Genoa City Lost

Readers of daytimeconfidential can discern the truth of Jamey Giddens' recent critique of Y&R. The state of the show is appalling...but it is also curious. All the elements -- from production to writing to acting -- are THERE...so why is the show so bad?

In short, the problem is the absence of heart...of emotion, nostalgia, or sincere feeling. Even remarkable actors who have bled on the stage for us in the past are clearly not connecting to the rushed, plotty show they're putting on.

My credentials: I have watched Y&R since 1973 (I was a wee 8 year old, but mom put it on). Y&R is so ingrained in the narrative of my life that I view it not from a "technical" perspective, but as someone who knows intuitively when the show is true to its nature. Or when -- as now -- it is not.

Right now, we have a canvas filled with original or veteran faces (Kay, Victor, Jack, Paul, Phyllis, Nick, Sharon, Ashley, Kevin) and characters we saw born on this show (Billy, Victoria, Chloe, Ronan)...but it all feels so flat. Characters are doing things they'd NEVER do (Kay annulling her son's marriage out of spite, Victor throwing a woman out of an ambulance and taking a son away from his father).

This happened once before. After a promising start, Lynn Latham's second year got seriously off the rails, as Nikki (Nikki!) ran for Senate and the entire town clustered around some rural village that was being turned into a resort (Clear Springs). Little made sense. Ratings began to decline precipitously during this period, and continued to do so well into Maria Bell's "rescue regime".

It is curious that Maria Bell's Y&R feels so off right now. We know she's capable of heart. Her nadir-story was "the death of Kay". Kay's funeral and eventual reunion were the ultimate of "heart", as a touching romance bloomed with Murphy, old friends and rivals reunited at Kay's funeral, and Marge got a touching "ghostly farewell" to the tune of Perry Como's "Papa Loves Mambo". Greatness!

But then the Silver Chipmunk happened. It is fair to say that, since then, Y&R has progressively devolved back into a crime riddled (Richard Hightower! Skye's multiple deaths! Patty's reign of terror! Corporate shenanigans!, Diane's murder! Baby stealing! Over-the-top Australian mobsters!) mess. Not only do these stories not elicit feeling or emotion...emotion is decisively left out. Examples:

Diane -- a character with a thirty year tie to Jack -- gets nary a tear (except, maybe, from the terrific Christian Leblanc's Michael). Adam is betrayed by Sharon, and embarks on a spree of revenge (thank heavens Michael Muhney -- and his eyes!! -- work against the malevolence of the tale). Three touching couples are made -- well -- not touching.

- Billy and Victoria: The story here would have been to see them stay together -- fight together -- against obstacles. Instead, they folded as soon as the first marital assault hit them. Where's the rooting value in that?
- Nick and Phyllis: Apparently they're sex buddies again. Okay. The actors still FIRE UP the room in every scene when they're together. So why is there no emotion or tenderness or motivation in their scenes?
- Lily and Daniel: (Controversial here--I know Cane/Lily have major fans). There's something beautifully touching in a pair that damaged their union through youthful mistakes rediscovering each other from a grown up perspective. Daniel feels he doesn't want to be a father (shadows of his own damaged childhood and paternity/maternity issues??)...but could Lily make him feel secure in his nurturing skills, so that he would be a good stepdad to her kids...and even dad to his own Lucy?

There WERE promising emotional stories.

The Lear-esque "Fall of the House of Newman" was especially good...and it really made the most out of Marcy Rylan/Eric Braeden's terrific chemistry. The family was fractured. This promised YEARS of rivalry and reconciliation. Instead...it is over. Forgotten. Done. Huh?

Phyllis -- inexplicably -- tried to pull baby Lucy from the secure loving parents who were raising her. (I guess I get it...it has to do with making up for her own previous shortcomings as a mom). Everyone picked sides. It was an agonizing story. Then...Phyllis got Lucy, was ostracized for week, then Nick and Michael seemed to mostly forgive her...and it's over. Forgotten. Done. Huh?

