I just read two quite interesting articles (this one and this one) analysing the factors behind the slow decline of a type of television program that was once a staple of broadcast media, the soap opera.
I confess that over the years I have been a fan of soaps. As a child I enjoyed Australian dramas like Sons and Daughters with its outrageous plots as well as British shows like Howards Way, and of course the American hits Dynasty, Dallas, Knots Landing and Falcon Crest, and I am enjoying watching some of those again now on DVD. I was also a semi-regular fan of Days of Our Lives, Santa Barbara and Another World when I was a teenager (I always thought that the opening catchphrase for Another World, which I think ran for 30 years or so, was particularly evocative: "We do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds' - there is something quite profound and literary in that I think).
Days of Our Lives is still popular on Australian daytime TV and my grandmother remains a devoted fan of that program, although I understand its days are numbered.
I also watched The Bold and The Beautiful for many years, from the time it started in 1987 until sometime in the 1990s I suppose. At some point then I started to prefer the UK shows like EastEnders. These days the only soaps I watch at all are DVDs of Dallas and Dynasty and Knots Landing, partly because I don't have time in my hectic life schedule for television and partly because I don't have a television. Also, of course, I think I got a bit bored by soap operas, which seemed to lose some of their cleverness as well as their wit and sparkle sometime in the 1990s.
The heyday for the soaps was the 1970s (from which era this fabulous Time magazine cover comes, featuring the "super couple" Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes from Days of Our Lives) and the 1980s, but a combination of factors including massively diminished daytime audiences due to increased workforce participation by women, rising production expenses, declining advertising revenues and not least of all changing viewing preferences combined with the fact that so many other programs such as talk shows, "reality" programs and more off-beat and risky cable television programs all "stole" that peculiar domain of racy voyeurism once the sole province of daytime soaps have contributed to the decline of the genre.
The heyday for the soaps was the 1970s (from which era this fabulous Time magazine cover comes, featuring the "super couple" Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes from Days of Our Lives) and the 1980s, but a combination of factors including massively diminished daytime audiences due to increased workforce participation by women, rising production expenses, declining advertising revenues and not least of all changing viewing preferences combined with the fact that so many other programs such as talk shows, "reality" programs and more off-beat and risky cable television programs all "stole" that peculiar domain of racy voyeurism once the sole province of daytime soaps have contributed to the decline of the genre.
There is of course also the overall decline in US network television audience - when millions of people watched Dallas to find out who shot JR, for instance, there was no internet, no cable, no DVD - and this makes programs like scripted drama more of a risk for television producers than a cheap reality show. It seems that the soap opera is likely to become a thing of the past in the foreseeable future
It's a shame though - re-watching Knots Landing and (early) Dynasty on DVD reminds me of how escapist, fun, entertaining and sometimes very clever the soap opera format can be.
