What J. Bernard Jones Started (Part 3)

Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. The original piece that served as inspiration is here.

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Part 3. Hope? Despair? Both?

Let me start with full disclosure. I am ardent soap fan. In my life, I have been a regular viewer of Ryan's Hope, Loving, All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital, Days of Our Lives (briefly), Search for Tomorrow (briefly), Bold and the Beautiful, and the Young and the Restless. Only the last two are still on my DVR (for a lot of reasons) and have really had my attention since the mid-late 1980s, but I have been ridiculously smitten with this genre since I remember watching TV.

In my dream world, Soapnet would show daytime programs all day long, including a healthy dose of classics. In my dream world, SOD or SOW would be more like "Vanity Fair"--deep, probing, long, analytical articles with perspective. (They would also have people in addition to Eric Braeden on the cover). In my dream world, too, Phoebe Tyler and Myrtle Fargate would both still be alive and sparring over Langley Wallingford. But sometimes, it is more adaptive to let go, and acknowledge reality.

I have been pretty consistent in the last little while, though, about my assumption that, on the current course (important caveat), daytime drama will soon end. I base that assumption (like many of us) on the exponentially shrinking numbers, coupled with the concomitant budget cuts and production decisions that then lead to impoverished content. This latter element, I believe, squanders the goodwill of long-time fans for shows that have been a long part of their lives.

I wish it were not so! In my last post, I tried (indirectly) to explain why it is so important to me to be clear-eyed about this genre. Anticipatory socialization. I have to get ready for the end. It is a defensive posture. Realizing that makes me seem like a Revelations-Armageddon fundamentalist, I apologize....but I really do fear for a Soaps Apocalypse.

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So, one of the themes in Jones' blog post, if I may again paraphrase (badly) is that -- judged against what is happening across the broadcast networks (this week's NBC Jay Leno announcement being a perfect example), things may not be that bad for the soaps.

I don't agree. (I wish I did).

It used to be that daytime was profitable enough that it actually helped to subsidize primetime. One could imagine that these days, maybe turnabout would be fair play. The problem is that primetime is bankrupt. There is no money.

In industries throughout America, there are no longer sufficient reserves to "nurture" fledgling or foundering divisions. It is, sadly, time to cut out what can no longer be supported.

So, as the networks look at what costs to shed, they must remove unprofitable albatrosses. If the current economic climate--coupled with shrinking viewership--continue, there is simply no way to PAY for daytime. The hatchet-people will look at these five-day-a-week niche shows and say "uh uh...we can do talk shows".

Because I believe the networks are trying to get out of the broadcast business (by which I mean: abandon the local affiliates, and become cable-only outlets with reduced schedules, from which they retain a higher proportion of profits, and receive subsidization from cable licensing fees), there is a need for a smaller, cheaper footprint.

If you accept my premise that there is no money, there is actually a fate worse than cancellation. It is disembowelling these shows--cutting casts, cutting sets, cutting pay (thereby killing morale). We actually see this latter process happening right now...and it ain't pretty.

That said, I truly am hopeful and optimistic in the long run.

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First, I think the Leno experiment really should beget a "Young and Restless" experiment. What I would do...and commit to for a 24-month period...is to run the first-run Y&R episode on CBS every night at the start of primetime (e.g., 8 pm on the east coast). I would continue to broadcast it the next day at 11 am or 12:30 pm or whatever it is in the local market. But the premiere of each episode would be in primetime.

As I have blogged elsewhere, this and similar timeslots have been effective for soaps in other countries. It would have NO incremental cost for CBS. It could ONLY increase both live-views (good for ad dollars) and total viewership for Y&R. It would be a version of the Leno-move.

Of course, I know this will never happen...mostly because of the misogyny and anti-daytime stance of a lot of primetime programmers. They want "hip, edgy, youth-skewing". Okay. Because that is working so well for them....

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So, let's take the more apocalyptic view. Every single daytime soap is dead by 2016.

I will mourn, to be sure.

