As much as I think that almost anything Nuke related is a mess, I think that the show's writing has gotten substantially better in the past month, especially when compared to when it was enjoying top 3 status for what I now interpret as hype and unearned buzz.

What I think is happening is that runaway train lasted so long, that it will take a very long time (if it even happens) for anyone to hop back on the train even if the show focuses on core characters/family/romance/humor and continuing to kick to the curb secondary characters/stories that don't work. Janet/Liberty...... Did I say that out loud?

I see the ratings continuing to plummet until the show reaches its new real fan base. Many may never come back as the extended writing and departures of key characters and veteran actors may have done them in for good and they'll have to adjust to this new lower rating if the business model allows them to make money.

I suggest that Chris Goutman reach out to Martha Byrne and Larry Bryggman to see if a new focus and more faces from the past might just be enough to bring back the older fans that they perpetually put down/ignore but are the core of the ATWT audience. The show has always skewed old, so I say embrace them and they might keep some of us too as I am certain that TPTB underestimate how hip the older folks can be. I don't even mention Nuke as I want them broken up with Luke engaging in a truly old fashioned romance and not the toxic mess that I see.

Guillermo's Media Guillotine: Entertainment, journalism, politics, and popular culture.

http://springintoaction.typepad.com

Soap opera is all about the drama of love and sex. So far there's been plenty of talk about love for Nuke, but absolutely no action.

 

The Powers That Be at ATWT MUST be slammed against the wall for this.

Recently, I've seen several ratings lists that have include The View, which has gotten as high as number three compared to the soaps. Other day time programs are in a completely different league, like Phil, Regis, Martha and Oprah.

But don't be quick to blame ATWT or soaps in general, all day time programing is seeing losses with percentages similar to the Soaps. (Oprah even started re-broadcasting at night.) It has been suggested that fewer people are at home during the day, and folks are turning to other forms of entertainment, like the internet, cable and Tivo. Some advertisers are trying to reach those consumers who shop on-line at work.

The Soap audience is about half what it was 10 years ago. You can see that the soaps are hovering around 2,000,000 for totals, (they would like to have that number for Female 20-45.) While those numbers might get a prime-time show canceled, the alternative network programing for soaps isn't obvious. I suspect if any of these shows are canceled in the next few years they will be replaced by informercials or home-shopping programs. There is a glut of crummy game shows and dumb talk shows.

The problem with gearing your show toward an older audience is that you're going to loose a predictable amount of viewers regardless of the quality of your show. An older audience will die sooner than if your viewers are younger. And if you're selling soap, you want to target younger viewers who have yet to become loyal to a brand.

The line writing on ATWT has improved. The plots are worse. But you don't measure a soap by the believability of a plot or even the likability of a plot, quite the opposite. This is the soap directive: you want your audience to be angry at the manipulative women, to feel superior to the stupid men and wrench their hankies over the martyrs. A good way to measure that is to read the chat rooms. If people go on about how selfish and confused Noah is and how pathetic and deserving Luke is -the writers have hit a bulls-eye, no matter how dumb the plot. Soaps are the feminine version of Pro-wrestling.

Where ATWT is getting it wrong is that they are taking it safe. The head writers and producers are fairly incompetent. (If they were more talented, they would be writing for Film and prime-time.) They are taking it safe because they meet the directive and stop there. What happens then is they can keep the same audience, while never gaining new viewers. At the bottom of the ratings, they had nothing to lose by introducing a gay character. But they botched Nukes unexpected success when they caved to pressure from the AFA.

Taking a cue from Prime-time soaps, ATWT has paced-up their plots to the point where the show is driven by plot alone. While fast pacing can be exciting like a music video and attractive to a younger audience, the writers don't have the finesse to carry it off. Compare Desperate Housewives. DH is a fast paced, plot driven, Prime time, soap. However, the plot is always informed by the characters. The characters become their own worse enemies and not so much a victim of their own life, but a product of their failings. What could have been more outrageous than when up-tight Bree tried to pimp her gay son in order to get her roof shingled? Or more in character?

