Friday, April 17, 2009

FLASHBACK: Soaps Maturing in Romantic Way 1986

DAYTIME SOAPS MATURING IN ROMANTIC WAY

By Jan DeKnock
Chicago Tribune
July 13, 1986

The summer of '86 is a time of real transition for daytime soap operas.

On the way out are the spy sagas, treasure hunts and sci-fi escapades that have dominated most of the shows for the last several years.

On the way back in are old-fashioned stories about romance--and this time, the lovers are not just the young kids.

"Every summer we're usually bombarded with teenage storylines," says Nancy M. Reichardt, a syndicated columnist who has been observing the soap opera scene for nearly a decade. "This year . . . while there's some of that happening, there aren't really a lot of front-burner teen storylines.

"Last year, for example," she says, "everything--and I do mean everything--on DAYS OF OUR LIVES was Bo and Hope, Bo and Hope. Personally, I don't mind a teenage storyline, but DAYS just carried it to extremes. I mean, here Hope is supposed to be just barely out of high school, and suddenly she's married, she's running a private detective agency, she's running around looking for Russian spies.

"But this year, I think the soaps are kind of going back to the old 'love in the afternoon' approach, and they're utilizing the people that they like to term as their 'older' actors."

Reichardt believes the trend of "action" storylines originated in response to changes in prime-time programming, including the arrival of such big-budget, high-glamour soaps as DALLAS in 1978 and DYNASTY in 1981.

"Someone noticed the success of the nighttime shows, with all their murders and car chases and expensive clothes, and said, 'Well I guess we need some of that excitement, too.' And then all of a sudden," Reichardt says, "everyone went into a James Bond binge."

What the daytime soaps lost when they went for that fast-paced, prime- time look was much of the sense of "family" that developed for viewers as they watched their favorite characters grow and evolve over the years.

But there are signs that the soaps are going back to basics, according to Brian Frons, vice president of daytime programming for NBC.

"The main thing happening now is a renewed focus on families, with each member of the family really having a love story, be they 65 or 17," he says.

"I mean, we've not changed soaps so that they're back to two people in a living room drinking coffee," Frons said. "But we're looking less for, say, 'Who's got the laser that's going to destroy the Earth?' and more for, 'How will these characters deal with problems on an emotional level?' "

What viewers also are seeing, according to Reichardt, Frons and other observers, is a backlash against the "youth craze" that was set in motion in the early '80s by the extraordinary success of ABC's GENERAL HOSPITAL, which soared to No. 1--and, most days, remains there--on the strength of what has become known as the Luke and Laura Phenomenon.

That storyline, which featured actors Tony Geary and Genie Francis (now both gone from GH) as a pair of star-crossed lovers involved in increasingly bizarre tales of international intrigue, had an immediate impact on viewers--and the competition. Suddenly, on shows from CBS' AS THE WORLD TURNS to NBC's ANOTHER WORLD to ABC's own RYAN'S HOPE, entire families of characters were put on the back burner to make way for more action-packed, teen-oriented storylines.

"At that time, there was a lot of misinterpretation about the youth movement in soap operas," says Jo Ann Emmerich, vice president of daytime programming for ABC Entertainment. "The idea of a summer story that appealed to young people was misinterpreted as a story about teenyboppers, and that's not at all what had been popular.

"Young people are like anybody--they like a universal story. A wonderful romantic story or a wonderful adventure that has romance at the core is going to be appealing to a universal audience.

"I mean, why did we see such high ratings for The Thorn Birds? It's not just because people like a story about a priest and a woman; it's that it's a wonderful, forbidden-fruit romance. And every age group was interested in it.

"And besides," Emmerich says, "Luke and Laura were not kids. She was a young woman of maybe 20 or 21, but he was obviously over 30. And though their kind of adventure story was very appealing to the young people, it was also appealing to the older people.

"Other shows copied the inanities and didn't copy the essence, which was the romance of Luke and Laura--that chemistry and that relationship."

During the height of the Luke and Laura mania, there were few shows that didn't jump on the teen-scene, cops-and-robbers bandwagon. One that resisted, notes Meredith Brown, executive editor of Soap Opera Digest (a fan-oriented magazine with a circulation of 825,000), is CBS' THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS, which during the last few years has become a consistent No. 2 behind GENERAL HOSPITAL and occasionally hits No. 1.

"YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS hasn't been a faddish soap opera," Brown said, "and it has really kept its center. It's still done in a very kind of old Hollywood way--lots of closeups, lots of long pullbacks and pauses; very glamorous."

The person largely responsible for keeping YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS on an even keel is its creator and executive producer, William J. Bell, a Chicagoan whose reputation as a soap opera master goes back 30 years, when he began writing dialogue for THE GUIDING LIGHT. (He also has had a hand in AS THE WORLD TURNS, ANOTHER WORLD and DAYS OF OUR LIVES.)

When some critics say that THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS is not just "old Hollywood," but also old-fashioned, Bell has this response:

"I deal with people, I deal with families, I deal with feelings, and if that's old-fashioned, then hallelujah.

"You can't just suddenly say, 'Well, the kids are home from school, I'm going to pander to the youth of America and hype the show.' Because you can't do that to your regular viewers--you have to keep them involved in their stories as well."

Bell and his wife, television personality Lee Phillip, are in the process of creating a new one-hour soap (Phillip also helped create YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS), which is scheduled to premiere on CBS in early 1987. The only details Bell would reveal is that the show is to be about Chicago families, with possibly some exterior scenes shot here.

"If I told you what the background was going to be for one of the families," Bell said, "two other shows would have plenty of time to start families just like them between now and then."

And competing soaps do watch--and copy--each other, according to NBC's Frons.

"Let's say GENERAL HOSPITAL does a young love story, say Luke and Laura on the run," he said. "Everybody duplicates it. And finally you have an overload. Then everybody says, 'No, none of us are going to do that any more; we all need to do something else.' So they have this vacuum until somebody figures out what the new trend is.

"A few years ago," Frons continued, "I think what we faced at NBC was a lineup that was getting old fast, because we had a larger number of women watching who were over 40 than under 40. And you don't have to be a Harvard-trained demographer to figure out that if you have nobody young watching your show, in 20 years you're going to have a big problem.

"So I think we may have gone overboard, as did the other networks. I think that's what we all did in an attempt to get the younger audience."

And it's not a coincidence, he said, that soaps are returning to a more mature viewpoint at the same time that America's largest and most sought-after group of TV viewers--the baby-boomers--is starting to show a few gray hairs.

"That baby boom group is now 22 to 40 years old," Frons says. "How can we not react to the fact that the largest group demographically in our country is starting to hit 40?"

Another factor that can't be overlooked is the ever-increasing presence of the videocassette recorder in the American home. According to A. C. Nielsen Co. figures, some 5.6 million households are now using VCRs to record daytime programs.

"The VCR is having a very positive impact," says Brown of Soap Opera Digest. "It's kept the working woman--and the working man--still interested in the soaps, years after they first got hooked on them in college.

"And let's face it," she says. "There are not that many women now who can afford to stay home all day."

ABC's Emmerich says, however, that "most of the people who are watching are still home during the day. That's our core audience."

But Brown says there's no difference in what her magazine's readers want to see, whether they watch their programs "live" or on VCRs.

"They want the romance," she says. "They don't write in and say, 'I love that spy story.' They talk about the love stories.

"As a people, we just love romantic stories, we really do. And I'm not talking about romance novels. The greatest stories that we've ever watched or listened to or read are about love--any kind of love. Family love. Romantic love."

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