Word: soaps
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...years ago, MTV made the uncharacteristic move of approaching two television producers significantly past the age of 25 to concoct a nighttime soap opera. What partners Mary-Ellis Bunim (a veteran of Search for Tomorrow and As the World Turns) and Jon Murray, both in their 40s, came up with -- The Real World -- was a hip complement to the channel's usual diet of music videos. Now in its fourth season, the documentary series follows the lives of six or seven carefully chosen young strangers, brought together to live for several months in a home seemingly decorated from a Pottery...
STRUGGLING SOAP OPERAS...
Although your reporting is usually balanced, your article "Soap Operas: the Old and the Desperate" [TELEVISION, May 29] was pretentious and snide. The mainstream press never takes soaps seriously. Yes, they have their share of feeble story lines and poor acting, and they suffer from a decline in ratings. If you measure the best of prime-time television and movies against the best of daytime soap operas, however, soaps win by a landslide. JOHN L. JONES New York City...
Whether outre plots or gimmicky marketing will succeed in reviving the soaps remains to be seen. Traditionalists think that the tactics are unlikely to help. "We are not just competing with other forms of media and murder trials but with faster-paced, more sophisticated life-styles," notes veteran soap-opera writer Tom Citrano, formerly of General Hospital and currently with Loving. "It's not about coming up with spectacular plots, or comic-book stories, or public-service announcements but with stories that mirror contemporary life...
That is also the philosophy espoused by Bill and Lee Phillip Bell, creators of television's top-rated soap, The Young and the Restless, and The Bold and the Beautiful, the only successful new daytime drama to be introduced in the past decade. "We have characters who are role models and families that work to stay together," proclaims Bradley Bell, their son and the head writer for The Bold and the Beautiful. "Our strength is investing in character-staying with interpersonal relationships." Interpersonal relationships, so far at least, that don't involve Lucifer...