I know it was a 3 p.m. ritual for me back in high school; race from the bus through the neighbors’ backyards to get home so I could plant myself in front of the TV in time for General Hospital. It was the height of the Luke and Laura saga and I couldn’t miss a minute. My mom watched with me. My friends watched with their moms. This was emotional, moving drama at its sappy best. We kept tissues at the ready.
Now I hear the tradition of the daytime drama may be fading away. Last week, the Guiding Light, the longest running soap (it actually started out on radio) announced that it will wrap production forever early next fall.
This turned out to be especially unfortunate for Northampton Community College’s TV and Radio Department whose students have traveled for the last several years to New York City to go behind the scenes at Guiding Light. This year I had the privilege of being invited to join them and I planned to tell you all about the experience in this blog. So, I was surprised to learn one day before our scheduled departure that there would be no tour of the set—the tour was just cancelled with no promise of re-scheduling. The official announcement had not been made yet, but that very night Brian Williams delivered the sobering news to America.
An insider relayed that this is just the tip of the iceberg—that the future of the entire genre of serial soaps is in jeopardy-perhaps literally, as it is reported that soon cheaper-to-produce game shows will take the place of the soaps. Shockwaves are rattling through the community of actors and production types.
It does make sense though. Who is home during the day anymore? And if you are home with children, there are just so many other things to do:
· Mommy and me classes
· Play dates
· Educational, and not-so-educational, computer games
What mom today cares about what’s happening between the cheating Mrs. Gotbucks and the gardener, when she could be Twittering while the baby’s napping?
And there are also many more dads home these days with their kids. I can’t see any of them wanting to pop the top off a cold Michelob Ultra to the sounds of the theme of the Young & the Restless.
Not to mention that people seem to be creating and living enough of their own daytime drama, as life just gets crazier and crazier.
This, for lack of a better word, episode, in our media history will probably play out as just a nostalgic commentary about how media has changed over the years. It seems inevitable that parts of that history will be sad.
Pass that box of Kleenex, please.
**Stay tuned for details about what we did do and see with NCC that day in NYC.
