A-Damn-Men! This should be submitted to the soap magazines to print. This is very important, what you're saying. It keeps getting worse every day. I'm glad you wrote this.

Jamey, I with you, the genre is dying and the execs that think that the youth will be here to save it is wrong on all counts. I do think the the older generation and mid range is so disenfranchise with this industry that they are tuning out because they are not be putting money into the pockets of idiots that don't care about them. I am so over the youth that it is not even funny anymore. The older crowd is more entertaining than the youth anyway. It is also the writing for the youth and the older generation on soaps have to be good or the fans will tune out. They are not dumb and stop acting like it.

siomonstuart2003

Thank You for speaking the truth.

This is an excellent summation, Jamey. You totally get it...now why can't execs who are freakin' PAID to figure this out get it? Makes ya wonder....

I've been watching soaps since I was a little kid back in the 50's with my Mom.(I remember so many "first days" of the ABC soaps- that tells you how OLD I am! LOL) My daughter watched with me- and still watches the ones that don't piss her off too much for their stupid writing & storylines.

Why TPTB act like we (dare I say "older viewers")are worth nothing is beyond my comprehension.....we ARE the steady ones without, as you so aptly put it, "a liquid fast attention span". Maybe its a sign of the times...an aging boomer generation wishing and hoping and thinking they are still young....or perhaps its the younger ones not wanting to face their inevitable aging...I dunno. This society sure as hell worships youth, of that I am sure. Wisdom, knowledge and experience are nothing compared to youth & beauty. What a shame as the balance is what makes life interesting.

Anyhow..sorry for the rant...just want to say thanks for DC! Great article, certainly food for thought!! You guys totally rock!! Keep up the good work!

HALLEUJAH JAMEY !!!!!!!!!

YOU HAVE SPOKEN THE TRUTH , THIS NEEDS TO BE POSTED ON A BILLBOARD NEXT TO THE ABC, CBS & NBC STUDIOS

"... Grandma... doesn't want to watch a 40-year-old man, who got off for killing, raping and or running over the town sweetheart, romance someone who looks like her 14-year-old granddaughter."

________________________

LOL! It's funny because it's true and oh so very sad!

Applause. And yes, do send it in, Jamey because you hit the nail on the head. I would much rather watch characters with history on the screen instead of the teenybopper set.

Yes, GH brings on newbies that come from heritage families, but I still don't care. Not if the writing isn't there for them.

I would much rather watch the Qs deal with the fact that Michael is in a coma becuase of his parents and the fight to gain custody of him while dealing with the fact they they have another relative in Jake. That would bring up Tracy messing with Alan's will. I would love to see Jason pulled back into the Q fold to protect what's Jake's unitl the boy is old enough to decide what he wants to do with it and himself.

I would rather watch the Qs five days a week than Sonny Corinthos getting another child that he won't pay attention to.

I would rather watch the Scorpios in a storyline dealing (really dealing) with Georgie's death instead of watching Sam run around PC sticking her nose in something that isn't her business only for Jason to have to come save her sorry self later on.

Come on. When Georgie was killed, Maxie should have been running around PC trying to bring it to it's knees, and Robin and Mac should have been there to pick up the pieces. Robin's baby should have been the a catalyst for Maxie's healing as well as being about Robin being HIV+ and pregnany instead of being all about Patrick's daddy issuse and comedic filler.

Not to bring down the sister show, but I shouldn't have to watch Night Shift to get hospital backstabbing, romance and intrigue. I shouldn't. It should all be apparent on GH itself.

I know that Spixie has a huge following. But I'm not one of the followers. I probably would be if they're was a real story instead of the mess there is now.

I'm a Liason fan, but a Liz fan first. Why aren't she and Jason together? He's a mobster and she's a nurse. There's ten years of history there. They have a child together, there's chemistry and so much story there they would both be knee deep in it for years.

It makes no sense why the MORONS in charge over at GH haven't capitalized. Even some of those who don't like the idea of Jason and Liz can see the potential in story. Instead we have to watch the Zaccharras who I could careless about, and the craptastic paring of Jolu.

It's been said before, and I'll say it again. It's ego. It's not about what the fans want anymore. It's about what the they think the fans want, and I for one am tired of beind told what I should like, and having what I should like being shoved down my throat.

