Rationally and Respectfully Saving AMC/OLTL

The always-entertaining blogger of Daytime Confidential, Jamey Giddens, proposed a number of constructive, rational ways of trying to save AMC/OLTL. Note that each of his suggestions are respectful, business minded, free of insult. They seek to use the demographic and marketing clout of the devoted soap audience to make a logical case for the perpetuation of daytime drama.

I reproduce his suggestions below, and fill in my own "followup" in blue. These are all from the Sunday April 10, 2011 Twitter timeline of @Jamey_Giddens

1. Hearing a decision will be announced re: ABC Daytime THIS WEEK! Keep calling Anne Sweeney! (818) 460-7700
2. Neither are safe, but one could have more time. Keep calling, keep writing, I am serious. ABC wants out of the soap game.
3. Look up your local entertainment reporters at your local newsapers. Ask them to do articles in favor of ABC soaps.
4. Do the same for local morning talk shows, radio, etc. Tell them ABC's soaps are in danger and to do stories.
5. Tweet (poilitely) famous ABC soap fans/alum ala Rosie O'Donnell, Oprah, Roseanne Barr, Carol Burnett, Nathan Fillion. Ask 4 their help!
6. Snoop Dogg, Wendy Williams, etc.Make noise! Email top bloggers in mainstream, Perez, Just Jared, Michael Ausiello, Nikki Finke, etc.
7. Go to message boards like Daytime Royalty, the Soap Opera Network and Soap Opera Source forum and organize. (From MarkH: SoapCentral too)
8. Contact We Love Soaps, Michael Fairman, Carolyn Hinsey, Nelson Branco, whoever, just let the soap fans' collective voice be heard!
9. And remember, be polite and sane. Don't be talking all crazy and stuff. They already expect that from soap fans. Prove them wrong.
10. In your emails, point to the success of telenovelas, essentially Latin soaps that are winning timeslots in primetime.
11. It's not the soaps that need to go, it's the execs who have run out of ideas and ran them into the ground. Serialized stories are viable. (MarkH: the final bolded part seems most important to me...don't think we should add anti-exec rhetoric right now.)
12. Watch the commercials between ABC soaps this week. Write down the sponsors, contact those brands. Tell them you saw their product on ABCD.
13. Now is the time for sane, rational solutions 2 attempt to stave off a bloodbath.

Using the GL evolution as an experiment

As a non-GL viewer, my reaction to GL's apparent passing is not emotional, but intellectual. I do view the loss of the oldest soap, one of the last Irna Phillips soaps, the only soap to make it from radio to the present, as a major symbolic loss for the genre. GL bordered on "sacred cow", so when we're ready to kill that one...

In this post, though, I want to focus on a more optimistic future, and some personal "brainstorming" I have been doing to think about what a next-generation GL might look like.

The rumors are that GL is looking for a new home. DaytimeConfidential suggests that the most serious talks are with the Lifetime Network.

Since Lifetime is "Television for Women", I don't watch that a lot...it seems to be the new home of women-in-peril movies (what we used to call "Movies of the Week" or "Sunday Night Movies"). In principle, such an emotional, women-oriented platform seems ideal for soaps.

But there is also a fundamental difference. The two-hour movie is self-contained. You get your emotional fix and then you move on, never again to revisit those characters. That is the antithesis of a soap.

So, how to graft the two together? My feeling is that the secret is to move in the direction of a telenovela...a self-contained story that is fixed in time. (I know this has been tried and failed...OLTL was reviled when Michael Malone played with short arcs, and Port Charles is no longer around -- a testament to the failure of that experiment. Indeed, some attribute GL's most recent fall to its lack of melodramatic and serial elements during the first year of the new production model).

So, what if Springfield/GL is used as the fictional universe (with all the history back there, but maybe not front and center), and a series of 13-week 30- or 60-minute ensemble dramas (set to play once a week...not daily) were set there?

For example, using the current buzzworthy tale, what if for 13 weeks Lifetime presented: "Otalia" (with, in smaller letters, at the bottom of the screen, "A Guiding Light/Springfield story").

