Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live Today
TV Soaps Steaming Up Screen
Aired May 17, 2002 - 14:41 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight is also a big night for daytime television. Daytime Emmys handed out in New York City. And if you are a fan of soap operas, you know that sex sells in these shows. And so do some wacky story lines as well. Beth Nissen has more on the soaps.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tune into a soap opera these days and you'll will see the familiar.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stop talking and take me upstairs.
NISSEN: And the less familiar.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, no. Somebody is casting another spell.
LYNN LEAHEY, "SOAP OPERA DIGEST": Soap operas just have to stretch a bit. Because the same old presumed dead wife coming back from the dead at the wedding isn't going to cut it anymore.
NISSEN: That's because the soaps have been losing viewers. Their mainstay audience of housewives have vanished. Many now work all day, and even those who stay at home are often too busy to devote five or ten hours a week to the tribulations of Bobby, Luke and Laura, or Erica.
SUSAN LUCCI, ACTRESS: Well, then, by all means, go to them. Move on!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't.
NISSEN: The 10 surviving daytime soaps, half the number there were in the '70s, are fighting for eyeballs, especially the younger eyeballs most desired by advertisers. To entice them, some soaps have gone far outside the traditional soap box.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, damn that demon!
LEAHEY: "Passions," they have a doll who came to life. They have a witch on the show. On "Port Charles" they had a vampire story line. And they've really delved into the supernatural, and they still are.
NISSEN: Even the venerable "Guiding Light" had a key character who was cloned a while back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not Annie. My name is Reva -- Reva Shane.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So are you ready to push the envelope a little?
NISSEN: The top-rated soaps still rely on the more traditional plots: boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy cheats on girl with girl's mother.
Yet even these soaps are picking up the pace, turning up the heat. As on "Bold and the Beautiful," where a woman has become pregnant by her daughter's husband.
LEAHEY: Other soap operas have told that story, but you'll see her five months pregnant in these torrid sex scenes.
NISSEN: Soaps know sex sells. So do storylines that echo prime time successes. Like "Law and Order," watch "Young & the Restless." Like "ER," watch "As the World Turns." Like "The Sopranos"? A key "General Hospital" character is a mobster. The actor who plays him is also one of several new generation soap stars who is Latino.
LEAHEY: There's a huge Hispanic audience out there that the American soaps would love to tap into.
You can lure that audience to the American soap operas if you have characters that will appeal to them.
NISSEN: Seeing the inroads made into daytime by topical talk shows, soaps have more storylines dealing with real social issues.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm gay.
NISSEN: Sexual orientation, breast cancer, drug and alcohol abuse. AIDS.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am not HIV-positive.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, you slept with someone who was. So there was a definite chance. Look, man, just get yourself tested, OK?
NISSEN: For all the focus on better, grabbier plot lines, the key focus is on better profit-grabbing bottom lines.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm taking back what's mine.
LEAHEY: What soap operas are realizing now is if they're going to maintain their business, if they're going to stay alive, they have to find other sources of revenue.
NISSEN: So networks are marketing products based on the soaps.
LEAHEY: You can buy the engagement ring that Leo gave Greenlee. You can buy Greenlee's comforter from "All My Children." NISSEN: ABC is getting more mileage out of its soaps by re- airing them at night on the fast-growing cable network, Soapnet. Soap producers have high if distant hopes that someday soap fans will be able to download their favorite daytime dramas on-line, on demand.
And they say there will be continuing demand for what all soap operas deliver daily: stories about relationships, whether between regular mortals...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Damn it, Erica, I'm in love with you!
NISSEN: Or the alien and the undead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I love you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No more!
LEAHEY: Soap operas have always been about romance. People have a hunger for romance. There is an audience out there for love stories. There always has been and I think there always will be.
NISSEN: The trick now, give a greater and younger audience more to love. Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HEMMER: Good luck tonight. We shall see.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
