Soap bubble bursts
As ratings sag, webs eye Hispanics, teens
While the audience for soap operas had been dwindling for years as women ventured en masse into the workforce, it wasn't until O.J. Simpson's trial that the daytime industry stood up and took notice.
"It was a pivotal point. It was something we never fully recovered from," said ABC daytime prexy Angela Shapiro about the trial, which ran from June 1994 until October 1995.
"People who had been watching soaps every day found there were other things to do with their time, and maybe O.J. offered them a better soap opera than they were getting on the networks."
To make matters worse, the televised trial coincided with the Internet boom and the rollout of digital cable, presenting viewers with even more nonsoap options.
Fearing the eventual extinction of the genre, daytime execs have been aggressively pursuing new viewers wherever they can find them. Their two major targets are the relatively untapped Hispanic population -- which has already proven its passion for ongoing serials by the success of telenovelas -- and teenage girls.
"What we're seeing in the soap community is a resurgence of creativity -- people are saying, 'We've got to make this form survive,' " said NBC daytime senior VP Sheraton Kalouria.
Anxious to regain their former ratings glory, in recent weeks ABC, CBS and NBC have launched initiatives aimed at attracting new viewers, specifically those two target auds of Latinos and teens:
- In an effort to woo Hispanic viewers, CBS' "The Bold and the Beautiful" on May 28 became the first daytime drama to offer a Spanish-lingo audio feed. The show also said it would introduce Latino characters, including celebs from the Latin American music and telenovela worlds.
- NBC plans to broadcast both "Days of Our Lives" and "Passions" with a Spanish closed-caption translation for all its affiliated stations, beginning July 9. Hispanic TV talkshow host Cristina Saralegui ("The Cristina Show") and actor Emiliano Diez will be featured in nine episodes of "Passions" this summer.
- Promoting Disney synergy in a drive to reach teens, Hollywood Records' recording artist BBMak and Lyric Street Records' SheDaisy and Kortney Kayle will each perform on one of the ABC daytime soaps during the week of July 2. Kayle will have a short-term recurring role on "One Life to Live" playing herself.
The teenage audience for soaps has dropped dramatically over the past decade. While media buyers purchase ad time based on ratings for women 18-49, teens represent the industry's future.
"Younger audiences are always important to a mature business like soap operas," says ABC's Shapiro. "Once you start to watch, it's like an addiction: You're hooked for life."
In the past, women weaned their daughters on soaps, but with moms out of the house, the tradition is being lost. "Young girls would start watching soaps because their mom had, but now we have to start from scratch," said Lucy Johnson, senior VP, daytime, children's programs and special projects, CBS Entertainment.
The teen-oriented promotional campaigns focus on summer, when kids are home from school and have time to lose themselves in daytime dramas.
Looking at the recent census numbers, the Hispanic audience will also be crucial to the long-term success of soaps. According to the 2000 census, Latinos are the nation's largest minority group among those 17 and younger, with 12.3 million in the demo. The census also found that Hispanics totaled 35.3 million, or about 13% of the total population.
However, according to a recent study by TN Media, Hispanics make up an average of only 4% of the daytime viewing audience (including all daytime shows, not just soaps) and represent 9 million television households, or 9% of total U.S. households.
"There's clearly an opportunity," says TN Media's Stacey Lynn Koerner. "The problem is that Hispanics watch Hispanic TV."
Maybe so, but daytime programmers are hopeful that by injecting the short-term, quick-paced storytelling popular in telenovelas and introducing more Hispanic characters, they can lure viewers from Univision and Telemundo.
Another growing audience for soaps is overseas, where American daytime product often airs in primetime and garners big ratings.
Broadcast in more than 100 countries, "The Bold and the Beautiful" is, according to CBS, the world's most-watched television series, with an estimated 300 million viewers.
In Finland, the sudser receives a 60 audience share, in Australia a 47 share, and in France a 37 share.
"We hear stories about how it's hurting business in Scandinavian countries because everyone is in watching the show," says Bradley Bell, head writer and executive producer of "Bold." "In Africa, people walk 20 miles to get to a television to watch it. In India, 'Bold' airs three times a day and is one of the country's most popular shows."
While there's little chance, in the U.S. at least, that sudsers will ever regain the audience they lost in the past decades, they are still a crucial element of the broadcast networks' business.
In 2000, daytime soaps generated nearly $1.2 billion in advertising revenue, according to Competitive Media Reporting. They're also cheaper to produce than primetime series.
"We do five episodes a week for what might be the cost of one episode of a filmed drama in primetime," said CBS' Johnson.
Shapiro says daytime dramas are "the moneymakers" for ABC.
In fact, ABC is so committed to the future of the genre, it created SoapNet, a 24-hour cable net that features same-day primetime repeats of ABC's "All My Children," "One Life to Live" and "General Hospital."
However, some industry insiders are concerned that SoapNet will only cannibalize daytime ratings and cut into daytime sales revenue. Personal video recorders such as TiVo -- as VCRs did before it -- will only make it easier for people to tape their favorite soaps and skip the commercials.
But, despite the proliferation of threats to their livelihood, daytime execs are optimistic the soap opera genre will sustain itself.
"While immense, the challenges are certainly not insurmountable," said NBC's Kalouria. "If I thought they were, I couldn't come into work every day."
