Carol H Tucker Passionate about knowledge management and organizational development, expert in loan servicing, virtual world denizen and community facilitator, and a DISNEY fan
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beladona Memorial Be warned:in this very rich environment where you can immerse yourself so completely, your emotions will become engaged -- and not everyone is cognizant of that. Among the many excellent features of SL, there is no auto-return on hearts, so be wary of where your's wanders...
This morning I ran across an article about ABC [which is now owned by Disney Enterprises] cancelling two very long-running soap operas -- All My Children and One Life to Live. The announcement, which states: "Iconic shows All My Children and One Life to Live will broadcast their final episodes in September 2011 and January 2012, respectively; series will sunset in a manner that honors viewers and the shows’ creative legacies" can be read here
Time was when the afternoons were devoted to the soaps... Grandmom Hughes was not into afternoon TV and neither was Aunt Blanche, but Grandmom Riley was a devoted and consistent fan -- no one called her between 1PM and 4PM becuause that was the time "the stories" were on. She and my mother both settled in front of the TV in their respective homes, sometimes while sorting laundry or ironing or sewing, to watch The Guiding Light, General Hospital, As the World Turns, and Days of Our Lives. When Aunt Nell was off work, or when I was home from school, we joined them. Whole conversations revolved around what was going to happen next and of course, since I wasn't a regular viewer, I had to be filled in on the different characters' histories and how the relationships were interwoven. When Mom went back to work [I was in high school], she would call her mother for regular updates on what was happening in the stories. As a teenager, I started watching Dark Shadows when I got home from school and quickly became a fan until that show was cancelled -- it triggered an interest in vampyres that has lasted a very long time too although I never followed either Buffy or Twilight. And as things happened in my own life, I sometimes threatened to run away to New York and start writing for the soaps by just telling my own story and that of my friends -- my pen name was going to be Veronica Riley...
Those days are long gone. They belong back in the early days of TV, back in the 1950's and early 1960's when women were pretty much always home even while the kids were at school. For many years, the audience for the soaps has been both aging and shrinking.
When I was a homemaker I started watching for a time, but quickly realized that they were not shows to have on TV with inquisitive little ones about! It was a story line in Days of Our Lives, and Trish was about to be molested by her step-father -- in typical soap fashion, nothing really was being shown and it dragged out for a week with him walking towards her and her crying and Tom [who was about 3 at the time] looked over from where he was playing and asked "why is that girl afraid of her daddy?" I shrugged and the show was immediately turned off and I never watched again. It was just too much trouble to set up the VCR every day to tape the program and hard to find time to watch it if I did tape it -- my husband wasn't likely to want to watch it in the evening after the kids went to bed. For a while I kept up with what was going on by reading the TV Guide synopsis, but just lost interest. And of course, when I returned to the workforce, I wasn't going to worry about daytime TV! My daughter never got into soaps. The closest thing she had was Sex in the City, but that too is gone.
Daytime TV has changed radically now that cable has expanded our choices. If I am home, I am more likely to veg out watching something like a Top Chefs marathon or America's Top Models, or put on the Discovery or History or CNN channel or pop in a DVD and watch my movies then I am to look at tired game shows and old soap operas. But as I read some of the blog posts and other articles remembering watching soap operas with mothers and grandmothers and it was nice to remember back when times seemed simpler....
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