AlexB, I with you about the what you said about GH. This soap is an icon and will probably be around long before the other two soaps because of the history and the fanbase, but the way they are doing with the show and I don't know if the soap will be around much longer. Guza and Frons has totally destroyed the essence and history of GH that older and newers fans love and longed for that I just don't care about GH anymore. Thats the way I am feeling about Gh. These two idiots have destroy my love and desire of the old school type GH that was back in the day. I dont think ABC cares about daytime soaps because it is not making the bucks like Disney channel and the prime time shows is. I at the point that this industry will be gone by the end of 2011.

siomonstuart2003

I just remember when I first started watching soaps their were CLEARLY defined triangles. We knew their was going to be a struggle and that we would eventually see the right people together.

Now it's about what the writers want to see and how they have ADHD when it comes to romance. They want the viewer to agonize rather than giving them what they want. It should never be like this.What happened to everyone meeting in Kelly's? If you were a couple, you met and ate at Kelly's. Not now. Couples don't even go on dates on the show anymore. They are just kept in secrecy. It's sad.

we don't need more young characters. We need more romance and more declarations of love. We need to see couples together rather than having sex in a office or a couch.
"I wish I could back to the time where romance was alive and growing and then followed up by a bullet to the head of a enemy"

ITA WITH YOU ALEX B

GH is my favorite soap of all time i have been watching it since i was about 9 years old with my grandmother and i tune in every week to watch the people i grew up with.

I am a huge liason fan, i don't understand why guza does not let this couple have a happy ending they have been in each others live for so long, now they have a kid and they are still not together

If they put their mind's to it and stop phoning it in everyday they can give liason such great stories to play out. They can give everyone great stories.

dear bob guza and brian frons,

STOP BRINGING UNECESSARY CHARACTERS AND USE THE ONES THAT YOU ALREADY HAVE.

who cares about nadine and aunt raylene ?
who cares about sonny's other son?
who cares about the russians?
who cares about the zacharras?

what happened with the quartermaines?
where's bobby?
how could you burn down kellys?
where's alexis?
are you gonna address alan's will?

STOP REPEATING THE SAME STORY LINES OVER AND OVER.
FIX THE WRITING ALREADY.

Bravo, Mr. Giddens! Bravo!

From your pen to Frons' desk! Other than GH I watch only 1 show on ABC and that is Grey's Anatomy. GH is rapidly approaching the status of unwatchable for so very many of us.

How can we get our voices heard, our preferences known? Writing letters doesn't seem to have the desired effect. Do we have to stop watching entirely and risk having our show canceled in order to make an impact on Frons and his suits? I wonder if they care as long as they can point to favorable numbers. Let's face it, if Frons cared at all about viewers he would have reined in Guza a long time ago.

as someone from that coveted demo I will tell you soap watching is not a priority for me, the only reason I actually watch oltl is because it's on when I get up to pick my neice up from school and I don't want to start a movie and then have to pause it.

The only thing I can't do without is my music, I can get my soap fix via youtube,blog or message boards and at times it is more invigorating. Most young adults I know of barely watch broadcast tv, not with cable and demand channels, free movies/tv online and youtube.

on a sidenote Jamey have you seened the youtube video of the guy dancing to beyonce's single ladies video if you haven't you must check it out, it seems people are more interested in letting their own star shine nowadays.

Great job, Jamey!
I agree with all you said!

Jon

Ya know I love Jamey... but I just fell in love with you a little more.

Jamey, can you please stop dissing Passions? The show's over now. Let it go.

Hum.. okay fine because AC is the one above me who brought it up i will tackle passions.

Meh, It really didnt even have its 'super couples' none of them were ever really together.

Theresa and Ethan were the 'big' couple on that show (and i guess you could say Luis and Sheridan pre ruining of the characters were as well) but i do agree they are not 'super couple' worthy if they were to be compared to the hay day of DAYS and its many super couples.

BUT if we are going on a show by show bases then Passions at least had a couple worthy of rooting for, who on GL is there to give a crap about? or on DAYS right now??????? (talking about new couples not Josh&Reva/ John and Marlena, Bo/Hope)

The problem is we are all looking for 'super couples' now and they don't exist anymore, the super couples are gone, they don't exist anymore and we just need to quit trying to 'create super couples' and just create chemistry filled romances and actual reason to tune in 5 days a week to these messes they call 'shows'.

Anyways thats my mini rant for the moment lol.

I'm sorry but Passions was a dismal joke. It had a few okay moments early on, but overall it was a ghastly display of bad acting, ridiculous writing and obscene plot points and this is coming from someone who was a huge fan of James E. Reilly's work on Days of Our Lives. And no, I will not stop writing about it, because this is a soap opera site. It's no different than my still writing about Another World, Santa Barbara or Loving, except that in my opinion, it was an example of bad daytime drama. That in no way, shape or form minimizes anyone else's love for the show. You have your opinion, I have mine and I am sorry, in my opinion, that trainwreck of a show, complete with tacky correlations to a real life, beloved princess's shocking death and a man having a child with his biracial, hermaphrodite, offspring wasn't worth losing Another World for.