The Y&R canvas is OVER-STUFFED. The show seems to have little motivation to write for Tricia Cast/Doug Davidson, Kristoff St. John ... Yet the show also refuses to decisively clean house, and to commit to protracted story arcs we can invest in.

These days, I find little compelling material to draw me to the show. There are a few very capable actors (Muhney, Leblanc, Rylan, Thomas-Scott, E. Davidson) who are still finding emotion in every scene they do. There are a few others who rise to the occasion when they can connect with the material (Bergman, Braeden, Heinle, D. Davidson, Stafford). Still others seem utterly emotionally disconnected from this plotty show...even actors who have given us AMAZING performances in the past.

I still check in every day, but more and more reluctantly. My thoughts stray to cable (Breaking Bad, Torchwood, True Blood, Big C, Weeds). B&B (that's another blog post) --always my also-ran soap--has become my first soap of choice!. I guess I'm waiting for Genoa City to welcome me back to a big, nostalgic, sloppy, feel-good-or-feel-bad-BUT-FEEL-SOMETHING homecoming.

Why I'm dismayed by Y&R Diane Jenkings Murder Mystery (Killer "revealed")

This adapted from a twitter-stream in which I ranted this morning. Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way. Ugh...

Structurally, I actually LIKE the murder mystery, and if I'm reading it right (see the section at bottom for my guess about the killer), it's one of the best-constructed for Y&R in yrs.

What I don't like about the murder mystery is the underlying emotional mistruths and plottiness it forces us to endure. To wit:

(1) We KNOW (subjectively) that none of the nine prime suspects is a killer......even Adam, we KNOW--because Muhney's eyes tell us he's not. (He did NOT kill Hightower).

(2) Too many crime stories (Hightower, Patty, mob, murder) have infected Y&R since the latter days of Lynn Latham. What about emotion, love and family drama in small Wisconsin town? That Y&R seems to be dead, eh? (Interesting that GH, AMC, DOOL all seem to be RETURNING to the formula of emotional family-based drama...and B&B is excelling in that category these days...with nary a murder in sight).

(3) Murder derails the show in a single umbrella story. So many interesting tales (Nikki's recovery, Villy, Daniel/Lily rediscovering each other, Tucker's son) are ignored.

(4) The story is ultimately pure plot, minimal character. There are a few actors on this show who can still evoke emotion with their faces and body language (Muhney, Leblanc, Ryland, Braeden [when he cares/is invested], and ... shockingly, Heinle). Strangely, Peter Bergman has been really emotionally disconnected from his scenes for a long while, and all that reads now mostly is coldness. But while this crew is front-and-center in the plot, most of them aren't finding the emotional truth of it at all. That relates to my next point.

(5) Y&R is totally ignoring the emotional HEART of this story. Diane has been on canvas since 1982 and some DID care for her. Only Michael Baldwin, briefly, got to play the emotion. I suspect that owes itself 80% to Leblanc's strengths as an actor--his constrained emotions and tear-brimmed eyes told the story of his outrage.

If I had my way, Y&R would do a two-year moratorium on death and crime, and see what else they could come up with.



Also, it bears noting that while many of us felt Maura West was an odd casting choice for Diane, and the character was scripted from jump (during West's watch) as a lost woman with no sense of her self-worth, no real identity, just money-grubbing man whore, she still thrived in it. West reinvented Diane as utterly broken, and she pulled it off. It is the writers' fault that Diane's successful past as a fashion maven, model, and architect were all fully ignored. (Empowered Diane couldn't have filled the show's obviously much-desired victim niche). Nevertheless, during her brief year on the show, West was a STAR. She captivated attention even in the most throwaway scenes.

My predictions about the killer are below, in white font. I'm pretty sure I'm right. Highlight the text with your cursor to reveal:

I think the killer is Patty. As such, it's actually a brilliant move because it makes sense based on THIRTY YEARS of history.

