I'm a little late seeing this news, but I read today that CBS is cancelling As The World Turns. This wasn't a soap that I watched regularly as I did Guiding Light, but I think of it as the one of the iconic soaps that I grew up with. I would also include in that group All My Children, Days of Our Lives, One Life to Live, and General Hospital, as well as dearly departed shows Edge of Night and The Doctors. I'm old enough to remember when The Young and the Restless was considered a newer show, at least among my mother's peers. I
I've heard that several more daytime soaps are on the chopping block, and my feelings about this are conflicted. My interest in soaps waned years ago because I got frustrated with the endless star-crossed lover plots and every character sleeping with every other character. Since I don't watch soaps any longer, I have no right to complain about them being cancelled because I contributed to their demise. Still, I have a soft spot in my heart for anything -- TV show, restaurant, family ritual -- that manages to keep going for more than 25 years.
Lately, I've found that I am not totally opposed to all parts of the daytime soap model. I enjoy following characters for a long period of time and through several storylines. To scratch that itch, I've turned to book series like the Southern Vampire Mysteries. I also wish there were more radio serials like The Archers from BBC Radio 4. It gives me family and village drama in daily 15-minute bites. It may be too gentle for some, but it is a refreshing change from some of the oversexualized TV shows I watch.
2 comments:
I grew up watching Another World, one of the first soaps to go under. As an adult I watched Guiding Light fairly regularly for a long time and Y&R once in a while.
I stopped watching when the regular plausible storyline stopped being dramatic enough and they resorted to crap like cloning. Some of those shows fell right off the campy cliff and killed themselves.
You hung in with the soap operas longer than I did. I heard about plotlines like cloning, witches, and aliens, but I had bailed on the whole genre way before that. I got tired of stories that dragged on forever. Remember the trials where it took a whole week to show one day's court session? Ack! Now that I watch more Brit TV, I prefer their model of ending a show when the story ends, instead of padding it because it is popular.
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