Oh yeah, the Princess Di thing was tacky!

Jamey, your right about Passions. It was dismal but we should keep talking about it. We should talk about it until THERESA gets a job. She deserves it. You can't tell that she wouldn't fit in on GH or ATWT or anywhere? She is the best thing that came out of Passions and she deserves a job. I want and need her tears on my screen as soon as possible!

"I wish I could back to the time where romance was alive and growing and then followed up by a bullet to the head of a enemy"

Jamey, of course it was worth loosing another world you get me posting here because of it! i mean that has to be worth.....ummm well maybe i should have to pay you .....nevermind stop reading now.

Yea the princess di thing wasn't the best move in the world but I really didn't think it was 'THAT' bad, it was two scenes and the episode is on youtube to watch if you want.

I do think it had its problems, there is no doubt about it, and i do think there needed to be some cast changes (like a Miguel that was at least as good as the first), and i do understand it being the mockery of the industry, it just sucks lol.

The show had potential to be a really good scifi based soap, Passions Vendetta (for the most part) was a really good summer storyline, yea it had its flaws (the end and the rewrite of the end to name one of the points, + the whole harmony plotline sucked during that time), but it was still a 'okay' show, and at least no one was paying bills or folding clothes .....crap okay so at least it.....ummmm.... the last year was horrid so i can't think of really one good thing to say about it at the moment lol.

Passions does have its fans thou, but I would rather you speak your mind Jamey and have me come in here shacking my head saying 'oh silly Jamey leave Galen alone' then you censoring your self.

I know I let soaps that almost NO ONE HERE watches effect my writing, i will go off on talking about how Max and Stacy on Eastenders is a STAX i want to watch, or how screwed up the HIV+ pregnancy was on GH and how Home and Away could have done a amazing job if the actress hadn't quit.

Long post short: Passions is over, Jamey don't censor your self, Eastenders Rocks.

Amen Jamey, on everything.

ssjohn, I actually liked several members of the cast, definitely Lindsay, a soap should snap her up tomorrow and I even realize the appeal of Galen. I loved Justin Hartley and just might have tuned in more regularly had Reilly given up the "Ethan/Theresa" crap and had Theresa go where the chemistry was, but overall I think Reilly just flat out forgot what good storytelling was with this show. I am all for the supernatural, if done right, i.e. Dark Shadows, Days' Devil Possession storyline and the first arc with Caleb and Livvie on Port Charles, but Reilly, may he rest in peace, went bat shit crazy in the last few years of that show. And it wasn't just the supernatural. It was all the horrible, obscene storylines with that one girl being raped and beaten repeatedly by her boyfriend, Julian's penis being cut off, etc. It became atrocious. And what bothers me the most is it NEVER came close to the ratings of Another World or Santa Barbara, which NBC did nothing to save, but they pulled out all the stops for this show. All things considered AW should still be on the air right now. I guarantee it would be higher rated than Guiding Light, and the strength of two shows with long histories would still give NBC soap fans a fighting chance. What is really upsetting is that Dena Higley TRAINED under Reilly, yet learned nothing, good or bad. Her writing is just, blah. It's nothing, no storylines, nothing to shock or cause outrage or disgust even, it just...is.

Well, all of you Passions bashers can sit and spin, and then take pleasure in the fact that you're driven me away from this site for good. Congrats.

Jamey i completely agree with you, i only came into passions right before he completely lost it, I watched the first 60something episodes on Scifi and fell in love, then tuned in to see the whole Rome adventure and was still in love, then he completely lost it, i firmly believe the moment he made Little Ethan, Ethan's son the show went to crap lol.

I never saw Theresa when Justin was on, but from the pictures i have seen Theresa and Fox were hot together, and Fox wasn't the only 'potential' couple destroyed at Ethan's alter.

There was a storyline that came at the end when Theresa 'finally' gave up on Ethan with Jared Casey (played by James Stevenson who is my dream cast as Eric Brady on days lol).

They were amazing together, but because JER was so gun ho on E/T he sacrificed Jared and screwed around with viewers for another year until the final episode.

((Here is a montage of Jared and Theresa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLkaeiUnCL8))

I never got to see AW, i kept debating weather or not to watch the soapnet reruns but then it was pulled and made the decicion for me.

I just looked it up and AW was canned with a 3.0, holy crap.

Passions stayed around a 2.0 and dropped around a 1.7 for the final season(nbc).