Rationale:

Motive: Patty's life derailed, basically, when she married philandering Jack Abbott. The NIGHT before his wedding to Patty, Jack slept with Diane...and the affair continued after the marriage (leading to Patty's miscarriage). The show cleverly reminded us of this rivalry in a one-off episode when Haiduk's Patty confronted Susan Walters' Diane during a brief visit.

Opportunity: Patty is missing. No one knows where she is. We have a sense that she may be "around", when Adam talked on the phone to "someone" last week, telling him/her to stay away and that he was sending him/her enough money.

Character: Patty's a killer. Kitty-Kitty, Zapato, endangering Summer with peanut butter. It also seems likely -- although the show introduced ambiguity here -- that Patty killed Richard Hightower. (Adam reminded her that she did it...but we weren't clear if he'd really uncovered the memory, or if he'd implanted it). Let's not forget that as early is the early-80s, Patty went into a fugue state and shot Jack (for revealing, to Jill, he never loved Patty). Remember that Patty shot Jack MULTIPLE times? Just like Diane got bashed in the head MULTIPLE times. Girl's got anger issues.

Rumor: Someone told me, after I guessed this, that Haiduk had been seen on the Y&R set for a few episodes to "wrap up" her character. Plot construction: Suddenly, the criminally ignored Doug Davidson resurfaces. He's sudden the lead local detective (special investigator) on the Diane Jenkins murder. (Negative points to Y&R for ignoring how many years Paul and Diane had intertwined lives, from when she was married to his partner/best friend Andy. Davidson should have been allowed to grieve for what Diane once was). Anyway, why put Paul on the case (rather than, say, Coco from FAME??). So he can react with trademark shock and heartbreak when he realizes HIS SISTER IS THE KILLER.

I must confess, it is this last part of it...rooting this murder in 30 years of history and positioning Davidson to play the emotional beats of it...that makes me hate this story less.

Y&R: "Rating" the headwriters

[Click on the link below to see the full version, if it is trucated]

ETA. SON User Paul Raven was able to give me 1999 ratings, which fleshes out data for Kay Alden. The pattern of data was identical to what I had published in an earlier draft, but it gives me more confidence in the Alden results.



Last week at Daytime Confidential, writer Jamey Giddens wrote an eloquent review of Tom Casiello's first breakdown at Y&R. It was a terrific review, and I agree with almost all of it.

But a funny thing happened in the comment thread. Jamey and a user named Monamis got into a debate about the relative impact of Lynn Latham on the ratings. Monamis points out things really went south with current headwriter (HW) Maria Arena Bell took over, but Jamey Giddens argues that Latham lost a million viewers.

What is the truth? Well, it sounds like a data analysis, and that's my thing.

Here is what I did. I wanted to go back to the start of Kay Alden's regime as solo Headwriter, but Toups' ratings archive at Soap Opera Network only gives me weekly ratings as far back as 2000. Okay, I'd start there.

Because different tenures lasted different periods of time, I thought I should post average weekly changes. These represent the slope coefficients that result when the household (HH) ratings are regressed on week. They represent the single best way to express ratings change in a common metric, despite the varying writing tenures on the show.

The figure at the top illustrates the data graphically. You can see that, as always, there was a lot of week to week variability. So, I am just extracting the linear trends from these data.

I divided the tenures this way:

Alden = Alden solo, before the arrival of Jack Smith
Smith = any period after Smith returned to the show, but before Latham joined
Latham = any period after she was formally named HW, even while Alden and Smith were still there
ArenaBell&Griffith = the disastrous (for ratings) period that began with the WGA writer's strike of 2007, and continued until Griffith's ouster in early 2008
ArenaBell = the post-Griffith period, in which she led a team that included Hogan Sheffer, Scott Hamner, and mahy others.

I further broke Latham's tenure into two pieces. 2006 was when she still had the legacy team (Alden, Smith, Ed Scott and many others) for most of it, and 2007, when she essentially had absolute control over her team without any "legacy" interference.

The table looks like this:

HW regime	Average weekly HH ratings change
Kay Alden	-0.010
Jack Smith with Kay Alden	-0.004
Lynn Latham (overall)	-0.003
Lynn Latham (2006 with legacy team)	+0.001
Lynn Latham (2007 without legacy team)	-0.006
Arena Bell/Griffth	-0.028
Arena Bell	+0.004

What do these numbers show?

