Soaps on the bubble

Will Jessica keep her baby? Will Mike discover Mary has been cheating - with his evil twin?

And will Brittany ever find her long-lost father?

For the answer to these questions and more, tune in tomorrow!

The evolution of the daytime serial television show is a long, convoluted story fraught with drama, intrigue, joy and sorrow. The twisting tale of how soap operas have evolved through the years is well … like a soap opera.

And these days, there are more burning questions than who’s sleeping with whom:

Will All My Children and One Life to Live - two beloved soap operas that each broadcast for more than four decades on ABC before being canceled in 2011 amid waning ratings - be able to find new lives and new loves on the Internet?

Will Susan Lucci return as Erica Kane, a role she portrayed on All My Children for 41 years beginning with the show’s debut in 1970? And will she still look freakishly good for her age (66)?

Tune in (er, log on) Monday to find out. That’s when the soaps will be brought back from the dead (a favorite plot twist in the world of soaps) on Prospect Park’s the Online Network (theonlinenetwork.com) via half-hour shows on Hulu, Hulu Plus and iTunes. Agnes Nixon, who created both series, will serve as creative consultant.

Sheila Bernard of Little Rock is a seriously devoted fan of All My Children and its longtime star Lucci. In spring 2011, producers of The Nate Berkus Show found her on Facebook and invited her on the syndicated talk show to receive a makeover, hairstyling, wardrobe and jewelry (which Lucci wore on the show) and a surprise meeting with Lucci.

Bernard, now 58, began watching the show in the early ’70s.

She was 17.

“For me, the appeal was always Susan Lucci’s character Erica Kane. I was very shy and she went for what she wanted and was very outgoing,” Bernard says.

“I remember the first episode I saw her in, she and another character were skipping school and drinking champagne and she climbed up on the hood of this car and proclaimed, ‘After all, I am Erica Kane.’

“I instantly fell in love with the character,” Bernard says. “She became a role model for me and my family used to teasingly encourage me to be more like Erica.”

She’d been watching ever since when, four decades later, the show was canceled.

“I was devastated,” she says. “At first, I said I wasn’t going to watch the final episode. I was angry with the writers; I felt they had destroyed it. Longtime fans like myself could see the writers weren’t doing their research about the characters and had them doing things they otherwise wouldn’t be doing.”

But at the last minute, Bernard gave in and watched that final episode.

She’s disappointed the series’ return online will be a shorter 30-minute show but is reserving judgment.

“I am glad I will get to see the people from it again,” she says. “When you watch a show like this as long as I have, the characters become like family.”

How will she watch the Internet show since she’ll be at work during the day?

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” Bernard says. “Maybe I can watch it on-demand or maybe I’ll have to arrange my lunch breaks around Hulu,” she says, laughing.

Meanwhile, over in Port Charles, General Hospital, the third longest-running drama in American TV history (after Guiding Light and As the World Turns) and the longest continuously running soap opera currently in production, is fighting for its own life on ABC.

The show, dubbed by Time magazine as one of the “Top 100 Television Shows of All Time,” debuted in 1963. Earlier this month, it celebrated its 50th anniversary with producers bringing back many notable former cast members. Fans responded and the show’s ratings soared. Katie Couric hosted an hour-long special edition April 5 of ABC’s 20/20 dedicated to the show and recently appeared on the show in a cameo.

People magazine issued a special edition dedicated to the show’s history and the Paley Center for Media in New York held a special panel on April 12 in Beverly Hills, “General Hospital: Celebrating 50 Years and Looking Forward,” featuring the show’s stars, executive producer and head writer. The sold-out event streamed live via the center’s website. Even with the renewed interest, will the soap be able to entice former viewers back long-term and bring in new ones?

TUNE IN TOMORROW

In 2006, Marianna native Derrick LeMont Sanders, an actor then living in New York, worked as a day player (shop talk for a one-time appearance) on the long-running CBS soap As the World Turns. The Lee High School and Southern Arkansas University graduate also appeared in small roles on All My Children and Guiding Light and last year landed another day player role on The Young and the Restless.

But four years ago, as more soaps were being canceled, Sanders moved to Los Angeles, auditioning for prime time shows.

