Raineypark wrote:
>>a problem that afflicts every other current Soap and most television these days: too many perfectly perky and pretty people...Lately, Soaps, in particular, have been ditching their oldest and most beloved (by a certain segment of the audience) long-term characters in order to get and keep a younger audience. I'm not naive...I understand that like most things in life, TV is all about money and money requires a specific audience make-up. But in the pursuit of the right demographic, tv today has tossed overboard a very significant part of storytelling: The Character, who knows the secrets, tells the tale, provides the moral, remembers the past and already suspects the future.....there are some extraordinarily talented and stunningly beautiful young people working out there right ....but I do believe that an unrelenting diet of pretty faces is no substitute for the banquet a show like DS provided: some beautiful, some not, some young, some not, some very talented....well, no comment (!) and all supporting one another in the common task of telling the tale.<<
You're so right, Raineypark! Of course, soaps (and all TV dramas/sitcoms) are fantasy, even if some try to throw in "realism", done for entertainment, and being fantasy they are populated by performers who look "more than normal". Yet, facts and figures prove that something is just not working, despite efforts by TV corporate execs to please that "demographic". The ratings are low. The Young and the Restless is today the highest rated TV soap and it can't command six million viewers. Naturally, things like cable options have cut deeply into the major networks, but I believe that the attempt to make everyone who appears in a show one of the "beautiful people" does not work. With everyone looking like some Vogue or GQ model, there is no variety - soon they all begin to look alike. So what would be a draw?
Let's be honest about DS - it was populated by "normal people" just like us. We all know there were some knock-outs, especially among the female cast, but what viewers cared about were characters, not cut-outs. Today, DS is the only soap which survives in syndication, still commanding millions of viewers, both old and new. Other than on the Soap Channel, can we find ANY of the other soaps, both retired and recent, re-airing anywhere on TV? All those beautiful people, and no one is interested in seeing them in their roles again. That says something.
Gerard