I can't argue about the actual 'need' for passions vs. the other soaps, it sucks that they had to be killed, but I can't not give some credit to JER for at least bringing me into this industry.

Here is one question, knowing the way soaps are 'screwed up' today, do you think DAYS should have ended instead of AW? ((Days was at a 5.8 dang...))

I do not think that the genre should cater for the youth. I agree with you there. However, I am a teenager. And what you, and many soap execs arent realizing or stating, is that we like the older generation characters. if they actually want to keep us, they shouldnt fire people like Dierdre Hall or Drake hogestyn, those are the people that keep us watching. I almost quit watching All My Children back in 2006 when Vincent Irizary was fired. This year when Michael Knight was in contract negotiations I was ready to quit if he left. They are not only losing older viewers when they get rid of these vets, they also lose people like me, the people that they want as viewers. I think that people my age do watch Ugly betty and the other shows listed, but look at a show like Grey's Anatomy. Its wildly popular and the main male character (McDreamy) that keeps teens watching is in his 40s. Shouldnt that scream something to daytime? An all time favorite male actor in movies is George Clooney, that constantly makes the all time sexiest male lists... Would movies get rid of him because hes too old? No, those people are the types that draw us in, and the same goes for daytime viewers. When shows get rid of people like Genie Francis, it makes just as many people my age tune out as it does for the older generations. I personally find the writing awful for many teen storylines as of late. They were better 5 years ago. Yes I have only been watching for 11 years (since I was 6 years old), but even I can see the trends in getting rid of the vets leads to unhappy viewers and a drop in the ratings. We just want good soap, well written, character driven soap. People need to be connected with a history and family. Why do they think that a dominant teen setting will bring in people my age and that will benefit them? I know that I dont.

SHUT IT DOWN!!! Shut it down Jamey! Look I've always said this from the time I started watching soaps back in the 80's when I was a tyke (I'm an 80's baby deal with it.). I never was into the "teen storylines," growing up, it never appealed to me or related to anything I was deal with. Back then I wanted to watch what the adults were doing and not the kids because the teen scene sucked big time. I'm still in that age range that the soaps are trying to land and quite frankly I can do without the shit they are ramming down my throat. I'm going to quote what my older sister always says about the soaps, "Give me back the good old days when everyone was sleeping with everyone and the core families!" I don't want some chick that just came from a Clearasil commercial dominating my tv screen! I don't want to see witches and wizards flying around the set! I can watch Bedknobs and Broomsticks for all that shit.

You know even with all the ranting i have done here i haven't even touched on the subject of Teens in soaps????

See I may not watch US soaps for the teen storylines, but thats because they all suck from the writing to the acting (most of the time) its just horrible.

But they can be done right, Home & Away and Hollyoaks prove that to me every single day.

The problem is US Soaps love sterotypes and to push that sterotype until we dont care anymore.

Well UK/Aus soaps treat them like 'real' teens, they are not written as 'stupid' idiots only used because they are cheap, most teens are not just tossed on the front burner.

They also know how to cycle the cast around so you are not completely sick of character A-b-c, you get to see X-Y and Z as well.

Are teens needed in us soaps? Yes but they just need to improve, ATWT had a good start with Parker and Liberty, they went a little crazy with them but they are better then that Melanie on DAYS, and OLTL teen cast has really grown and become a good set of characters i care about.

I have been saying these same things for the past ten years. Catering to the kids is not working and it won't work. They have the entire CW network to watch and a bunch of other primetime shows geared toward them. Soaps did so much better back in the mid-late nineties. GL had just gotten Reva back and so her, Josh, Alan, and even Buzz had lots of airtime. Days had John,Kristen,Tony going on and later John and Marlena reuniting. ATWT had John, Lisa, Lucinda, James and Barbara actually in a couple of stories.John and Maime the couple that should have been on Y&R. Jill would use the word delusional about 8 times a show, and I will always think of them when anyone says that. The Emmy winners in 1996-Lead Actor Charles Keating, Lead Actress-Erika Slezak, Supporting Actor-Jerry Ver Dorn, and Supporting Actress Anna Holbrook. They even had a lot of airtime and everything. I was a teen at that time but I could go on for days about how much I loved those characters.

Hi Jamey,

I agree with you 100% and I like to add that whoever thinks that actresses over 40 can't get anyone under 40 watch them, they can kiss Jeanne Coopers 80 year old lips. For the last two weeks, that woman has glued me, a 34 year old woman, my 28 year old sister, and all of my co-worker who are mostly under 40 glued to their television. My 15 year old cousin can't get enough of Jeanne cooper these days. That woman just proved that young people can watch anyone at any age if the acting and writing is good. Period.