It means the worst regime for the show was that Arena Bell/Griffth collaboration, that coincided with the WGA writer's strike and the sudde dismissal of Lynn Latham. Story-wise, the rushed introduction of Sabrina and her whirlwind romance with Victor seems to caused so much disgust that viewers tuned out in droves.

Alden's solo regime was next in problematic ratings. On average, she lost about 0.5 HH ratings points a year, which is a lot.

What that means is that the most disastrous period in the Toups/SON ratings archive is the several month period in which Arena Bell was writing with Josh Griffith. During this period, which encompassed the writer's strike and brief period thereafter, there were non-trivial declines on a week-by-week basis. "Bleeding". Many internet bloggers/message boarders blame this on the "damaged ground" that these writers inherited from Latham, but the descent was so precipitous, I have to believe that the introduction the much-younger Sabrina and Victor's whirlwind romance with her provoked a "disgust" response that led to massive tuneout.

More impressive is that in the time since Griffith left, Arena has actually stemmed the bleeding, and she is the only HW since Bill Bell to show ratings GROWTH.Now the growth is actually fairly anemic (.004 HH ratings points per week, on average), but in this climate, any growth is breath-taking.

Ratings-wise, the second-most difficult period in the post-Bell era was Kay Alden's solo regime, at least in the period beginning with 2000. Every ten weeks, on average, the show could be expected to lose 0.1 ratings points, or about 0.5 ratings points a year.

It seems that Alden's collaboration with Smith stemmed the tide...during this period, a much slower rate of decline set in.

And here is where it gets interesting. Latham was brough into shake things up. But, overall, her weekly rate of ratings decline (-.003) was only trivially different from the Smith & Alden era. She was not any more destructive to the ratings than her predecessors, but she was also not helpful. The truth, of course, is that Latham's era can be broken into "early Latham" and "late Latham", with these distinguished by when she had Alden/Smith/Scott around and when she didn't. If you compare these periods (roughly delimited by 2006 versus 2007), you find this:

In 2006, Latham and the legacy team achieved a weekly ratings change, on average of +.001...or slight gain. But in 2007, when Latham was solo (i.e., no legacy team) her ratings changed, on average, to a weekly decline of -.006!

Thus, Latham-solo was almost as negative as Alden solo.

Jack Smith's addition did stem the flow, and the rate of decline was much slower...but continuous. Interestingly, overall, Latham's weekly rate of decline was almost identical to Smith's, even though she was brought in to "fix things up". Ironically, a closer examination shows that when she worked with Alden/Smith and other legacy team members, she was actually experiencing slight ratings gain. But, once she let go of the team, her solo rate of decline was actually almost twice as bad as that experienced by Jack Smith.

The optimistic closer, of course, is Maria Arena Bell's current trend, which is actually positive. There has been a slow but steady very slight ratings gain. A little hope for the future....

What Barack Obama should learn from Lynn Latham

I hope that is not too provocative.

Yesterday in Chicago, Barack Obama announced more members of his economic advisory team. A large number of his team members served in the Clinton and even Carter administrations...prompting some critics to argue that this is not the "change" Obama promised.

To this, Mr. Obama replied, in part

The reality is is that sometimes policymaking in Washington can become a little bit too ingrown, a little bit too insular. The walls of the echo chamber can sometimes keep out fresh voices and new ways of thinking. You start engaging in groupthink. And those who serve in Washington don't always have a ground-level sense of which programs and policies are working for people and businesses, and which aren't.

This board will provide that fresh perspective to me and my administration with an infusion of ideas from across the country and from all sectors of our economy, input that will be informed by members' firsthand observations of how our efforts are impacting the daily lives of our families.

Later, he said

And I suspect that you would be troubled and the American people would be troubled if I selected a Treasury secretary or a chairman of the National Economic Council at one of the most critical economic times in our history who had no experience in government whatsoever.

