critical observations about soap operas, past present, and future...

that giant sucking noise...

In 1981, daytime soaps began a transformation that over the past twenty-five years has profoundly changed the genre. At first glance, the process was set in motion by the wedding of General Hospital's Luke and Laura. But the real story began back in 1978 when General Hospital was on the verge of cancellation.

The numbers back then tell only part of the story. As the World Turns was at the top of the ratings, as it had been for almost 20 years, with a Nielsen rating of 8.6 (households). (ATWTwas tied for households with Another World, but held the edge in the number of viewers.) The lowest rated show was brand-new: For Richer, For Poorer at 3.9. General Hospital was actually in the middle of the pack: 7.0, tied with Ryan's Hope, which remained on the air until 1989. Even more confusing: the five shows below GH also remained on the air for several more years, including Days of Our Lives, which still airs on NBC (although 2009 is rumored to be its last year); so why was General Hospital in such trouble? As I was falling asleep one night, it came to me like a smack on the forehead: the time slot; GH was losing badly to its competition, AW and Guiding Light, both of which overlapped with GH.

Looking at today's soap opera ratings, where, with the exception of the top-rated Young and Restless, a fraction of a percentage point often separates the middle five shows, canceling a show because it was losing its time slot to the competition seems positively quaint. But there it was. So, veteran television producer, Gloria Monty, was called in to fix things. And fix them she did (For a full account of Monty's transformation of General Hospital, see Robert LaGuardia's Soap World pp 178-85). Within two years, GH was at the tops of the ratings, with a Nielsen rating of 9.9, among them six million teenaged girls (Soap World, pp 183).

Attracting younger viewers had been a concern throughout 1970s (Harding Lemay: Eight Years in Another World) In fact, soap opera viewership had actually peaked in 1963-64, whenATWT posted a 15.4. More women in the workforce left fewer at home to introduce their children to the pleasure of soaps, as my mother had. With the exception of the short-livedNever Too Young (1965-66) the first soap opera created specifically to appeal to young people was All My Children, a fact reflected in the legions of college students who gathered in lounges to follow the travails of young lovers Phil and Tara. But AMC's creator, Agnes Nixon, had carefully maintained soaps' storytelling convention of evolving multi-generational characters and relationships in never-ending flux. So, while students watched, so did their mothers and grandmothers.

But, there was no denying the force of nature that was General Hospital back in the day. Even now, there are soap opera observers who look back on the 80s as soaps' apex, and believe that declining viewership didn't begin in earnest until the 1990s when the networks began losing their monopoly to expanded cable availability. While it may have seemed that way at the time, the numbers suggest otherwise: GH highest yearly ratings actually came the year before the wedding. The 1980-81 season, GH had a 11.4; 1981-82 (which included the wedding), the number dropped slightly to 11.2. By 1987-88, GH was tied with Y&R for households, 8.1, but had more viewers. The next year, GH dropped to 7.5; Y&R retained its 8.1, taking over the top spot it has held it ever since.

But something else happened in the wake of "Luke and Laura." When Gloria Monty asked Anthony Geary to join the cast as Luke Spenser, he famously said, "I hate soap opera." To which Monty replied, "Honey, so do I. I want you to help me change all that." And they did; even before the wedding spectacle, other shows began to emulate what Gloria Monty had done. And that's when the theory of unintended consequences began to rear its ugly head.

Because Monty really had changed soaps; critic, and Red Room member, Patrick Erwin sums up the feelings of many when he said, "Gloria Monty did wonderful work when she changedGH and updated the look and feel of the show, but that change irrevocably broke the genre away from what I think made it special: everyday people leading extraordinary lives." (response to "OJ Didn't Do It, Kill Soaps That Is," Savoring Soaps 21 September 2007.) My mother certainly noticed the difference when As the World Turns jumped on the bandwagon in 1981. She hated what she was seeing, and what she wasn't. No more old Oakdale friends like Nancy and Chris Hughes, who were pushed to the side as Tom and Margo took to the road chasing Mr. Big, (ATWT's version of GH's Ice Princess story that kept Luke and Laura on the road and out of Port Charles).

Eventually, my mother had had enough and abandoned the show she had watched and loved for over 25 years. She wasn't alone. From a pre-GH high of 8.6 in 1977-78, by 1984-85, ATWTwas down to 7.1, and it's been all downhill since. Nor was ATWT alone in audience erosion: viewership for all soaps fell in those years. And the slide continued, because even when Doug Marland came on board as headwriter in 1984 and began to right the ship, my mother refused to come back, along with who knows how many other alienated viewers. But my mother didn't abandon soaps altogether, remaining faithful to Guiding Light until her death in 1991. She started with GL when it was 15-minutes, and stuck with it through its expansion to 30-minutes, then to a full hour, and transformation from black-and-white to color. I often wonder how long she would have endured this latest incarnation.

4 June 2008