Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 24, 1993 TAG: 9303240034
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LYNN ELBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
`GENERAL HOSPITAL' TURNS 30
The Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble and prime-time television shows may have the longevity of a lightning bolt. But daytime TV? Now, there's staying power.Fall in love with a typically short-lived nighttime show and your heart is likely to be soon broken. But start dating a soap opera such as ABC's "General Hospital" and you could wallow joyfully in a 30-year affair.
The smoldering looks. The sexual escapades. The simmering rivalries. The illnesses. The angst. The great clothes. Is there more to life?
The venerable serial begins its fourth decade April 1 with the airing of the 7,676th episode. There's a discreet facelift as a birthday gift: new opening titles and updated theme music.
Clearly, a 30-year life span is astounding in a medium where having your series picked up for another 13 weeks can send spirits aloft and prompt giddy purchases in depressed Southern California real estate.
But such landmarks aren't rare in daytime TV, where even "General Hospital" doesn't have dibs on seniority.
"Guiding Light" on CBS is in its 41st year on television (it started in 1937 as a radio program). Marking its 20th year this month is CBS' relative newcomer, "The Young and the Restless," consistently the No. 1-rated soap.
The network itself recently celebrated a major milestone: four years atop daytime's weekly ratings competition.
By comparison, in prime time, CBS has boasting rights when it comes in first in audience viewership for six weeks in a row.
Stack that up against its daytime record of 208 weeks-plus. Historically, that's par for the course for CBS: Out of 35 daytime seasons, the network has finished first or tied for first 26 times.
The current ratings streak is built primarily on the seductive shoulders of its melodramas; just one game show, CBS' "The Price is Right," has managed to squeeze into the season's top 10 list.
In daytime, about 7 million people are watching CBS during any given moment, the network says. Prime-time programming finds about 19 million viewers parked in front of the screen - but hey, are they as loyal?
Overall, daytime programs are attracting an average 35 million weekly viewers, while the prime-time audiences average 101 million per week, according to the A.C. Nielsen Co.
The folks in charge of daytime are confident they know why their Energizer bunny-like shows keep fans hooked.
"Because we're on day in, day out, 52 weeks a year. There's a familiarity and intimacy with the product," said Lucy Johnson, vice president in charge of daytime programming for CBS.
"It's like reading a novel that never ends," she said.
"We're creating an addiction," said William J. Bell, who with his wife, Lee Phillip Bell, dreamed up "The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and the Beautiful."
"It's a matter of getting involved," he said. "You get to know these characters better, at times, than you know members of your own family. You become deeply involved with these people."
And get to suffer and savor their unremitting pain and pleasure.
"The mundane parts of life are clipped out. Everything is just those 10 minutes out of each day, or out of a lifetime, that are frantic or crazy," explains soap opera fan Sue Aicher of New York.
Aicher videotapes episodes of "The Young and the Restless" while at work as a medical college research assistant, then "watches 'em in bulk."
Videocassette recorders have clearly retained viewers who otherwise would have been lost to the work world. Changing with the times is another way of keeping audiences hooked.
The soaps have tackled AIDS, date-rape, sexual harassment and euthanasia, among hot issues. And then there's feminism.
"The demand has grown from women in the audience to make the women on screen more powerful and more in charge of their destiny," Johnson said. "Not that we don't enjoy a good cry, a good triangle, a good unrequited love. It's not so much plot line, not so much about the jobs characters have, but about women wanting to see themselves projected as women of strength."
Here's to lots of lip gloss AND strong females.