And talking gay, an ugly fountain becomes a plot device for the new gay couple of Wisteria Lane because of how it will affect the neighbors. That's the whole plot really -the characters are the plot without missing a beat because we want to know how they will deal with the fountain. Paul Ryan would be so much more interesting if they took a cue from that. As the head of Worldwide Industries He needs an ugly fountain for everyone to decry.

A well written show using the existing characters would bring ratings up. Lucinda needs a coffee clutch where she and the women can act as a greek chorus. Lucinda could also use a new foe, she is brilliant in a fight. As noted, Agim Kaba is completely wasted. I believe there can be life after Martha Byrne and the others.

Personally, I can't stand the re-Lily because she talks from the back of her throat like someone is choking her. Luke and Noah need to interact with the straight folks, but all the characters need to mix it up more. Here's an assignment for the writers: put all the characters on playing cards, draw four cards and make up a plot that would involve those 4 -maybe you'll come up with something interesting and original and romantic.
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With the declining viewers during daytime broadcast hours, we're seeing shows taking a safer route, which is a shame. But ATWT did climb up the charts by taking a risk with a gay couple. That tells us something and I never thought their success was reliant on the gay story-line, per say.

But let's assume this:

1. the numbers are now near that point where some shows are doomed to be canceled.
2. those shows that are canceled are not going to be replaced by another soap.
3. the folks who watched the canceled soaps are soap fans and will start watching other soaps once their stories are canceled.
4. the remaining soaps stand to gain a number of new viewers who will be switching over from canceled shows.

It seems like the ratings game right now is a game of attrition. If you are able to hang in there long enough, you're bound to pick up new viewers when another show bites the dust. Which is like vultures waiting to eat vultures, really.

To Goutman's credit, he has been able to bring ATWT from the bottom of the ratings to the top three. In todays market that still remains remarkable regardless of how much of a creep I think he is.

The problem is that they see the old competition as the new competition and the new technology as the enemy. I can hear the detractors in the board room now: "Viewers would rather watch a romance movie on cable." "Tivo is directing the daytime audience away from soaps." "People can watch a few minutes of a program on the internet at work and never really become involved."

Listen, if you have a show people want to watch, none of that matters. Once an exciting soap embraces the technology they will find that "Cable viewers are choosing our show 'on demand'", "We are the number one Tivo program during workers lunch breaks." and "Our internet recaps of specific story-lines are bringing in huge ad revenues because of the iTunes subscribers."

The way that the networks have looked at the internet has been wrong from the get go. The media web pages, (magazines, newspapers and T.V. networks) are the antithesis of the streamlined effect that Google uses and what created the Google empire on the internet. Going to one of the media web pages is like having a load of cement dumped into your convertible. What is up with that? What's up with the php, and new obtrusive Microsoft programing designed not to offer a seamless experience, but to track your every mouse movement and click from now until the year 2085? The download from these sites is sluggish, the videos are more like the old out-of-sink silent movies transfered to video. People are turning away from those sites who would have been drawn in if it wasn't for the "marketing" that robs the bandwidth.

The media web-pages are unable to deliver their product to the consumer in an easy and direct manner. It used to be you only had to turn a page, you pushed a button or turned a dial and there it was: information and entertainment with a modicum of advertising all seamlessly wrapped into one package. What we find on the internet now are chaotic web pages designed by committee with infinite download time and requirements. The internet was never seen as a way to attract consumers, it was seen as a way to track, predict and corral them. Am I the only one who finds that insulting? You want my time and my money AND you want me to stand in line and fill out a form before you allow me the privilege of viewing your advertisements? I mean, that's what they ask of my browser every time I click to cbs.com or nytimes.com (one of the worst.)