Now, let's pretend that for the first 13-weeks, the "A" story of "Otalia" is about these two women becoming open and committed lovers (say the last episode of GL = Otalia getting married, so the new series picks up on their married life). As an ensemble show, there could be "B" and "C" stories anchored in Otalia (their co-workers, relatives, friends), but distinct. Some of those "B" and "C" stories could come from the rest of the GL universe--AS LONG AS THEY WERE THEMATICALLY TIED IN (e.g., Doris tries, finally, to open her heart to love while her daughter has a hard time coping; Frank tries to move on in the world, looking for a woman who can finally appreciate him for what he is).

At the end of the 13-week arc, Otalia would rest. Maybe it would come back "next season" (next year), or maybe not. That would depend on fan response.

Meanwhile, after the 13-week arc is over, another 13-week novel would begin. For example (don't roll your eyes...I'm trying to play to a Lifetime audience here): "Healing Hearts: The Story of Dinah and Shane". Again, at the bottom of the screen, it would be signalled as "A Guiding Light/Springfield Story".

As that couple plays out its 13-week drama, again supported by related "B" and "C" stories (I really think these shows have to be tighter and more contained...new viewers MUST be able to sample without getting lost), there could be weeks with "Special Guest Star Kim Zimmer" or "Special Guest Star Maeve Kinkead" (spelling fixed per comment below). At that could be the link to classic GL.

Soap opera towns and universes are fictional places that we love to return to over and over again. In the new financials and the evolving universe, where the patience and time for a daily experience may not longer exist, and where the "burden" of decades of history may actually serve as a turnoff for viewers, can GL pioneer (as it has before) the evolution of the form? Can Springfield and the 70 years of history that went before serve as the "franchise" in which self-contained short arc stories...featuring people we know and people we don't know...keep the town alive?

Maybe returning to Springfield and Guiding Light in a different way would be the method of achieving this "place to come home to" while building something that requires a little less commitment?

I note that the GH:Night Shift experiment did something very much like this. If anything, it was too tied to the "mothership", using too many characters from the daytime show (enough that discontinuities between the two series annoyed some fans). Night Shift I was a ratings success for Soapnet (but not a critical one). Night Shift II was a critical success but ratings failure. I know that a version of this experiment (ATWT's Eileen Fulton spinoff, Our Private World, penned in part by Bill Bell) did not succeed in the 1960s...but that was not so fully situated in the Oakdale universe. It was a true spinoff, and those are always risky.

Maybe Lifetime (or whomever is lucky enough to participate in the evolution of the GL franchise) can find a way to tell new stories rooted in Springfield. If lightning strikes, this new GL might satisfy both the commercial needs of the network, and storytelling needs of hungry fans, all of whom believe there is still life in the "old girl".

For all of them, I wish that the genre trailblazer continues to push soaps forward into the new media landscape.

The gay male soap fan

With gays erupting all over daytime :-), I thought this historical article might offer some interesting historical context on a segment of the audience that was long ignored.

In another long-promised excerpt from that out of print soap book I have been drawing from, I wanted to share this tail-end excerpt from Jane Feuer's chapter, "Different Soaps for Different Folks". Her broader chapter considers the question of how soaps, programmed for such a mainstream audience, have come to have such specialized appeal for subgroups like African American women and gay men. Because the appeal of soaps to gay men has been a through theme in this blog, I thought I'd include some her comments on that topic. The article is old (1997), so it would be interesting to think about whether what it says is still relevant almost 12 years later.

=========

The Fan and the Gay Male Audience


Although they may not he counted as a commodity audience, demographic groups other than women in the age range of eighteen to forty-nine may he interested in soap opera as an art form. The common word for those viewers who are overly invested emotionally in soap operas is fans, and according to Michael Kape, the level of affective investment differentiates the fan from the ordinary viewer. (Very few soap fans are as extreme as, say, the one who stalked soap star Andrea Evans and forced her to leave One Life to Live.) Kape makes a distinction between fans who merely have an emotional investment and the readers of Soap Opera Now, whom he sees as better educated and more discriminating. But not everyone agrees with this distinction. Many academics believe that the audience/fan distinction has been too sharply drawn, and they now feel that viewers may be deeply emotionally involved in soaps and, at the same time, may be critical of them.