But I think the serial format itself is fairly secure. It goes through peaks (Dallas, Dynasty, 90210 the first, the early seasons of Lost, Heroes, and 24) and it goes through valleys (the latter seasons of all of the above shows). It could be argued that HBO and Showtime's biggest successes have been with dramas with a serial structure. Even the big cable critical hits these days (say Mad Men, Breaking Bad) are dramatic serials.

They are also reinventions. Most of the shows I have mentioned above are not really melodramas, and they're not really female-focused. But that is okay. Those are thematic emphases that worked for the housewives of the 1950s and 1960s...but that entity really doesn't exist in large measure anymore.

The reinvention of the serial as shorter, more limited, more gender-neutral...this simply reflects adaptation ('evolution') to the modern audience. Some of those shows are just terrific. And, by not having 70-year lifespans, they dazzle with "bright shining moments", and then we move on. The Sopranos or Deadwood or Six Feet Under (or, now, True Blood) will linger for many of us as a time of greatness, in part because they knew when to leave the stage. Even the still-marvellous ER...which has had a looooooong run...manages to leave with dignity intact...still seeming like a fairly strong version of itself.

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But what about Erica and Marlena and Luke and Laura and Victor and Nikki and Kim and Bob and all these beautiful, iconic "people" with whom we shared every day for so many years?

Well, beyond saying goodbye, it sure would be nice to say goodbye with our heads up...with planned endings on a high note. There is a seedling of hope that life could continue for some of them.

(For me, Soapnet's Night Shift II was just the most beautiful little gem. I wish it had rated better. I'd love to see that used on the broadcast networks, and serve as the model for the next generation of our daytime soaps).

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The dramatic serial will live on, clearly, well past all of us. The adaptive response from all of us, in my opinion, is to (a) celebrate the past, (b) treasure what we still have, and focus on the positives of our beloved genre in its twilight years, and (c) enthusiastically embrace the evolution. Primetime serials, re-inventions of daytime shows as shorter-arc telenovelas, internet soaps....so much hope! Sometimes, you need to clear the forest to restore it to health.

What J. Bernard Jones Started (Part 2)

(Part 1 is here, Part 3 is here, and the source article that inspired this post is here. And thanks to Sound and Fury for the shoutout!).

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Part 2. Anticipatory Socialization and Illusory Control.

In his excellent "Soap on a Rope" blog entry, J. Bernard Jones wonders:

Once a particular narrative has taken hold in the minds of fans it can be hell trying to ask folk to consider a slightly different view. Nonetheless, I think it's worth a try.

I am willing to admit that I could be completely wrong. However, I am reminded of something that my late mother used to say all the time: when you speak things into existence, they are liable to come true. Another way of saying it is "be careful what you wish for..."

Do the fans want Soap Opera do disappear? No, I do not believe we do. But there is something a little off in the incessant negativity in some quarters about the possibility/probability of it all, as if some fans are all but waiting for the final episode of General Hospital or the last fade out of Y&R to say, "See, we told you so! Nobody listened to us! If they had paid attention to the fans this genre would have been saved! We're the fans! We know everything there is to know about this genre and if the idiots in charge had only listened, we would still have love in the afternoon!"

This is powerful stuff. You need not look very far to see the incredible negativism in most quarters regarding soaps. Where does it come from?

I think there are two main sources (beyond group-think...which is really an important factor on internet message boards and has personally influenced me; when bright, articulate people make passionate and persuasive arguments, and there is widespread agreement...it is hard not to follow along): anticipatory socialization and illusory control.

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Let's start with the definitions.

Per Wikipedia:

Anticipatory socialization: Anticipatory socialization refers to the processes of socialization in which a person "rehearses" for future positions, occupations, and social relationships.

A typical example cited here is that of an older married woman who experiences the death of many of her friends' husbands. Even though her husband is still living, she knows his time is likely to come too...and she, like her friends, will be an older single woman. So, in her mind, in small subtle ways, often unconsciously, she starts rehearsing for life without him. She makes sure she knows where the paperwork is. She makes sure she has a credit card in her own name. She even thinks, in her daydreams, sometimes, about how she will handle parties and responsibilities, etc, when he is gone.