Give me the good olde days, back when All In The Family would be commercially interrupted by a hairy beef-cake lathering up in the shower and the next day I couldn't fathom why smelling a bar of Irish Spring has suddenly given me an erection in the middle of the supermarket. What I'm talking about is advertisement that works not tons of tracking data that point to a trend market and other gibberish that keep paper pushers busy pushing paper.

All of television need to embrace the internet and new media and make it work with the consumer not against us. The first media to take that stance is going to be a Goliath.

Now back to the soaps.

Traditionally the soaps have NEVER been about making little old ladies feeling comfortable in their feeble homophobia. Soaps have a history of being challenging and on the forefront of sexual relations and even interracial relationships. Back in the day it seemed that mommy wanted to be titillated between doing household chores and the toddlers didn't have a clue why that dark eyed man was peeking through a window at a woman about to get boinked by the mailman. I remember reading one of my mothers bodice rippers for the first time and thinking, "this is as dirty as the stories in Blueboy, and they can sell this at the supermarket?"

And just like the fact that you could buy them at the supermarket made the Romance Novels dirtier than they were, so did the 'daytime' time slot, make soaps seem sneaky and tawdry with a "I saw it through the key hole" perspective. But soaps didn't seem to clean up their act until the 80s.

Let me say why I think it changed. In the late 1970s, groups like the AFA began attacking Prime Time programs like Soap and Hot L Baltimor, by using the fact that they were aired in prime time as a basis of their scorn. Families watched primetime and families meant kids. They tried to reason a compromise, that the shows should be aired post primetime at 10 p.m. But we know the real debate was over the minds of the public not the time slot.

That's been the debate ever since because prime time happenes when the most number of sheep consumers are watching t.v. and it's the best time to indoctrinate them get your message across. The wing nuts are all about the indoctrinate. But they lost the battle over prime time because many prime time consumers saw that time slot as an adult, rather than a childrens time-slot, even if children do watch prime time t.v.

Well if prime time is "adult" or "semi-adult" then it would stand to reason that daytime is childish, right? I mean, hard to argue the point. Those groups did go after after day-time after losing many battles in prime time (and after the networks made the sensors more religious and anti-gay- another story)

But soaps used to be like the little boy who farts in the middle of a sermon and everybody laughs. No one would notice if he farted at the pool hall. Everybody wonders why that kid even attends sunday school, but they miss him when he doesn't. Day time has a long history of shockers and racey material. It is the quintessential fart in church. We need more of that.

T.V is not sacred, daytime is not sacred. And with the new media, the air time is unimportant. I mean, you can watch your story anytime you want now, and ATWT is missing the boat by not capitalizing on that.

Short of researching and writing the essay, allow me to say that the 'soap' genre has been around for hundreds of years in one form or another. Lets call that 'popular theater.' As such it is beyond the reach of the AFA but needs the controversy of the AFA to make it relevant. (wait, I'm starting to write that essay. I'll stop now.)

The soap opera is never going to go away. You can call it something else, but there will always be this kind of "popular theater." And I believe there is life in writing a daily drama, like a soap. I believe there is a huge untapped audience out there. Catering to old farts isn't going to find them.

I had suggested over a month ago that instead of jumping on the bed Luke and Noah should have made love. In the aftermath, Ameera saw Noah go to "clean up" and when she entered the bathroom after him, she discovered the discarded rubber and used a turkey-baster to impregnate herself with the contents.

Of course, only to find out later that it was Luke's condom that Noah had trashed. So Ameera's carrying Luke's baby not her husband's.

How many girlz would be screaming about that at the water cooler the next day? And how many straight guys would be secretly tuning in? I mean, that story isn't as much about what happens as what Nuke and others do about it.

I believe that the soaps that are trying to placate an AFA audience, will die. The soaps that try to steal an audience will also die. But the first soap to come of age in the 21st century will become iconic.

