Don’t bet against soaps yet

Some media pundits would have you believe that the soap opera bubble is about to burst, that a long writers strike could be the death of the daytime serial.

Are the days truly numbered for “Days of Our Lives”? Will “The Young and the Restless” not get the chance to grow even older? Is “As the World Turns” about to stop spinning?

Cue the melodramatic music, and cut to a commercial break.

But anyone hooked for any length of time on a soap opera can tell you it’s not wise to trust pronouncements of doom and despair. Begun on radio during the Depression, the daytime serial has survived for more than 75 years.

“The reports of the soap opera’s death have been grossly exaggerated,” says Michael Logan, who covers the soaps for TV Guide.

“These shows are troupers. They have endured and prospered over the decades through changing times, changing media, changing viewing habits, societal changes and an explosion of competition. It’s an incredibly durable form, and it’s a little premature to be writing its obituary.”

Leading the crowd of doomsayers is author and TV historian Robert J. Thompson, a professor of communications at Syracuse University.

Thompson says that if the strike called by the Writers Guild of America drags on for months, it “could be the final nail in the coffin of soap operas.”

Daytime soap ratings have been in decline since the 1980s, and if a strike eventually forces them off the air, the networks will replace them with talk shows and game shows, Thompson predicts.

“Once they take them off and find they can do as well with things that cost less, that will be the end of this incredibly inefficient programming structure,” he says. “And if they dismantle that structure, I don’t think anyone is going to put it back together.”

But many experts believe soap producers will do everything they can to keep their shows on the air.

“Everybody learned a real lesson during the Oliver North hearings and the O.J. Simpson trial,” says Lynn Leahey, editorial director for the magazines Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly. “The soaps were pulled off the air during that coverage, and the ratings did go down.

“Some viewers didn’t come back, so the people in the business know that the key is stay on the air: Whatever it takes, stay on the air, because viewers are accustomed to seeing original episodes every day.”

Thompson says the soaps will be struggling when they run out of original episodes in January or February. But Logan and others counter that the writers strike of 1988 lasted 23 weeks, and the soaps stayed on the air throughout the dispute.

Who will do the writing?

“They’ll obviously be operating with some scab writers, who will include everyone from production assistants to network executives to producers,” Logan says. “Every one of these shows has a fairly large backstage company intimately acquainted with the material.”

Producers certainly will be writing more when the backlog of new episodes runs out, and there are reports of soap writers notifying the Writers Guild and crossing the picket lines.

Even if the strike were to last for months, it’s foolish to single out the daytime soap as a prime candidate for extinction, says author and TV historian David Bianculli.

“It will take a lot to kill the soap operas,” says Bianculli, who runs the Web site tvworthwatching.com. “The audience is extremely loyal and tolerant. The pattern of habitual viewing will keep soap operas going.”

Brian Frons, daytime programming president for the Disney-ABC Television Group, believes it’s a mistake to place too much emphasis on the ratings.

Those numbers don’t account for viewers who time-shift with DVRs, download episodes on the Internet or watch daily repeats on SOAPnet, the cable channel he also oversees, Frons points out.

“I don’t think there is a television programming form that doesn’t have lower ratings now than it did in the ‘80s,” he says. “The truth is that if you look at total viewing for the eight soaps still on broadcast, five out of the eight are up from this time last year.

“There always will be an appetite for soapy drama,” Frons adds. “That won’t go away. Look at how many prime-time-dramas and reality shows use soap opera elements and techniques.

“If you look at SoapNet, we’re showing things like ‘The O.C.’ and ‘One Tree Hill,’ which are soaps.”