This is the process, it is said, that often makes widowhood relatively easier for older women than for younger women. For younger women, it is a total shock...they didn't expect it! But for older women, while still sad and life-altering, the shock is blunted by expectation. (I'm not being sexist here. This is mostly a female phenomenon since, on average, men do not expect to outlive their wives. I'm also not being homophobic; this is pretty much a unique phenomenon of heterosexual marriages). There are other times when this kind of socialization occurs, as in when a loved one is passing from a long, protracted terminal illness. Or when a teenager practices, in their own mind, for adult roles.

Illusory control: the tendency for human beings to believe they can control, or at least influence, outcomes that they demonstrably have no influence over.

The same source has this nice illustration:

One simple form of this fallacy is found in casinos: when rolling dice in craps, it has been shown that people tend to throw harder for high numbers and softer for low numbers. Under some circumstances, experimental subjects have been induced to believe that they could affect the outcome of a purely random coin toss. Subjects who guessed a series of coin tosses more successfully began to believe that they were actually better guessers, and believed that their guessing performance would be less accurate if they were distracted.

An illusion of control over certain external events could be a basis for belief in psychokinesis.

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Okay, I think you know where I am going here.

I do not think the animus that many of us have encountered about the soap genre is simply function-less, free form negativism. I think that what we are seeing are typical, normal, healthy emotional responses to a "terminal condition". It doesn't surprise us that both anticipatory socialization and illusory control are often discussed in the context of "dealing with death". It is all about going through grieving steps.

This anger is a "rage, rage against the dying of the light". We talk (and talk and talk) about the soap-less days to come, in part, because it will blunt the pain when that day (soon) comes. This is not being done with relish or pleasure. Instead, it is like bracing for a blow. Moreover, for lovers of the soap genre, we need to do it.

Take Another World for example. The people who were most hurt by that cancellation were those who felt it could be avoided. The protesters, the people who blamed the network and TPTB. When the show was cancelled, some even boycotted NBC. The anger was a roaring fire in them. That is because they had not, in advance, accepted the inevitability of the outcome.

I contrast this with the current fan animus about Guiding Light. The writing is so UTTERLY on the wall, it might as well be hieroglyphs. But, honestly, I think the fan-bashing of Ellen Wheeler and the show is ultimately a way of focusing a diffuse anger about the myriad factors that brought us to this point. In other words, Ellen is a convenient target. GL dropped to the near-bottom of the soap rankings in the EIGHTIES. Ellen was still playing Marley when that happened. Where GL is today is only, in SMALL measure, her fault.

So why all the rage? First, for mental preparation.

But second, to give the illusion of control.

I get my angriest comments and emails when I write about the idea that "no matter what, no matter who was creatively in charge, soaps would still be where they are today." I have written, on a soap board, that "Irna Phillips and Bill Bell and Douglas Marland could come back from the dead, and still the soaps would be in their current state". People HATE when I say that. Because it implies that broad a set of social forces is responsible for the state of daytime...not creative and corporate malfeasance.

The thing is, if you look at my last post, daytime really is going where all of US broadcast TV is going. This is NOT just about daytime.

But people--especially we Americans--have a very very hard time with concepts like "inevitability", "uncontrollable", etc. The "blame TIIC" theme that is across the board is a very American reaction to the current daytime situation. The must be someone to blame. There must be a way to fix it. There must be hope and optimism that if only a "savior" came along, daytime could be fixed.

I don't think so...I really don't. Zoot suits are gone, except as nostalgia items. So are genuine-article 1960s Thunderbirds. So are eight track cassettes. Each of these had their day. There is no one to blame...this is the march of time and the evolution of fashion, fad, and technology.

Who killed Cock Robin? (err...I mean daytime). All of us.

What J. Bernard Jones Started (Part I)

(Part 2 is here; Part 3 is here).

Daytime Confidential's J. Bernard Jones has written the kind of detailed, analytic, insightful, contrarian essay about daytime's survival that simply begs rereading and rereading.

