Young Again : SHOWS ABOUT TEENS AND THE SOAP DRAMA OF GROWING UP WIN OVER AUDIENCES

“The Young and the Restless” isn’t just the name of a soap opera any more: It’s the description of a whole new market of soap viewers.

The soapy Fox hit “Beverly Hills, 90210” is not the only series that caters to the younger set. Now in its third season on Nickelodeon is “Fifteen,” a weekly soap opera about the lives and loves of students at the fictional Hillside High, geared for viewers age 9-14.

Last month, MTV premiered “The Real World,” which combines elements of soap opera and documentary in its weekly depiction of seven young adults sharing a Manhattan loft. On June 29, KCAL begins airing the daily syndicated “Swans Crossing,” named for the fictitious Eastern Seaboard village that is home to the rich eighth-graders who make up most of the continuing drama’s cast of characters. And July 8, “90210” spinoff “Melrose Place” begins its run on Fox.

The traditional daytime soaps have increasingly featured storylines about younger characters, particularly in summer when school is out and youthful viewership up. But why the rash of serials geared specifically to that audience?

“Because advertisers are starting to realize that girls count as a market,” said Ned Kandel, who conceived “Swans Crossing” and is one of its two executive producers. “For years, series were for boys. This is an outgrowth of feminism in the 1970s, that a new generation of girls are being told they count.”

Indeed, Nickelodeon executives discovered that, unlike the equally divided audience for their usual comedy and game shows, “Fifteen” does have a predominantly female following.

But, said Herb Scannell, vice president of programming and development for Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite, “We don’t go out and develop shows with a bias to serving one group over another. I think what’s really happening is that you’re getting shows that address ‘my issues.’ Say I’m 9 through 14, or 15 through 24. These shows involve issues important to my age group.”

Those issues are much tamer on “Fifteen” and “Swans Crossing” than on the sometimes steamy “90210.”

In the case of “Fifteen,” whose title was chosen by creator-executive producer John Binkley to reflect a pre-driving age limited primarily to home and school, “There is still an innocence,” Scannell said. “You don’t have most of the answers. This isn’t about sex, but about kissing someone, liking someone. These are issues in a community of kids where your ally today may be your enemy tomorrow.”

Similarly, “Swans Crossing” executive producer and head writer Mardee Kravit called her action-adventure romantic serial “a fun, whimsical show, probably because we’re not dealing with drugs and heavy social issues. We’re doing things that I remember being crucial as a teen-ager--who likes who, who you think you are in terms of your identity.

Kravit, who wrote for the daytime soap “Ryan’s Hope,” said that the show does not talk down to kids. “We feel if we’re bored, a 6-year-old will be, too.

“There’s a kind of sophistication here,” she said. “We’re dealing with questions like, ‘How do you conduct yourself in an ethical way? How do you make choices that are right for you?’ If you learn to live with a certain amount of joy and caution and respect for others, you’ll go a long way toward dealing with those problems.”

On “Fifteen,” where there are no adult characters, the kids help each other cope with such problems as the divorce of two siblings’ parents, one boy’s alcoholism and subsequent rehab and another boy’s decision to drop out of school. The issue of racial discrimination has arisen, while the issue of recycling has received particular attention, reflecting research results showing young people’s strong interest in the environment.

For the older crowd (15 to 24), Nickelodeon’s sister network MTV recently began airing “The Real World,” conceived as a soap opera with no actors and no script. Accordingly, four men and three women, who range in age from 19 to 25 and aspire to careers in show biz and other creative fields, were cast via auditions and set up in a New York loft, with cameras recording their relationships and experiences at home and around the city.

Lauren Corrao, MTV’s vice president of series development, calls the show a “hybrid,” produced like a documentary and edited like a soap opera. “Aside from the initial setup of bringing people to that loft, it’s a documentary,” she said. “But we chose storylines to follow that have some arc, some interest, with a hook before each commercial. We looked for real people with charisma, who weren’t concerned with cameras and had some drama in their lives.”

As for more traditional soap drama, though, most daytime serials began tapping the youth market only recently; two ABC shows have been going after younger viewers for years.

Capturing that market so as to ensure a future adult audience was a priority for Agnes Nixon when she created “All My Children” in 1970, according to executive producer Felicia Minei Behr. One of the show’s first plotlines dealt with the rivalry of two teen-age friends for the same girl, with one of the boys being drafted into the Vietnam War and his mother becoming an anti-war activist.

Nixon’s foresight paid off: College students flocked to campus television sets to watch, a trend that continues today, and in those pre-VCR days they arranged their class schedules to accommodate their viewing. Courses utilizing the show as a study tool also began flourishing.

“We were amazed,” Behr said. “People were spending $50 or $65 a unit to study ‘All My Children,’ especially when we got into certain public service storylines and how characters reacted within a family group. Every spring I hear from college graduates who’ve watched the show. High schools have used it, too.

Over on “General Hospital,” the Luke-and-Laura storyline, culminating with their wedding and a “Newsweek” cover in 1981, helped grab younger viewers. Even before that, former executive producer Gloria Monty had changed the sound of daytime music when she came on board in 1978, dropping the customary organ refrains in favor of more pop-oriented scoring, a trend that continues today.

“We use contemporary music to help establish characters. It inspires an emotional response before the audience actually knows the characters well,” says executive producer Wendy Riche. Hans Zimmer’s “Thunderbird” from the film “Thelma and Louise” was chosen, for instance, to evoke a sense of loneliness and danger around the new brooding street kid Jagger.

A viewer favorite is Dave Koz’s “Emily,” used as the love theme for Ned and Jenny (Wally Kurth and Cheryl Richardson); Koz recently performed on the show. Other contemporary contributions have come from Melissa Etheridge, Chris Isaak, Elton John, Billy Vera, U2 and Luther Vandross.

Whether traditional or cutting edge, all the shows have at least one element in common. As Kravit says, “The basic stories remain the same as the adult soaps--I feel if you scratch any one of us, you’ll find an adolescent underneath, with the same fears and insecurity. Adult problems are just more serious and have more social implications.”