Want to rant chat about how a particular network handles its daytime schedule, write an open letter to a soap bigwig, or engage in other futile efforts to understand what the hell people who run soaps are doing? Here's your venue.

I was reading the "And You Are" thread, looking at the stories of other posters and I was struck by something.

So many people's introduction to soaps was grandma...mom...aunt...babysitter. And then I started thinking about the networks obession with getting younger viewers, at the expense of the respect for character and story that keeps dedicated viewers turning in.

As we all know, the ratings are plummeting across the board, and I wonder if part of the problem is that the networks are shutting down one of their main sources of getting new viewers. If mom and grandma aren't watching, then there aren't the little kids who are trying to sneek peaks of the show when they should be napping or doing their homework, who grow into the high school and college students who are faithful watchers.

Anyway, just a thought.

sadly that thought is logical and makes loads of sense....which means it just didn't occur to the network runners....

It's so true. The grandmother who introduced me to the shows watches the Food Network all day long now instead. She's not drawn to soaps anymore like she was when I was a kid.

My Grandmother's use to watch Another World all the time until it was cancelled and replaced with the now double cancelled (triple if you count Austrailia saying they were going to air it then opting not to). Now she just watches the news.

My sister got me into DOOL. But now Dool is just a joke. She also got me into AMC which is also a joke.

I got myself into Passions then near the time I heard it was going to be cancelled the first time I stopped watching. I also got myself into GH, and ATWT. Which are both dissapointing.

I can't seem to get myself into OLTL.

You know, it's taken me a while to realize this, but I don't think that anyone in daytime actually knows how to run a soap anymore. I've given up on a few, moved to a few, followed them for a while, but the ridiculous number of actors coming and going on these shows is driving me insane!

It seems that the daytime networks are buying into their own failed hype machine, and soaps are becoming increasingly gimmicky and plastic, like cheap imitations of themselves. Soaps aren't about the short term payoff. Soaps are about the long-term payoff, the slow-burn romance, the long, painful reunion, the steadfast friendship, the changing family dynamic, the old rivalry, and the long term character growth. These are not, by any means, the only things that soaps are about. Soaps are about conflict, too, and about crazy plot twists, and outrageous scenes and characters. However, without all of the long-term stuff, the short term stuff is just frenetic crap. It doesn't sustain a soap in the way that soaps need to be sustained.

I'm sick of turning on soap operas and seeing 5 or 10 undeveloped, new characters, with no ties to the canvas. I'm sick of children not interacting with their parents, and parents forgetting about their children. I'm sick of characters not having friendships. I'm really sick of the lack of well-planned, long story arcs. I'm sick of plot points in the place of actual plots. I'm sick of the lack of bonding scenes on the show. I hate that no one seems to work anymore. I'm beyond sick of the way that long-term and legacy characters played by committed actors are repeatedly thrown by the wayside to accommodate the flavour of the month. I'm sick of airhogs and the favouritism in the writing that supports the airhogs. I'm sick of the lack of respect for veteran soap actors.

So, for the meantime, I'm done with soaps, until they figure out a way to reclaim what was great about them, and fit it into a format that works for this millenium.

What makes me doubly nuts is, we can see this, why can't they? Its not like the networks don't have a blue print for what works. My theory is at ABC, there is NO ONE who can disagree with Brian Frons to his face. The choices being made over there reek of an insulated environment where outside feedback is just not getting through.

If Frons does not fire Guza soon, I really am just going to have to live through GH from 80-95 on youtube and call it a day (and of course Serial Drama).