watch or even care about watching.
My loyalty to daytime started as a young lad when I would watch soaps with my mother. As I grew more and more interested, I would have her audio record my favorites and listen to them at night.
Imagine my pure pleasure in receiving a VCR for my high school graduation. I could now record all of my soaps and watch them at my leisure. I spent many a Saturday afternoon while in college watching a weeks worth of episodes.
For the past several years my viewing grew more sparse, but this past fall, upon transferring back to Florida for a job, I had no TIVO or VCR. As I was already growing increasingly frustrated with the state of the genre, it didn't take much for me to completely ween myself from my lifelong addicition to my stories. And now that I have a VCR, I could care less about recording them. I would, once in a while, watch SOAPNET, but now have cancelled that fake of a channel and am working Monday through Friday and have no access to them at all. And no desire to watch them, either, especially after reading the continued postings on here about the lack of respect for us lifelong viewers and the genre as an entitity.
For years, I have voiced a rather loud opinion that soaps need to respect their history, bring us character-based plots and get back to their romantic roots that garnered them the highest ratings. My pleas (and the pleas of so many others on this board) have gone unanswered. All we get is continued frustration and quick fix answers that do nothing to improve the quality of the shows and even less to raise the ratings.
I miss my conversations on this board and continue to read them and will post every so often, but I don't miss the soaps anymore, as they certainly could care less about my opinions and have fallen so far in quality that I'm not really missing anything, anyway.
I'll stick to my DVDs of Six Feet Under and many other shows with continuing plots. Heck, even Friends is more of a soap opera than the trash we are being served by the higher ups of the daytime community these days.
Basically soaps have forgotten who there core audiences are and what they like and instead have tried to appeal to some supposed gold standard demographic that has yet in the last 10 years to respond to what they've done. They broke up all the core famalies, they dumped the veteran actors, hired hair models (for lack of better word) and wrote entire shows about two or three characters and lost all originality. They stopped taking risks and stopped challenging viewers.
In the glory days of the 70's, 80's and 90's soap operas teased audiences with plots but made them wait months (sometimes even years) for a resolution; whereas nowadays everything is solved within 1-4 weeks and then starts repeating again and again. In the glory days characters that were evil PAID for their actions, nowadays they always get off and never learn from their actions.
In the glory days heriones and villians were clearly cut characters; now our villians are written as our heros, anyone that disagree's with them is named a villian and horrible... it's moronic!
I'll take evil hooker Bobbie Spencer over little tramp Maxie any day. I'd rather be seeing Erica Kane and Brooke English fighting over Adam's affections than watching Greenlee Look-a-like # 297 tormenting less than brillant Ryan...
What i really miss about soaps was when they were used as platforms for socially relevant, socially progressive storylines. Irna Phillips always intended for the soap opera to tackle important social issues, so much so that when she was writing several soaps she wrote to the head of major companies and organizations and asked what she could do on her shows to help them! Now a days the most socially relevent we seem to get is teen pregnancy that never ends up being born because they always end up having a misscarriage or surprise, surprise are written off w/out a resolution to the story.
I wish soaps were still willing to risk challenging viewers minds by showing a socially relevant storyline... AIDS on GH in the 1990's was a grand social storyline, now this show seems to forget that robin even has HIV and instead has her making love in broom closets. It's so pointless.
I REALLY miss when characters on the shows were allowed to have real, true friendships---- Felica and Lucy on GH are a great example of that---they confided in one another, relied on one another and truly cared about each other. Now the closest thing to friendship on GH is Maxie and her sexual taunting with Spinelli. Friends turn on each other too quickly now...
Praying The Daytime Emmys air on TV in 2010!
Posts: 20069 | Location: just outside Providence, Rhode Island | Registered: July 28, 2002
Sometime in the 1990s, TV Guide's Michael Logan, in one of those soaps publications' many "Why are the daytime soaps' ratings falling?" articles, commented, "When was the last time you [heard from] someone who gave up Days of Our Lives for CNN?"
Logan was alluding to the so-called cliche of explaining away soaps' declining ratings because of growing competition from cable television programming.
Well, in 2008, I was watching CNN much more than ABC, CBS, and NBC soap operas. That's because I was "into" Election 2008. And the drama of that was a lot more fulfilling!
The ratings for soaps have been falling continuously since the late 70s, and only the rise of ABCD in the early 80s disguised that to a degree.
The loss of originality on shows has come into it. In the 80s every show (except Y&R) seemed to want to emulate the success of General Hospital, but they lost some of their identity in the process. This is how the legacy of GH success proves a double-edged sword, the supercouple phenomenon gave rise to the rabid fanbases we see today.
Of course, the success of JER on Days in the 90s also led to more copying, and did even more damage to the credibility and viability of the genre. Only now do we realise that.
The obsession with image over talent is sick, socially irresponsible and otherwise on many levels. Look at where it got the music industry- Milli Vanilli was EXACTLY a product of this sort of misguided thinking. Yet on our screens, people fell for it big time.
Posts: 347 | Location: Sydney, Australia | Registered: December 05, 2005
