Is There a Place for Soap Operas in Today's Society?

With society today being so celebrity focused the genre of daytime soap operas seems to be fading away. The woes regarding fictional Erica Kane of All My Children has been replaced with the real life drama of Angelina Joli. The fascination over mental illness engulfing the life of Viki Lord Reilly Buchanan Davidson has taken a back seat to the real life nervous breakdown playing out in front of the cameras by Brittany Spears. The mysterious life and death storylines of General Hospital is now being played out in the Anna Nicole Smith nonsense.

The dysfunctional lives of everyday people come into play also. Talk around the water cooler is how many men Sholanda had tested to be her "baby daddy" on The Maury Povich Show. Folks tune in to see the unhappy couples spew their personal problems to Dr Phil and of course Jerry Springer is still a hit on college campuses throughout the country.

I find this to be ironic because you can ask a co worker if they watch soap operas and they would reply no so quickly that you feel as if you offended them in some way. But then again that same co worker can tell you play by play what is going on with the lives of the people Anna Nicole Smith left behind, how many children Angelina and Brad had adopted or the rehab adventures of Brittany Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Some still equate soap watching as a pass time for lazy, lonely housewives.

Talk around the internet is that eventually the major networks will do away with soaps altogether. This move will be done to make room for shows that are cheaper to produce like reality and game shows. Many speculate that the network soaps will be making a move to cable television. Soapnet and ABC daytime honcho Brian Frons are planning a General Hospital spin-off called Night Shift to be aired on the cable channel. Some see this as a first step towards the move of soaps over to cable.

You can not find a more loyal fan in any genre of entertainment than a soap fan. The average time frame a soap fan has been loyal to a show is 10 years. With that said long time fans are disappointed in the direction the shows are going. Many long time veteran actors are being fired or back burned, the storylines are disappointing and the newly hired actors are nothing more than breathing Barbie and Ken dolls. It is as if TPTB are ruining these shows on purpose. But we continue to stay loyal hoping that things will improve. I guess you can compare the mindset of a soap watcher to that of a sports fan. By that I mean a sports fan will stay loyal to a team even if the team goes through years of a losing streak.

Yes, I am a soap fan, been a fan for over 25 years. I just hope with the changing times and fascination over real life celebrity drama this genre of entertainment will not fade away.