What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking. But understand where the -- the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me. That's my job, is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing it. I think that when you ultimately look at what this advisory board looks like, you'll say this is a cross-section of opinion that in some ways reinforces conventional wisdom, in some ways breaks with orthodoxy in all sorts of ways.

And that's the kind of discussion that we're going to want. We want ideas from everybody. But what I don't want to do is to somehow suggest that because you served in the last Democratic administration that you're somehow barred from serving again, because we need people who are going to be able to hit the ground running.

I am mindful of how much this sounds like early language from Lynn Latham at Y&R. When Latham first joined the show, it was sort of "under cover of night", first appearing as consultant, then later as one of three headwriters, then official top-dog headwriter, then later, executive producer.

In one of her earlier interviews, there was a respect for tradition, combined with a freshness of perspective, that was really inspiring (at least to me). Moreover, I found the energy she brought to early Y&R quite positive. I really liked that -- while she was new (but herself experienced) -- she was working with whole legacy team! Of course, history has since shown that she was not sincere about this...rapidly cutting loose her ties to the show's heritage, and creating an increasingly inconsistent mess with bad management.

But that early interview with Latham was great. In the 6/27/06 issue of SOW she said, in part:

Respect for history

1. Her "number one rule" in making changes was to "respect the history of the characters and the series". (Sadly, that seemed to have stopped later on)

2. It looked like she was working with the people in charge. In response to the new sets, moving cameras, actors walking and talking, Latham said many had created the changes. She said changes were initiated by Bill Bell Jr., Steve Kent of Sony, and CBS Daytime head Barbara Bloom. They wanted to pick up the pace in storytelling and production. Apparently, everyone was agreed on these changes, and worked together. (What I didn't pick up, at the time, was that key leaders like Kay Alden, Jack Smith and Ed Scott were missing from her list of collaborators)

3. She pledged to work with existing sets and team leaders, just reinvigorate them: She said that Bill Hultstrom had actually redesigned Newman Towers so that characters could be followed moving through elevators and offices. She also noted that they added the break room because she, too, has her best conversations with colleagues by the office microwave. (She also notes the break room is more upscale than hers...no Formica, hanging wine glases). (Now, in retrospect, we know that the Formica was probably as much a politically correct desire to get artificial and anti-green and poverty-encouraging materials off the set as anything else. Latham later expunged plastic water bottles, diamonds, and indoor fires for all the same reasons.)

Freshness

1. The biggest change, she said, would be replacing traditional Y&R stylistic devices ("slow arcs and pans at the beginning of scenes") with more "dynamic blocking and camera movement". She said they would be cutting away sooner, without multiple reaction shots. She called this "Y&R Plus", because characters would get more air time in this active style. "I love the actors here so much, I always want to see them more!". On this note, she said they dropped the"waiter shot", where the camera follows a waiter until it finally settles on the actors. So, too, closeups of gorgeous floral arrangements are also gone. (Interestingly, on 12/27/2007, when the Bells reclaimed the show, lingering scenery shots immediately reappeared. As time has moved on, these are no longer as common as they used to be)

2. From the writing perspective, she said they would be writing more movement into the scripts, eliminating greetings and exits, and they wanted each day to end with a "tag" (mini-cliffhanger) to encourage more days of viewership. (In the end, the pace got so fast that...if you missed a day...you were likely to say "huh? when did that happen? It didn't encourage more viewership...just more confusion.)

3. As a result, wardrobe was having to contend with many more costume changes.

In another interview from this era, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (7/16/2006) reported:

Latham, who took over at "Y&R" in the past six months, said she didn't do a full-scale housecleaning as some new daytime executive producers do.

"I have leaned very heavily on the actors, too, to help me fill in on the story," she said.

Actor Don Diamont, who plays Brad Carlton, said that's rare.

"To Lynn's credit, by the way, that's not something you'll come across? with every head writer," Diamont said. "Lynn said, 'Can we have lunch? I want to meet each and every one of you and hear what you have to say about the character you've been playing for 20 years. Who is he?'And that's a rarity."

