Let the soap games begin

Will viewers ditch “The Young and the Restless’ ” Nikki and Victor for a fling with hunky Olympic athletes? Will absence make fans’ hearts fonder for “Passions’ ” Eve and Julian? Will soap junkies remember to watch “General Hospital’s” Nikolas long after he has recovered his memory? Tune in later this month.

Soap opera plotlines may thrive on change, but there’s usually precious little of it in the ratings for the networks’ daytime lineups. In fact, CBS, already atop the prime-time summer ratings, racks up another bragging right this week. Its bloc of daytime shows -- “The Young and the Restless,” “The Bold and the Beautiful,” “As The World Turns” and “Guiding Light,” plus the game show “The Price Is Right” -- has been TV’s most-watched for 800 straight weeks, since the days when the first President Bush was in the White House and “Dynasty” and “Family Ties” were still on the air.

The program rankings seldom move, executives say, because soap opera viewers develop intense loyalty to the shows and to such characters as Nikki and Victor Newman, the love-and-hate couple from “The Young and the Restless.”

“It’s amazing to have these kinds of records in this day and age where everyone is jockeying for viewers,” said Bradley Bell, executive producer of “The Bold and the Beautiful” and co-owner of “The Young and the Restless.”

But the Olympics, which start in Athens on Aug. 13, could throw a wrench into the 15-year pattern. For one thing, NBC will temporarily take its soaps off the air starting Aug. 16 -- inspiring ABC and CBS to program soap-related specials while their rival is buried in Olympic coverage. However, history is on NBC’s side: Networks typically lose 10% of their daytime audience when a rival airs the Olympics.

More importantly, the networks are fighting over a smaller daytime pie these days. All nine network daytime dramas have seen their ratings dwindle by as much as two-thirds in recent years. Since 1990, the median age for viewers of daytime dramas has gone up by an average of seven years, making them less attractive to advertisers targeting 18-to-34-year-olds. In the past, soaps were a reliable for advertisers to reach young women. But with more women working and more programming choices as a result of cable, fewer viewers are tuning into soaps.

“We are No. 1 in a smaller pond,” says Barbara Bloom, senior vice president of daytime programming for CBS.

Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin, executive in charge of productions at Procter & Gamble Productions, which produces “Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns,” understands the pressures.

“It’s not like it was 52 years ago, when women sat in front of the television and watched an entire lineup,” she said. “Now if a woman is free during the day, there are so many different things she can do with her time.”

Unable to meet advertisers’ expectations, soaps have received less money from the networks and have trimmed casts and asked actors to take pay cuts while still producing 260 episodes a year. This year, “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful” pared their casts but labored to keep fans’ favorites.

Some characters on “Days of Our Lives” and “One Life to Live” weren’t so lucky: The producers used serial-killer plots to kill off main characters, including “Days” perennial Maggie Horton, played by Suzanne Rogers for 30 years. (Some of the “Days” actors will now have recurring roles, since in a typical plot twist their murdered characters have turned out to be alive after all.)

Intent on not losing ground during the Olympics, ABC and CBS are counter-programming NBC’s coverage with stunts and specials. NBC doesn’t seem too worried. While lagging behind its rivals in total viewership, its “Days of Our Lives” remains the top soap among women ages 18 to 34 and women 18-49, the two groups most targeted by advertisers on soaps.

The network says it will temporarily end both “Days” and “Passion” with cliffhanger episodes that executives say will guarantee viewers’ return on Aug. 30, after the Olympics end. In fact, Sheraton Kalouria, NBC’s senior vice president of daytime programs, is banking on stealing viewers from ABC and CBS soaps with the Olympics.

“What the Olympics present is real-life drama and suspense that provides an attractive alternative across the TV landscape,” Kalouria says. “I know that my audience isn’t going to miss one day of our storytelling if they watch the games. ABC and CBS can’t say that.”

Fans of “Passions” will be rewarded with a significant revelation on Aug. 13: The child Eve and Julian had longer than 20 years ago is identified, “and it will be a big surprise,” Kalouria says. “Days” revealed in May that 11 of its characters were not murdered, as it had been presumed in the fall, but are in fact being held captive on an island with their alleged murderer, also presumed dead. Before “Days” goes on hiatus for the Olympics, the people of Salem will learn where their missing friends are and will launch rescue missions. And other characters previously written off the show will be discovered on the island as well.

“We decided to pace our stories to have ‘who shot J.R.?’ final cliffhangers on that final day before the games,” Kalouria said. “If the other shows don’t try to take advantage, I’d be surprised.”