If fans have been given bad press, perhaps too sharply setting them oft from other viewers, then one group of viewers presents a particularly interesting case: gay men. Gay men are known to be more devoted fans of soap operas than straight men. Since many gay fans are not forthcoming about their sexual identities, this is an impossible audience to study statistically. Yet Michael Kape believes that the networks are aware of their presence, and that they will do more to cultivate this audience in the future. According to Sean Griffin of the University of Southern California, who has researched among gay male fans of All My Children, the show's producers are aware of this audience, or hoped to increase its size by creating the openly gay male character, Michael Delaney.


Network recognition of the gay male fans is only part of the reason why this alternative group may be of interest to students of soap operas. Gay male viewers, like African American women viewers, raise the question whether different audiences receive different messages from the same programs; that is, whether or not they constitute interpretive communities that differ from the assumed eighteen- to forty-nine-year-old housewife audience. The experts I interviewed disagree about whether gay men create different meanings from soaps than other audiences. Michael Kape does not believe that gay men respond differently from other groups. He says that if you look at the origins of soap opera as a form that relies heavily on emotional response, you will discover that "people are people," that sexuality ultimately does not affect responses to powerful soap opera dramatics. Sean Griffin, on the other hand, says that it does. His interviews with gay male fans of soaps from the Internet news group "rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc" led him to the conclusion that gay men had a fundamentally different response from other viewers to the introduction, for example, of the gay character Michael Delaney (played by Chris Bruno) on All My Children. According to Griffin, however, the responses of gay men are not uniform, and some conform to those of women and straight men. Some gay men, for instance, agree with some straight viewers that actor Chris Bruno is perfectly believable; other gay men find that the actor, who has declared that he is straight, is uncomfortable in the role. (There are straight fans who share this view too.) Griffin says that "Gay men seem more often to do a 'double reading'. While they remain completely engrossed in the story lines and characters, they also see the whole thing through the eyes of ‘camp'."


Griffin's research found that the gay culture's investment in the diva phenomenon (as explored in The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and The Mystery of Desire by Wayne Koestenbaum) factors into the pleasure of some gay male fans. Griffin makes the comparison of certain gay men who are staunch defenders of Erica Kane with those who are tired of her snotty egotism. Griffin also finds that gay men generally have a greater sense of whimsy or irony with regards to soaps, because they know that they are not the networks' intended audience. He also believes that the ability to read the small clues or social signs that help gay men identify one another in an often hostile society may help them in reading where soap story lines are going (in other words, which two characters are being set up for a romance, or that a character has been limping although others ignore it).


Lastly, gay men obviously like looking at handsome male actors. Here, it is hard to differentiate between how straight women and gay men appreciate the show. In the online discussions of soap opera Web sites on the Internet, Tad Martin was usually spoken for by the female fans, while Pierce Riley (at least when played by Jim Fitzpatrick) was championed by gay men. When asked why this research is important, Griffin replied, "Well, my main interest (other than I am a gay male myself who loves soaps!) is how gay male fans challenge the often rigid ideas about how who the viewers of soaps are and how they read these things." If this is true, then the title of this article, "Different Soaps for Different Folks," is a lot more complex than it seems. It is not so much a question of say, Generations being targeted at black viewers and The Bold and the Beautiful at whites. The issue is really that different audiences seem to make different meanings out of the same soaps.

A great day on ABC! (Should we be optimistic?)

I am not a regular ABC watcher anymore, and I also usually refrain from commenting on current shows/stories per se.

But the Monday 12/29/2008 ABC shows were, in large measure, perfect soap confections...enough that even this lapsed viewer might tune in tomorrow...which, after all, (per J. Bernard Jones) is the point.

Of the three ABC shows, All My Children was the weakest. However, a trio of villains has energized this show and restored some rooting value. David Hayward is just dastardly, but Vincent Irizarry is a revelation. Unlike his flopped character (David Chow on Y&R), Hayward has an unapologetic agenda. He wants to claim his grand-daughter, and 'avenge' Babe's death. The character's throughline is fairly clear. Amanda...well, I know her troubled background, and Chrisell Stause plays just the right note of ambivalence and guilt to make her deeds more interesting. Melissa Claire Egan plays her psycho with such a powerful vulnerability and childishness, and again (from her dead brother Richie) we understand that there are likely dark roots that explain her behavior. The big thing is that when any of these three are on the screen, they captivate and keep the show interesting.

