Soap opera audience keeps shrinking

I don't know anyone under 60 that watches soap operas anymore. Boomer problems.

The Old and the Terminal

The Young and the Restless Leg Syndrome.

and Pinched Sphincter Syndrome has claimed many.

And to think.... DL started out as all about the soaps.

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The network soaps are in an awful position. Network TV isn't what it used to be, which means numbers are way down, especially in daytime. Then they have the issue of trying to hold on to what audience they have, so it stifles creativity and new types of stories.

The shows are trying to hold on to a dying audience that is not repopulating itself with younger viewers. And they are not going to get younger viewers because Tik Tok and Youtube are the new soap operas.

Days of our Lives going to streaming had a great opportunity to reinvent and revitalize itself, but the truth of the matter is Days really hasn't broken out of the network model. It's still telling network type stories.

It's sad about these shows, but there is not a lot left for them to do to bring in a new audience. 50+ year old Steve Burton may bring back a few lapsed viewers, but it's not going to be enough to make a difference.

The Deadline article confirms what has been said on DL for years, the soaps are in fact only popular with older viewers...

[italics]The average age of the daytime viewers may have something to do with it. While GH remains the youngest skewing daytime drama at 68.1, all three of the soaps have seen their boomer fans age up this season versus last year. The GH average viewer age is up 4 percent from 65.6 to 68.1; Y&R is up 1 percent from 69.6 to 68.7, and B&B is up 2 percent from 68.2 to 69.4.[/italics]

I think they could have flourished - or at least done better - if they'd gone to 30 minutes.

There's always novelas en Español! Their men have improved in the past few years. Here's one of the hottest! Americans don't know he got hacked and dick pics circulated, and he was then made the #1 masturbating piñata in all Mexico. ¡Ignorant gringos!

Are they still blaming it on OJ Simpson?

The UK has three soaps that still run and have for decades: Coronation Street, Emmerdale and EastEnders. But they're thirty minutes and air early evening.

The demographic thing has to be part of it, but the bigger part is the story telling. If it doesn't entertain, people don't watch. It's pretty simple. Soaps here have one big problem: they keep recycling the same old hacks to work on them. No one seems to fail out of the business, just onward to another show, where they impose the same old what little they know. It's hard to make that sustainable when you air five days a week. In the early days, soaps were simple productions about people and their reactions and actions driven by the people around them. In the 80s they moved away from that and started trying to steal from network TV and sometimes film. Sometimes it worked, but overall, soaps are have been trying to be something they're not for a couple of decades now and it's driving the audiences to give up.

R12 Yes, they all started to have big business stories that tried to steal from Dallas/Dynasty.

Then they started to all rub crime/mafia stories to copy from the Sopranos.

And while it's always good to have veterans and people you recognize, they don't rotate stories very well. B&B has been doing the same story for 30 years, and Y&R is neither young nor restless. It's repeating a Jack/Diane/Nikki story from the 90s.

A good writer would know how to better balance that and add new interest and new growth, but they never do anything like that any more. They wonder why people aren't excited to watch so and so's seventy-fifth marriage to the same person.

Traditional TV is closer to complete death than people think. In the near future, TV manufacturers will just have their own proprietary smart service that runs an app store for streaming services on your TV or they'll team up with Roku/Amazon to provide the OS.

As of about a week ago, I haven't watched The Young & the Restless, as I had been doing since Mark Grossman took over as Adam. Nikki's overdone drinking/not drinking story annoys me. The thought that Colleen Zenk might only be temporary pisses me off. The business stories are the worst part of it, though. I gave up watching Guiding Light in the early '90s because of the endless dicking around about who owns Spaulding. The fact that Janice Ferri retired recently gives me room to believe the show isn't going to be getting any better.

Y&R was never my show. I was firmly planted in the P&G/Marvelous Midwestern stories. I'd given up on those, though, too, after Luke and Noah's non kiss on that fateful Christmas episode. Occasionally, I'd FF through, stopping at Luke and Reid scenes, but those were just as hobbled as the Nuke storyline.

Adam mainly exists in Y&R's business mishegas now, and the silly Nick-Sally-Adam triangle. I don't know if I will ever go back to watching Y&R.

WE MUST HAVE OUR STORIES!

Soaps is how I found DL. I was googling Tony Geary.

R3, ha! My favorite was All My Children of the Corn.

Y&R and B&B are just so flat. GH is OK but a shadow of its former self.

No one wants to see things like people wearing masks to fake being other people.

Soaps used to know how to show that spunky young slut who wanted to make the town hers. It may be 2024 and not 1974 or 1984 but that story should and can still be told.....but seldom is.

[quote] Soaps were simple productions about people and their reactions and actions driven by the people around them.

It's what it should be again - cheaper for the networks, rewarding for the audience. No one wants the bomb in the bassinet, not all the time, anyway.

Someone at Deadline must be related to Eden McCoy. This is the third article in a week that specifically name checks her.

[quote] Traditional TV is closer to complete death than people think.

Over the air TV is all but dead. In a few more years it will probably be one channel that plays news and emergency alert kinds of things for every area, and then the mesothelioma channels.

All the existing networks will go to streaming.

R20 I noticed that too. Every time she's scratched her ass in the last 3 months someone has been there to write about it.

MARY!

It's only a matter of time before ABC cancels GH. Strange that soaps are down to three network shows. As a kid I remember there were like 10 options, daily.

In 1969-1970 season, there were 19 daytime soaps on the three networks.

After 20 years on the radio, soaps were able to transition to television in the 1950s.

Why can't they transition to the Internet?

For most soap fans, they inherited the tradition from their mothers and grandmothers. If they didn't inherit the tradition, they got hooked on some young romance or some scheming vixen causing trouble. Now, when you look at the shows they're all revolving around 60 and 70 year olds and a young story is 40 years olds. The soaps can't help that people are leaving network TV, but they could have built a new generation of characters.

I was really surprised at how little changed when DAYS went from NBC to Peacock.

Now that we're here, I honestly don't like the future.

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I was devoted to the Procter & Gamble CBS soaps from childhood to middle age. Never watched NBC at all. Tried All My Children briefly in the 80s but it was easy to give up. Absolutely hate the dull, repetitive Bill Bell-created soaps, so badly acted and written, I can’t believe they’re the last ones left.

[quote] I can’t believe they’re the last ones left.

Me neither.

I think honestly Y&R is still popular because it's on the closest to lunchtime. All the people at the nursing homes etc watch it on lunch break.

R31, I always think that too. However, are there any Nielsen boxes in nursing homes or office break rooms?

Aren’t they still tallying ratings by the old school Nielsen boxes and three day later DVR viewing?

I think Lynette Rice has written about soaps for many years.

R8, I think you misquoted the numbers (not that it really matters).

Soap operas still exist. They star “real people” now. The Kardashians and Real Housewives are the same audience daytime soaps milked for decades.

A scripted never ending serial has no place in today’s world. A stranger can turn on one episode of Real Housewives and learn everything they need to know in one episode. No need to learn decades worth of backstories or forty different characters. Manufactured drama served up cheaply and efficiently. And the ladies market themselves through social media. No need to buy a digest-sized booklet at the supermarket checkout. Efficient, efficient, efficient.

Hi Andy/R135

R36 huh?

Oh, Andy Cohen. Sorry, the number threw me off.