Snark Weighs In

Around the Web

posted Thursday, 1 May 2008

Lynn Licardo continues her examination of the disconnect between P&G company culture and P&G's soap opera producing culture.  Today, she discusses the negative impact of market research on the genre.

We Love Soaps has your Emmy reaction roundup, as well as the list of pre-noms, so you can see all the people Vail Bloom hijacked.

One person who was not watching the Emmy nominations yesterday was blog reader Jennifer Gibbons.  She explains why here.




1. Jennifer left...
Thursday, 1 May 2008 1:44 pm

Snark- Thank you so much for the plug!!! What a honor it is to be mentioned on your blog. Now that I've read your list of nominations.... Heather from Y&R got nominated???? I've seen a couple of scenes and um, it's not enough for an Emmy. I'm still pissed about Cailtlin Van Zandt. Thank you again!


2. GuillermoIbarra left...
Thursday, 1 May 2008 6:46 pm

Lynn and Jennifer's pieces so perfectly capture what many of us have thought and felt for many years now. It's good to know we are not alone.


3. TV's Tim left...
Friday, 2 May 2008 1:23 am

Now for some reason I've always thought that James Scott was about 26 or so (probably because EJ/Elvis Jr. should only be about 10 or so in real time; BTW Jimmy is 29 years old according to that bastion of accuracy called Wikipedia) which is why I was so surprised that he didn't get the Younger Actor nom this year. But his colleagues might have unintentionally hurt his chances by prenominating him in the Best Actor catergory instead of Supporting Actor where he probably would have been a lock. I realize that they probably did so because of all the Santo & Colleen flashbacks that took up eons of screen time, but that garbage was incredibly cheesy and the whole convoluted storyline is best left forgotten. They should have just submitted the scenes with him discovering John Black in the basement and then turning his father in, and his scenes with Lexie and Tony where they decide to leave Stefano in his coma-like state.

And the prenoms for Younger Actress make the final choices even more horrendous.


4. Chris left...
Saturday, 3 May 2008 5:57 pm

I'm with Lynn. The issues surrounding daytime are MUCH bigger than who got nominatied for freakin emmys. If it were up to me , i would have done away with the Best Show and Best Writing category, as every soap was wildly uneven last year...and that includes the lauded OLTL. In my opinion NO soap is deserving in those categories.

Also, in reference to OLTL. Its amazes me how a lot of viewers out there speak of OLTL as if it were the Shakespeare of daytime when we all know that most of last year was a train wreck. Now everywhere you read, everyone is raving about its Drama Series nod. Really people? Are you serious? Has everyone forgotten that Jan-Sept of last year happened?

It used to be, prior to LML, that Y&R was the one exception. The one show that resembled soaps of days gone by. But we all know what happened there. And while I think it's improved a great deal, its still a far cry from the show it used to be.

I would like to see the mass hysteria everyone is spending on these nominations put towards something more useful. Writing you local networks and owners of Soaps and let them know we are fed up with the mediocrity they are giving us. Demand better soaps. If the rage and energy I have seen this week were put towards that, we might see something good happen.


5. TV's Tim left...
Sunday, 4 May 2008 11:51 pm

"I would like to see the mass hysteria everyone is spending on these nominations put towards something more useful. Writing you local networks and owners of Soaps and let them know we are fed up with the mediocrity they are giving us. Demand better soaps. If the rage and energy I have seen this week were put towards that, we might see something good happen."

The problem is, we have let them know in the most effective way possible: by not watching. Ratings are down across the board, and the fans have been very vocal about their displeasure, and yet nothing changes. In most cases, the networks simply don't care and see the soap genre as a costly nuisance that they can do without. NBC has made it clear that DAYS is done in 2009, ABC is trying to kill SoapNet dead with a lethal overdose of reality programming (and may cancel at least one soap to make room for another hour of GMA if NBC's TODAY gamble pays off) and who knows what might go down between Procter & Gamble and CBS if the ratings continue to fall. I daresay that most of the execs WANT the soaps to fail so they have an excuse to cancel the whole genre for good and air cheaper programming that they themselves would have direct control over.

What's worse, the people in charge of the shows take valid criticism and complaints and turn them into snide comments and snotty jokes to deflect from the very real issues that are raised. ABC's Idiots-In-Charge are the worst of the bunch, trying justify stuff like brutal onscreen murders and the shooting of children by calling it "romance during wartime" (?!?!?) and other asinine bullplop. Then they point to their Emmy nods and whatever miniscule ratings bump they can scrounge up to justify their incompetence and declare everything hunky-dory before scampering away like roaches to kill off more beloved characters and destroy the remnants of the soap opera tradition while the various shows continue their plummet to the depths of Earth both creatively and financially.

It's very sad and infuriating for many of us, but there's little to be done at this point. Even if the shows did suddenly and miraculously improve, the audience has been driven away and the networks aren't going to help promote the shows properly in order to bring those former fans back. Just think about how obnoxious those "The Real Greenlee" promos were and the fact that those were the result of TPTB "helping" the genre. And since CBS and NBC don't own their shows, it's doubtful that you'd even see any kind of help at all, destructive or otherwise. So the ratings either stagnate or worse, and the shows get s-canned anyhow.

Sad, but true.


6. lynn left...
Monday, 5 May 2008 9:22 pm :: http://www.redroom.com/member/lynnliccar

i've had a couple of interesting responses. i've already responded, and sam ford expects to in a couple of days. so do check back in once in a while. and that's for the connection to red room, where i'll be collecting my posts from hither and yon.