Better was One Life to Live, which just seemed like payoff city. Asa's video-from-the-dead, revealing both his connection to David Vickers and his challenge to his sons to come out on top. The unrivalled Tuc Watkins, playing just the right amount of winking as a 'reformed' (and Buddhist) David Chow returns to town. Payoff that Viki and Charlie found out about Dorian's role in their previous undoing. Payoff that Dorian is trying to high-tail it out of town. Payoff that Marty is getting Todd right where she wants him. I literally could not wait to see the next chapter...and it helped that a lot of the characters on the canvas are those I would recognize from decades past.

And, shockingly to me, best was General Hospital. Yup. Start with the mob that everyone hates. Except Jason and Sonny had a heartfelt scene, remembering that it was Michael's birthday, and remembering their next rivalry. The delightful chemistry between Jax and Carly continues to add an element of romance to a show that often forgets the importance of this element. SpinMax...who can eat the show...were much fun, and I enjoyed Bradford Anderson's romantic fantasy, as a debonair young man dancing with his Maxie. But, of course, everything Scorpio-Drake was perfection...from the vows, the toasts, the flashbacks, the dyadic conversations on the edges of the dance floor. For one episode, GH reclaimed all that it had won this summer on (the cancelled?) Night Shift II...and restored hope that the "mothership" could again rediscover its heart.

It seemed that these episodes are being scripted for people like me...lapsed viewers who are home during the holiday "break", and who might be enticed to keep watching. This strategy can work, too. As long as ABC doesn't do a bait-and-switch and return to the usual dreck. Might the network be rediscovering that heart, history, engaging villains and innocents, and payoff all work together to make a show watchable?

I'm always encouraged by these flashes of greatness, because they show me the potential is still there. The trick is to make it more regular and consistent.

What? OLTL is hot, but no ratings bump?

Week to week writing DOES NOT AFFECT THE RATINGS in a meaningful way. Yes, we may see dips and valleys of .1 or .2...but those are trivial. Those are simple random variations around the moving average. This larger trend, of course, is decline and death.

The best analogy I can give is in the muscle strength of an adult from the age of 50 to 100. NO MATTER WHAT THAT PERSON DOES, there will be steady decline and descent in muscle THAT CANNOT BE PREVENTED. Now, there may be week to week fluctuations in strength. "I walked more this week...so I'm a little stronger". That is true! And if the person really works on the muscle, there may even be growth and maintenance. But, in the long haul, the muscle is going to continue to decline and decline and decline. This is called the "inevitability of aging", which is defined as "universal, progressive, deleterious, and irreversible". Hmmmm...that sounds a lot like the ratings trends, doesn't it?

So, how to bring this back on topic? Well, personally, I think the excellence of a Carlivati, and powerful returns like Tina and Marty CAN make a difference...but not in the short run. What you need is a year (actually, they used to say, in the 70s and earlier, five years) of sustained quality to build an audience. I remember John Conboy said that repeatedly about Y&R in the 70s: Five years was the minimum needed for audience building.

Who thinks ABC has five years of patience and five years of budget to let Carlivati work his magic? Who thinks Carlivati has the energy and creativity to sustain five great years? (He may. Many have been complaining that he is reheating the past, rather than creating something new, but he is also trying to honor the 40th anniversary...so he needs some latitude to do this homage AND rebuild the classic base, pace and face of OLTL).

Can you tell it drives me nuts when people expect instant payoffs from stunt casting and the like? WHAT I WOULD EXPECT is (a) a slower rate of decline for OLTL than other shows, and possibly (a gradual 0.2 HH points per year, maybe) increase in the moving average IF ABC/OLTL commits to a five-year plan. (I'm not so sure about the gain, since the whole TV and soap enterprise is in decline...so it is hard to fight the overall contextual trend).

I realize this will never happen. But when we look for meaningful week-by-week variations, we simply are persisting in the face of the fact that these variations are not meaningful.