By the end of Latham's tenure, just about EVERY legacy writer on the show (excluding, I think, Natalie Minardi Slater, Eric Freiwald/Linda Schreiber, and Sandra Weintraub) was gone. The new writers few through in a revolving door that...sometimes...bewildered even them (with a lack of writing time and minimal opportunities to get to know the characters she was actually writing for). Tom Casiello wrote (originally here, but that post now requires "friend" adds at Myspace). The point is that--by NOT relying on the benefits of experience--you actually burden and burn out the fresh perspectives. They NEED experience to lean on!

I chose Young and the Restless.

What I found when I started was a show in deep transition. It happens. I survived two transitions at As the World Turns, and one at One Life to Live. They're tough, but they're part of the nature of this business. Lynn Latham had just taken over EP duties (along with being HW), a lot of longtime Bell writers were let go (and many were rumored to be on their way out, so I only had a few weeks to pick their brains and learn all I could from them), there was a mandate to move the show into the next generation, and while all of this seemed thrilling and exciting, there was part of me that said: "What have I signed up for?"

While the fan in me wondered why you'd want to fix something that's not broken, the writer in me could appreciate and respect the desire TPTB had to amp up the watchability factor. So I thought to myself: "Self? For better or worse, you have to give this your all. Read up on the history, learn about these characters, give them what they're looking for, dive in head first. You may stumble now and then, but you're a writer. You can do this."

And I did. But then production fell behind... the writers fell behind... sometimes we'd have LESS THAN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS to write an episode. Whatever was going on at the top trickled its way down to all of us, and we were under a gun, blindfolded and typing madly in the pitch black. Sometimes completely left to our own devices. I spent most of my week sitting around waiting to find out what I was supposed to do while I read up on fan history pages, and the last few remaining hours doing more research than I've ever done -- but NOT on Y&R! On deafness, on epilepsy, on Judaism. Everything BUT the characters and emotional content in my episodes. I'm not foolish or arrogant enough to be able to say I know what caused this behind the scenes, but whatever it was, it led to me ripping out handfuls of hair on many a Saturday night at three o'clock in the morning.

I could clearly see that whether it was my fault or not, I would not last through my first cycle. Working under those conditions AND trying to learn the rhythms and practices of a show both behind the scenes and in front of it, was just too difficult a task. But this was not a complete loss, by any means. I'm very grateful for my thirteen weeks there because I met some pretty amazing writers who were kind, welcoming, and ready to help me with character, with motivation, with history. Writers who would respond to an e-mail immediately, or even answer a frantic phone call at eleven o'clock at night. Kay Alden, and Janice Esser, and Natalie Slater and Sara Bibel.

It led to a profusion of excellent viewer comments like this:

Just wanted to say that I think they've destroyed the show with the plot driven writing, full of continuity errors and characterizations which change depending on who wrote what episode and what story is being told.

I am a big fan of Lynn Latham from Knots Landing and Homefront, but she's not fit for daytime. Major events like Jill and Ji Min's first love scene or Mackenzie's abortion now happen during the commercial break. What we get on screen is endless drivel about Clear Springs, MEEthane gas or reliquaries.

It was a mistake to completely uproot the show instead of fine tuning it. Now nobody knows the history of the show or what made it successful. Bill Bell must be rolling in his grave.

So, how do I tie this all back to Obama? Because I really do feel (obviously in very different spheres...I don't mean to trivialize Obama's huge mission) that early Obama sounds an awful lot like early Latham...which is a good thing. He's trying to respect experience and to select the things that have worked in the past. At the same time, he wants to innovate, bring in fresh perspectives...and he cites HIMSELF as the genesis of many of those fresh ideas. Bravo! Work with old, encourage the new.

Six months after that Latham interview above, essentially all of the "old guard" were gone. Left to her own devices, without the benefits of experience, the show imploded. Let's hope that Obama tries to mix innovation with experience for the next eight years!

My question to Sara Bibel: Was LML undermined?

