Better Brand of Soap

Soap operas as vehicles for social change? Those steamy sagas wherein people get all tangled up with long lost children, amnesia of convenience, mistaken identity and secret pasts?

Absolutely, says Population Communications International, a nonprofit organization that encourages development of social content programming on radio and TV, with emphasis on soaps. The messages might be about population control, domestic violence, human rights, ecology or HIV-AIDS prevention.

“The soap opera is the most popular form of communication in virtually every part of the world,” says Irwin “Sonny” Fox, the group’s Burbank-based senior vice president, and, thus is a potent force for educating “hundreds of millions of people.”

Since its founding in 1985, Population Communications has been instrumental in developing message-based TV or radio soaps in 10 countries, from China--where valuing female children was one theme--to Tanzania, where AIDS prevention was the goal.

Closer to home, the group has hosted writers and producers at three Soap Summits in Los Angeles or New York, and on Friday and Saturday will present its first Prime Time Summit at West Hollywood’s Wyndham Bel Age Hotel in association with the Producers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America West and the Caucus of Producers, Writers and Directors.

Recognizing the entertainment industry’s interest in “responsible programming that is relevant to timely societal issues,” Fox has planned a comprehensive program.

U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher is scheduled to give the keynote address. In the wake of the Littleton, Colo., tragedy, he will discuss violence against children as a major cause of death in America.

Unwed teen fathers will talk about unglamorous realities, and Brenda Aris will relate a story more gripping than most soap scripts: Brutalized by her husband, Rick, she shot and killed him as he slept. She was granted clemency in 1994 by Gov. Pete Wilson, who cited “most extraordinary cruelty,” and the case set a precedent for the “battered women’s syndrome” as a legal defense.

The summit format will include dialogue between decision-makers in the entertainment industry and experts in other fields on how best to present accurate and compelling information within the parameters of entertainment.

In urging writers and producers to tackle the issues, Fox says, Population Communications is “not asking them not to get good ratings” or “stop doing sex” but, rather, to do it more responsibly. He calls his job “sandpapering sensibilities.”

Among small triumphs: A “General Hospital” episode with an AIDS story line, two “Beverly Hills 90210” story lines about domestic violence, a message about responsible sex on “As the World Turns.” “Bold and the Beautiful,” the most-watched daytime soap in the world with an audience of 450 million in 98 countries, is doing a story about AIDS and teen pregnancy.

“What [Population Communications is] attempting to do makes a lot of sense,” says Gerald Isenberg, a professor at USC and chairman of the Caucus of Producers, Writers and Directors. “A lot of these people really want to do stories that are issue based but just don’t have the time to do the research, don’t have the background, and are looking for inspiration. I think [Population Communications] is a pretty worthwhile venture.”

Benefiting From Research

Bonny Dore of Bonny Dore Productions, which specializes in miniseries and movies of the week, says, “In Hollywood, we get hit on by a lot of folks [pushing causes, but Population Communications] does very, very intensive research. That always makes me very comfortable.”

Ultimately, she adds, a good story is “the litmus test” and social issues make good stories. Citing domestic violence as an example, Dore says, “As a woman and as a producer, any information I can have that’s new and au courant and on the cutting edge, I need.”

Population Communications eschews what Fox, a former vice president of children’s programming for NBC, calls “Draconian” tactics, preferring to “plant seeds” for change. Headquartered in New York with a $3.5-million annual budget, the group is funded by individuals and foundations as well as the United Nations, but Population Communications neither has nor wants corporate sponsors.

Domestically, the group faces the reality of a shrinking daytime soap opera audience, its numbers (about 20 million) eroded both by women working and the networks’ diminishing audience share. But in developing countries, soaps are shown in the evening, when women and men watch.

Says Fox, “We have to change the men.”

At home there are plans for more soaps, starting in 2000. USA Network will debut “The Avenue,” a half-hour soap set in Queens, N.Y., a page out of the book of English soaps, which portray the lives of the working class. Columbia Tristar Television plans “Soap City,” a 24-hour soap channel, while Disney/ABC’s all-soap channel will repeat daytime soaps the same day in prime time.

Abroad, Population Communications-influenced soaps are written, acted and produced by local talent, with the group as a sort of midwife, instructing producers in its research-based methodology developed at Stanford University: Soap operas feature culturally appropriate positive, negative and evolving characters reflecting both traditional and progressive attitudes and behaviors.

Story lines change according to the sensibilities, mores and values of each country. Stories promoting birth control have aired in Catholic countries without church protest, but a Brazilian TV novella featuring a lesbian couple drew viewers’ ire, prompting producers to have them die in a shopping mall explosion.

In India, where the population is approaching 1 billion, a popular soap, “Humraahi,” dramatized the conflict between a young bride, Angouri, who hoped to be a lawyer, and her mother-in-law, who beat her and burned her books. The story ran for a year and, Fox noted, “the entire country sort of went into a state of shock and mourning” when Angouri died in childbirth at 15.

In China, millions of viewers have been caught up in the plight of a beautiful young woman sold into an arranged marriage and savagely raped by her husband. A major goal, Fox says, is “to get the Chinese to value girl children” and to improve the status of women, especially in the provinces.

Unlike American soaps, these stories tend to be finite, viewed over perhaps six months, and thus more intense. Viewers “are invested in these people,” Fox says. When something bad happens to a character, “it’s like seeing a family member get beat up.”

University of New Mexico researchers studied the effectiveness of one Population Communications-guided program in Tanzania, where 2% of the world’s population lives, and is also home to half of the world’s AIDS cases. The radio soap featured a promiscuous truck driver who contracts AIDS after repeatedly having unprotected sex. Researchers found that men and women responded by choosing to have fewer sex partners--and that demand for condoms increased.

Summer Program Convenes at USC

Six communications professionals from developing countries recently arrived for a summer program at USC under the auspices of Population Communications with USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, School of Cinema and Television and Population Lab. They will study program production and social roles of media as well as Population Communications methodology.

Participants include Roma Pereira, a Bombay communications consultant. She does not have to be convinced of the need for the media to forge social change.

“The things women go through in India are pathetic”--they are treated both at home and by society as second-class citizens, Pereira says. She said “Humraahi,” with its message about reproductive choice, was “very effective. There was a perceptible change in attitude.”

Other issues that need to be tackled in India, she adds, include child labor, AIDS and “family harmony.”

Another student, Kayode Egbeleye, a Nigerian communications specialist, also says women in his country “don’t have control over issues that affect them.”

“The average Nigerian woman has a minimum of five or six children, even when she is poor,” Egbeleye says.

He thinks “well thought-out, enlightened” soaps could be a significant force for “burying once and for all certain cultural and religious biases, traditions that encourage very large families.” With a population of 120 million, Nigeria has 6.5 million TV sets and, considering the illiteracy rate of 55%, TV has huge potential for fomenting change. But, Egbeleye says, “most of the soaps [just] entertain.” With the transition to democracy last month after years of military rule, he is hopeful the media will turn its attentions to issues such as distribution of power, rights of women, AIDS-HIV and environmental protection.

At home, where Population Communications strives to get its messages inserted into programming, its expanding focus includes not only prime-time shows but talk shows and news magazines. And Fox has his eye on interactive computer games, which, he says, are notorious for “sending out misogynistic messages about women.”

The group doesn’t expect miracles. Fox acknowledges that “there are 200 organizations in this town pushing issues of health, political issues. If we get half the shows and half of them take us seriously and half of that half does something . . .”