Soap Operas Look for Ways to Rekindle the Romance

Pity the poor daytime drama.

Not only is it plagued by freak accidents, amnesia victims, evil twins and unnatural disasters, it’s also struggling for viewers, in a battle perhaps tougher than any being waged on television. The long-maligned guilty-pleasure story form asks for a five-day-a-week time commitment when much of its traditional target audience, adult women, is now at the office instead of home.

Network executives and the creative teams behind the shows, who say reports of soaps’ demise are greatly exaggerated, are searching for ways to juice up the genre, hoping to snag new viewers while retaining the loyalists.

Those efforts--in the form of stunts and contests, self-contained story arcs similar to the Spanish-language telenovela, promotion on airplanes and allowing viewers to decide key outcomes via online response--will intensify over the next few months, when vacations and school breaks free up some potential fans.

“It’s a good time to put all the coals on the fire,” said Ken Corday, executive producer of NBC’s “Days of Our Lives,” which will feature the payoff of a number of major story lines in the coming months, including the marriage of two popular characters.

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This week, NBC’s intentionally over-the-top soap “Passions” promised an event in each episode, and it has been encouraging its viewers to get a friend to sample the show during “Buddies Week.” There’s an accompanying contest with the magazine Soap Opera Weekly that gives winners a trip to the L.A.-based “Passions” set. The magazine is heavily promoting the series and sweepstakes, as is NBC via the Internet and the “Passions” Web site, which contains extra back story for the newcomer.

In addition to experimenting with a new format on its half-hour soap “Port Charles,” which will become more like an ongoing miniseries (see related story), ABC has launched a 24-hour all-soaps channel that broadcasts each day’s episodes of its four shows in prime time and early morning. Marathons run on weekends, compressing a week’s worth of shows into a single programming block. The nascent cable network, with an original soap-themed show as well as the ABC-owned soaps “All My Children,” “One Life to Live,” “General Hospital” and “Port Charles,” will be available in 10 million homes by year’s end.

“Research told us that many core fans couldn’t watch during the middle of the day anymore,” said Angela Shapiro, ABC’s president of daytime. “We see this as the wave of the future, making shows available when people want them.”

CBS’ soaps--”The Young and the Restless,” “The Bold and the Beautiful,” “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light”--get exposure for the first time starting in January in the network’s in-flight magazine distributed on American Airlines. Network executives don’t necessarily think they’ll turn the business traveler into a soap fan but hope to pick up some lapsed viewers.

Another boost could come from sister Viacom channels such as MTV and the newly acquired BET. “We’ve never been able to target those audiences directly before,” said Lucy Johnson, CBS’ senior vice president of daytime. “To have a presence there would be extremely helpful”--especially, she noted, with a young crowd that doesn’t see a stigma attached to soap viewing.

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Each of the three networks has turned to the Internet as a way to get viewers more involved. Online responses picked out a character’s wedding dress on “All My Children,” and a currently running campaign asks viewers if a young character should tell her mother she’s gay (featuring Susan Lucci’s Erica Kane as the in-the-dark mom).

“Passions” recently bumped off a main character chosen by Web votes, and “Days of Our Lives” fans went online during the summer to decide the paternity of Hope’s baby.

Shapiro said the Web components need to be integrated into the story line for maximum effect.

“It blurs the line between fantasy and reality,” Shapiro said. “The more natural it is to the viewers, the more connection they feel.”

Off-air events have also become part of the outreach. About two weeks ago, ABC staged its fifth Super Soap Weekend at DisneyWorld in Orlando, Fla., with a first-time sponsorship from Colgate. As a response, NBC scheduled its first Soap Fan Fest day-and-date with ABC’s, holding its event at Universal City in Orlando.

While executives see more inventive promotions and marketing as essential, it’s also key to contemporize the shows themselves in order to grab eyeballs. Some elements of daytime drama will never and should never change, their creators said, with family conflict, relationships and love triangles remaining staples.

The presentation itself, however, must adapt. The dialogue must be bolder and the pacing quicker. Gone are the five-minute scenes of people chatting over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, said “Days’ ” Corday. “Scenes are a minute to a minute-and-a-half, with 40 scenes in each show,” he said. “That’s a response to the MTV generation.”

Ethnic diversity is also a must. “One of the strengths of a show like ‘Passions’ is its diverse cast,” said Sheraton Kalouria, NBC’s senior vice president of daytime programs. “But race is ignored in the storytelling. That makes it of-the-moment and relevant to younger viewers.”

“The writers are under pressure to deliver more twists and turns,” added Johnson. “The shows have to deliver the goods.”

Today’s sophisticated audience demands more from its dramas, both in daytime and prime time. Launching a new one, as NBC did in July 1999 with “Passions,” is especially difficult. The show features Juliet Mills in a career-reviving role as Tabitha the witch, whose sidekick is Timmy (Josh Ryan Evans), a talking doll character who swills “martimmys” and plots evil. It has quickly become a cult favorite, with its fireballs from space, avalanches and hexes fueling cocktail chatter and getting referenced on hipster shows like the WB’s prime-time series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Popular.”

“A large part of the audience did come on when they heard we had a witch and a talking doll,” said Lisa Hesser, the show’s executive producer. “We chose to do something fantasy-based. It’s part of the charm of the show. And, today, you need a hook like this.”

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The cast and writers don’t have to be populated by Gen-Xers, but the sensibility of the show needs to be more current with the times, said Bob Guza, who recently left his role as executive producer of ABC’s “General Hospital” and has worked on the Aaron Spelling prime-time serials “Melrose Place” and “Models Inc.”

“The genre has to take more chances--it has to get hipper and edgier,” Guza said. “It’s a question of who’s going to be bold enough to change.”

Bigger-than-life stories, supernatural elements, mysteries, gangsters and international intrigue can work if they’re well-executed. The same goes for heavier issues like alcoholism, breast cancer and anorexia.

Yet the real day-in and day-out draw remains romance and the couples who display it--a notion these programs need to keep in focus, executives say.

“Soaps need to be true to themselves,” NBC’s Kalouria said. “The stories about lovers’ triangles, star-crossed lovers, and love lost and found have worked for 40 years, and they’ll work for another 40 years.”

“Audiences go to talk shows to fill a specific need, same for news,” agreed CBS’ Johnson. “What they need from us is a sense of escape, fantasy, aspiration. Those ingredients never change. We just need to be who we are.”

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Bursting Their Bubbles

Ratings for most soaps are down sharply since the mid-1990s. Here are the three top-rated shows:

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VIEWERS VIEWERS (in millions) (in millions) PERCENT SHOW 1995-96 1999-2000 CHANGE “The Young and the 9.2 7.2 -22% Restless” “The Bold and the 6.3 5.4 -14% Beautiful” “Days of Our Lives” 6.9 5.1 -26%

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Source: Nielsen Media Research