I know Sara Bibel (a former writer for Y&R--she predated Lynn Latham and then was among the legions fired by her; she also had a brief stint as a writer for AMC, and was once a ratings analyst for Sony) can never answer this, but I really want to know :-).

I posted this on her blog:

May I be permitted to ask you an off topic question, knowing that you probably can't answer? You gave a recent TERRIFIC interview to Toups over at Soap Opera Network. In that you said:

"Story plans change for all sorts of reasons, both from external suggestions and stories simply evolving from their original design. With that caveat...", and you go on to list "Originally, Victor's epilepsy was going to be a much more complicated story. It was going to propel Victor back towards Ashley and Nikki towards Jack. I think that would have been interesting....When she first came back, Victoria was going to work for Jabot, in opposition to the rest of the Newmans. That could have been fun...Lily and Daniel were supposed to experience realistic financial and emotional struggles as married teens. "

The Victoria-against-family bit doesn't interest me much (I'm tired of contrivances pitting family members against each other), but the other two seem better than what we saw.

What I want to know is what changed, and why? Fickle headwriter who could not commit to her stories? A decision to not renew Eileen Davidson, which led to the Victor story not playing out? Interference from Sony or CBS?

Again, I realize you probably can't answer. But when Lynn Latham first came to Y&R, I honestly thought it was the second coming :-). Victor's epilepsy, John's memory lapses, Brad seeming to have a secret past (this was prior to the story turning silly)...I just remember loving every single day. I attributed it to a fresh creative force re-energizing a legacy team rooted in history.

I remember the Victor story when it started. He head-butted a mugger. That is what he ALWAYS does...it was rooted in history and character. Then, our attention turned to Nikki (would her back gunshot paralyze her?) and to John (memory lapses--needs a neurologist). What TERRIFIC red herrings. Our attention was not on Victor, so it was SHOCKING when he starting cutting paper dolls and smelling lavender! My hope for the show was as high as it has been since Bill Bell died.

And then it all....petered out.

What I am still trying to figure out is whether Lynn Latham was UNDERMINED. Did she start out fresh, but then have her plans ruined by corporate interference? Or did she cut too many people too fast (obviously, you'd be in that number)...and the consolidation of power turned out to be her undoing...because ultimately she did not know her show or her audience. Or was her legendary ADHD (one former assistant asserts that she lost her calendar EVERY SINGLE DAY) the root of a cognitive inability to "keep track" and to "manage"...resulting in chaos.

I know you can't answer...and it breaks my heart. Because legions of Y&R lovers really want to know what happened.

Did Lynn Marie Latham grow Y&R's ratings by stealing from ABC?

Sylph asked me, in early June 2008, "Mark, what happened to viewers Lynn Latham stole from ABC soaps?"

Do we have evidence she did this? I know her ratings spiked twice (John dies; Pheila returns). Did either of these claim ABC viewers?

I'd love to see that analysis!

But, my guess is that they are gone. Indeed, that is a fascinating proposition...

(1) If raters move to Y&R because they are disgusted with ABC, and they hear LML seems to be doing good stuff, I would argue such viewers are BY DEFINITION fickle. ("Real" soap viewers stick with their shows through thick and thin. I know there is disagreement about that on here, but I think this statement is generally true).

(2) So, fickle viewers (soap-switchers) come to Y&R. They have no emotional investment in the show. So, if the show goes bad..or if it just fails to engage their interest, they go away.

This raises a FASCINATING hypothesis, Sylph!

What if the APPARENT growth and stability of early-LML's Y&R was REALLY due to the migration of fickle ABC (and DOOL) viewers? So, when we saw ratings stability and ratings growth during LML, it REALLY masked the departure of long-term stalwart viewers and their replacement by this more fickle pool.

In this scenario, once Y&R returned to its' more traditional pace (which by all accounts it has), the ABC/DOOL viewers--fickle in nature because they have already proven to be soap-abandoners--flew away in droves. That would explain the sudden recent plummets.

I wonder if anyone has the data to track this kind of thing.