Word: soaped
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There are currently 10 soaps on daytime TV, but a successful one has not been launched since CBS's debut of The Bold and the Beautiful in 1987. It might be considered an act of courage, then, that NBC, home of Sunset Beach, the lowest-rated soap on television, this week unleashes a lavish daytime drama, Passions. But soaps continue to be made and broadcast because, when all is said and done, they continue to generate a good deal of money--$50 million to $60 million a year for a successful one. NBC's new hour-long series, centered...
With hope and a dash of contrarian good sense, this writer recently revisited the world of daytime soap opera, reasoning that like so much else in our postmodern culture--Las Vegas, fondue, Rob Lowe--afternoon dramas might have transitioned into hip. Little research was needed to prove this theory false. Sets still seem to draw their inspiration from the simulated Americana of a Holiday Inn lobby in Colonial Williamsburg. And on almost any given day, the chance of making it through the afternoon without hearing someone say, "I don't need any DNA test to prove that...
...That soaps have failed to evolve their formula for melodrama is surely one of the factors responsible for their diminished ratings. During the past five years, the number of women ages 18 to 49 who watch daytime dramas has declined 36%. Comparatively, the number in that group who watch prime-time network television has dropped 27%. Certainly women are more time-pressed than they were even a few years ago, and they are spending more of their spare time with cable TV and talk shows. But it could also be that their soap opera needs are being met elsewhere...
...with the kind of outre imagination for which the world provides few professional outlets. A veteran daytime-drama writer, Reilly was brought to NBC to revive an ailing Days of Our Lives in 1992. During his five-year tenure as head writer, the show became the most-watched daytime soap on television among the genre's target audience of young and middle-aged women. It also became one of NBC's five most profitable shows in any time slot...
Were it not for these instances in which a call to Agent Mulder might seem in order, Passions would appear indistinguishable from almost any other soap opera. Marxism may not find much expression in contemporary American pop culture, but it certainly still thrives on daytime serials, where conflict often revolves around a town's monied Protestant dynasty and its less privileged newcomers. Here, we have the Cranes vs. the Lopez-Fitzgeralds. In typically unseemly soap opera fashion, it is Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald (Lindsay Korman), Hispanic and the daughter of a maid, who is the gold digger who goes after Harmony...