“I am finally beginning to adjust to the change in market,” he says. “It is a starting over.”

He believes the advent of reality TV and the recession have led to the demise of daytime soaps.

“The cost to produce a reality show is a fraction of the cost to produce a soap,” Sanders says. “Reality shows are basically a cameraman and a producer who encourages dramatic behavior and serves up some of the same outlandish behavior as daytime [serials] do.”

What defines a soap opera? An open-plot structurewith several story lines running concurrently, intersecting and leading to further development.

The first soap operas appeared in the late 1930s as 15-minute daytime radio programs broadcast weekdays. Targeting housewives and moms, the shows were produced and sponsored by soap manufacturers like Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive, leading them to be dubbed soap operas.

By the 1950s, the shows had moved to TV and grown to 30 minutes and by the late 1970s, their increasing popularity led most to expand to a full hour.

Ron Simon, curator of TV, Radio, and Film for the Paley Center, explains the basic appeal of the soap opera.

“It was this unending narrative which pretty much approximated the emotions of real life,” he says. “The core theme is the relationship between individuals, their families, and their communities and the idea that emotions and relationships change over time.”

In 1976, Time magazine declared daytime television as “TV’s richest market” in the nation, thanks to a loyal fan base. While several prime-time shows were losing money, soap operas were bringing in profits several times higher than their production costs.

And that’s pretty much how the world turned. At least until the 1990s.

As original characters on the shows aged, younger generations were added and paired together to create “super couples” to reach a younger audience. Memorable ones from the 1980s included General Hospital’s Laura Webber Baldwin (Genie Francis) and Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary), All My Children’s star-crossed lovers Jenny Gardner (Kim Delaney) and Greg Nelson (Laurence Lau), and The Edge of Night’s Gavin Wylie (Mark Arnold) and Jody Travis (Lori Loughlin).

It worked. High school seniors who got out of school early started tuning in and college students planned classes around their favorite soaps. Those who didn’t have TVs in their rooms gathered around the ones in dormitory lobbies.

“In 1981, General Hospital’s characters Luke and Laura were not only the talk of daytime TV but the talk of television,” Simon says.

But since then, soap operas have declined in popularity. The last new one created was Passions (1999-2008),and many others, some on air for decades, have been canceled, replaced with talk or game shows.

In the early 1970s, 19 soaps filled TV’s daytime slots on the three major networks but by the early 1990s, that number dropped to a dozen. Currently, only four daytime soaps remain - General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful.

LIKE SANDS OF TIME …

The demise of the soaps has been attributed to more women working outside the home, more entertainment options like cable TV and Internet, the advent of reality TV, and a recession.

“In the past, we watched other people’s problems, like divorce, on TV and wondered how we would react in that situation; but now more of us are actually living it,” Simon says, adding that many former daytime producers and writers now work in reality TV.

William Keck, senior editor and columnist for TV Guide, who served as moderator for the Paley Center’s recent General Hospital panel, agrees.

“The appeal of the soaps was seeing beautiful people in horrifying predicaments because it made people feel better about their own lives,” Keck says. “With reality TV, we are now seeing real people and younger people in these predicaments.”

The soaps also suffered from increased competition, Keck says: “When young people in college were watching Luke and Laura, that was before the Internet,” he says. “Now instead of watching soaps, they’re talking to their friends on Facebook or Twitter.”

Will there come a day when the soap opera is completely gone?

“I thought that was what was happening in the last few years and when ABC canceled two-thirds of their remaining soaps by canceling All My Children and One Life to Live,” Keck says. “But I think a lot of people were angry and there was a backlash which led to those two coming back online. It’s going to be interesting to see how that works, if the younger people will be watching and if the older fans who aren’t as technically savvy will be watching.”

General Hospital, which recently had the lowest rating of the four remaining soaps, brought in a new executive producer and head writer a year ago, and they made it their mission to bring back a lot of the old fan favorites that viewers hadn’t seen in years, Keck says. In light of the risein ratings, the show plans to keep some of those veteran cast members on the show.

“They know they’ve struck oil here and they want to keep it flowing.”