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Guillermo and Nukely need to be writing this show! Even better, start one of your own! Now that's a show I'd work on for free. (well...really cheap)

:)

As for racy soaps in the past, that is totally true. All the school age kids were, well, suppose to be in school. Since it was illegal to not send your kid to school, taping tv shows had not been invented, there was no internet to discuss these things, all the networks had were the desperate housewives watching between laundry loads and diapers. The wingnuts hadn't picked up steam yet, so day time was as racy or racier than night time. Even the husbands weren't at home to monitor what the little wifey was watching during the day. The nights were family time. And everyone was in bed by 9:00 oclock.

 

I say we take the warning labels off everything and let nature take it's course.

we could do a better job than these writers have with these characters on their minisodes.

Today was frustrating as they even managed to tweak Juicy Janet (who I detest) just a nudge so that she'd fit into the fold in less then 3 episodes. Why not Nuke? Out with wannabe Rose D'Angelo, in with Janet 2.0. Parker is making out all over the place. My girl Carly is being objectified by Holden in a classic soap dream sequence that resembled what I thought was happening when Noah pulled a Linda Blair head-turn last week and had his one scene love declaration to Luke. Passive/aggressive meets doormat. Not so sexy.... Everyone but Nuke was bringing sexy back. Jack even got to lie.

Why not pair up Noah and faux-Lily as they are kind of annoying in the same way? Hear me out.... Now that the turkey-baster may have passed us by, I pitch that Fily find out about Holden/Carly and use her rage/pent-up homophobia from yesteryear to talk herself into thinking that she's going to "help" Luke by finding out what is going on with that "strapping" Noah not "wanting" Luke. Perfect for the current writing regime and she'll go under cover if needed:

It all starts out very Not Without My Daughter for one episode before the following scene ....

Faux-Lily: "Noah, have you ever seen a grown woman naked?" (As she takes off the tart-nightie that Lisa talked her into buying at Fashions with her buddy Carly)

Noah: "Not really ma'am" (Crosses his fingers as Maddie as just a girl not a woman and missed the tired Airplane reference)

FL: "Do you like these? And what about this? Supple aren't they"

N:  "Uhhhhh. Yeah...... But what about Luke?"

FL: "Come on Noah, Luke is my son and I know that you've never touched him, or looked at him the way you are looking at me. Certainly not pointing at him like you are pointing at me as we listen to that mixed tape that Dusty made for me." (Take Me Breathe Away by Berlin plays in the Snyder boudoir victrola)

N: "Mrs. Snyder. Wow...... OMG."

FL: "Dusty....." 

Forget all my previous suggestions of having Luke move to the dorms, have some fun, get a back bone. If they want to integrate the boys, let's do it the old-fashioned soap way. Almost incest and something to try to top the Holden/Carly tryst.

Noah starts falling for Fily and they go all 9 1/2 Weeks in every farm room. Fily goes back to full bad girl/liar mode as she falls for Doah. Luke discovers mom and Noah in the new farm bathtub that Meg Christened last week. Luke has a hissy fit and "accidentally" drops Faithlessness' ionic hair-dyer in the tub........ Fily goes into a coma again and Noah starts to experience some gay feelings due to electric shock... Calling Chris Hughes who nurses Fily into real Lily (bam ----> played again by Martha Byrne) during the November sweeps.

And we have not even gotten to what happens to Luke after he runs out of that bathroom....... After getting some relationship advice from Meg, Luke......

 Guillermo's Media Guillotine: Entertainment, journalism, politics, and popular culture.

http://springintoaction.typepad.com

Just total stream of consciousness fun on my part as there would be no lesson to be learned by Fily as the characters never learn a thing and the beauty for me is that it would play exactly like any other mother/"son in law" soap storyline, thus not having to go to those "special" Nuke minisodes where no other characters are involved. The above is more ATWT improv. as doing it would be mean and heavy-handed, so I better keep it low before Goutman gets any ideas as I am sure that he's trying to see if he can top Carly's "death" with something else to keep the talent in line.

Guillermo's Media Guillotine: Entertainment, journalism, politics, and popular culture.

http://springintoaction.typepad.com