Taking advantage is exactly what ABC hopes to do. ABC, second to CBS in overall daytime viewers, has announced a special, “The Wide World of Soaps,” hosted by Bob Guiney, “Bachelor Bob” from the unscripted hit “The Bachelor.” Guiney will offer Olympic-style reporting about the lives of ABC’s daytime characters. ABC’s soap stars will help Guiney spoof the Olympic games as well as discuss the lives of their characters. Among his many duties, Guiney will host a men’s freestyle six-pack competition involving ABC’s hottest male stars and will be featured in promos that remind viewers that soaps are more important than, say, shotputting.

“This is all very tongue-in-cheek,” said ABC Daytime President Brian Frons. “We basically want to tell people that we’re on and NBC’s not and this is a fun place to watch soaps. Today there are so many networks and so much coverage of the Olympics that who’s to say what will exactly happen? We decided to look at NBC’s preemption as an opportunity rather than a threat.”

On Aug. 16, ABC will air a soap-themed special instead of “The View,” the popular daytime talk show, which will offer summaries of ABC’s best soap stories this year as well as plans for the fall. For the last eight weeks, “General Hospital” has beaten “Days of Our Lives” among women 18 to 49, and ABC plans to take advantage of that boost with plot turns that include the murder of two characters, “and you will find out who the murderer is and the people really stay dead,” Frons said.

For its part, CBS said it too will try to take advantage of NBC’s soap hiatus but won’t divulge how, said publicist Beth Haiken.

“We’ll be courting those viewers as well, but in ways that we don’t want to talk about just yet,” she said. “If you’re new or you haven’t watched for a while, it will be easy for you to get caught up, but why would we tell anyone what we’re doing weeks ahead of time?”

It’s no secret that one potent (if old-fashioned) CBS weapon is “The Price Is Right,” the longest running game show in broadcast history, which reached its 6,000th episode this season. Bob Barker, the program’s first and only host, has guided the program to a consistent No. 1 ranking among daytime shows. “Mine is the original reality show,” said the 80-year-old Barker, whose program has invited contestants to “Come on down!” for 32 years.

“The Price Is Right” is so old-school that human beings -- not machines -- still move the sets around in between games.

In that same vein, CBS soap operas have tried to keep to their course, staying close to the tried and tested angst of its characters. “Guiding Light,” which started on the radio 67 years ago, and the 48-year-old “As the World Turns” are the longest-running programs in broadcast history and still average more than 3 million viewers a day.

“What sets CBS daytime apart is that they tell stories about families, family values and love stories,” Bell said. “We don’t do devil possessions and serial killers ... . In this day and age, with all these computers, the soaps are a connection to your heartstrings and provides an emotional release and connection that is important.”But even on tradition-minded CBS soaps, family values can get a little complicated. Take “The Young and the Restless” character Nikki Newman, played by Melody Thomas Scott for 25 years. Nikki has been married nine times (three times alone to her current husband, Victor Newman) and has become a successful businesswoman despite almost being raped by her father, whom she hit over the head and killed, which in turn prompted her to become a stripper and a member of a cult. That was until she met Victor, the dashing man she loves but cannot keep.

“Our show has been known for family, love and personal conflicts,” Scott said. “We deal with the true emotions that people experience every day. I think love and conflict is something we all have in common.”

Conflict is something Kim Zimmer knows well after playing Reva Lewis for 21 years (with a five-year hiatus when she moved to Los Angeles). Reva, married eight times, was the first clone in daytime television. To bring her back in 1995, writers created a story arc that involved Reva floating in the Gulf of Mexico for five years, washing up on an island and marrying a prince only to be thrown back into the water by her wicked brother-in-law and landing in Amish Country, where someone from her previous life recognized her.

“It’s continuing daytime drama with a little comedy,” Zimmer said. “People want to feel comfortable and know that they can turn on the television at 2 p.m. It becomes like ‘Calgon, take me away!’ ”

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Daytime TV Rankings

Here are season-to-date rankings in daytime programming at CBS, ABC and NBC (Sept. 22, 2003, through July 25, 2004).

*--* Show Network Viewers 1. “The Price Is Right 2” CBS 6.2 million

2. “The Young and the Restless” CBS 5.7

3. “The Price Is Right 1” CBS 5.1

4. “The Bold and the Beautiful” CBS 4.3 5. “Days of Our Lives” NBC 4.1 6. “General Hospital” ABC 4.1 7. “As the World Turns” CBS 3.7 8. “All My Children” ABC 3.7 9. “One Life to Live” ABC 3.6 10. “The View” ABC 3.1 11. “Guiding Light” CBS 3.1 12. “Passions” NBC 2.6

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Source: Nielsen Media Research