The crux of this post is this picture. It puts daytime and primetime US network ratings on a common scale, and then compares them for the past 50+ years. As you can see, a key point of J. Bernard's is absolutely correct: We must not over-focus on daytime ratings decline. The daytime decline is clearly part of a much larger phenomenon. In this picture, daytime (green) and primetime (blue) have been in a completely overlapping death spiral since at least the 1980s! I'll return to this picture again below.



I don't do Mr. Jones justice by paraphrasing him, but that won't stop me. Basically, he challenges all of us nattering nabobs of negativism who keep proclaiming the imminent end of daytime soaps. Beyond wondering if we're guided by a kind of Schadenfreude (putting it "out there in the universe" to make it true), he suggests that an exclusive focus on daytime ratings ignores the broader context of what is happening to the networks in general. He reminds us that the whole enterprise of network TV is doing badly, so daytime may be doing relatively okay. Moreover, daytime delivers a reliable (if shrinking) niche demographic that no alternative format can deliver. Every attempt to replace soaps, he points out, has yielded an even less successful alternative. Finally, he suggests that retreat only exacerbates the decline of daytime. NBC is in the trouble it is in, he suggests, because it has systematically turned its back and squandered its audience.

His is an essay of such richness and complexity, it really demands careful consideration. I would like to do that over the next 3 blog posts.

In Part 1 (this part), I'm going to examine his thesis that daytime is not the only thing falling. I've been struggling to get a bigger handle on just how much things ARE falling everwhere in the old, advertiser supported media.

In Part 2, I want to consider WHY people (including me) are so intent on proclaiming that "the sky is falling". It is an ardent "death pool" out there on the internet boards (and in the mainstream media, as J. Bernard proclaims). But why? What function does it serve?

In Part 3, I hope to address why -- as much as I love his blog entry-- I think J. Bernard is wrong. The sky IS falling. Daytime is just about done. At the same time, I agree with him...this is just the selection pressure that will give rise to the evolution.

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Part 1. On the ubiquity of the decline.

It really is quite striking. J. Bernard is right. Daytime ratings are not the only things falling.

TVBythenumbers has this useful set of data and illustrations:



So it is clear: The audience for TV is actually growing...but it is also GOING: to cable.

Going further back, you'll see something familiar: The same "inverted U" that we see for daytime. US network ratings have been in freefall for a very long time.



Now, since I have the EXACT same data period for soaps, I really want to find a way to compare the two set of ratings. In order to do this, what I need to do is figure out how to put the ratings for daytime into the same "metric" (range of values) as these primetime figures.

To accomplish that, I used a process called 'standardization'. I can explain this more for those who want it, but for now, suffice it to say that I took the daytime average and the primetime average, and (a) I averaged across all daytime shows, (b) I I averaged across all primetime networks, and (c) I converted them into something called T-scores (scores that have an average of 50 and a standard deviation of 10). I return now to the figure I posted at the top of this blog entry, which shows you what happens.


It appears J. Bernard has a point! Look at the period since the early 1990s. The slope of the decline is IDENTICAL for primetime (blue) and daytime (green)!

Juxtaposing the two sets of numbers adds another fascinating insight. Daytime (green) was on the leading edge of the decline, showing clear evidence of decline for the last 3-4 decades. Primetime (blue), in contrast, was continuing to build through the late 70s. But then, when decline set in...the trajectory quickly emulated that of daytime. The amazing lockstep decline of the two figures is...breathtaking!

So, yes, daytime is not alone. In my words: "The sky is falling, but not just over the daypart".

I'll close this post by noting that a lot of old media are going through virtually identical trajectories. It is not just daytime, and that is worth noting. The underlying sociological phenomenon is one we really need to understand better. The figure above from TVBytheNumbers suggests we can understand much of the network decline as "loss to cable". But a similar fractionation and movement to new media seems to be causing a ubiquitous loss to traditional methods of dissemination.

There are newspapers:



There is the recording industry:



Even Wimbledon viewership follows the trend:



So, when your friends tell you "Soaps are sinking because the quality sucks", can you PLEASE tell them it's more complicated than that! J. Bernard told us so, and he is right.