Amen!

Sara Bibel of Deep Soap wants to have an intervention for As the World Turns and I'm all for it! I agree completely with what she had to say and wanted to share it:

I’d like to stage an intervention for a soap opera. As the World Turns is widely rumored to be slated for cancellation in 2010. But that doesn’t mean it needs to lay down and die. Just a few years ago ATWT was daytime’s prestige show, dominating the Emmys if not the ratings. In the 1960s, it was America’s most popular soap, drawing ratings that today would rank it above most primetime shows. Now, it barely seems like a soap at all.

ATWT has embraced the concept of shorter term arcs, with many storylines that only last a few weeks. Characters come and go before the audience has a chance to emotionally invest in them. The numerous recasts of core characters have also alienated viewers. The show often does away with cliffhangers, clinging to the obviously erroneous notion that viewers have short attention spans and want self-contained episodes. Guiding Light made the same mistake, but realized the error of its ways. The show seems focused on characters a lot of viewers find annoying — Paul, Meg, Dusty, while other have little to do. Executive Producer Christopher Goutman has stated in interviews that he doesn’t believe people will watch soaps five days a week anymore. The show these days reflects that defeatist vision.

I say: snap out of it! Try harder! The show still has one of the strongest casts in daytime. All it needs is to return to a traditional narrative structure, and come up with a few good plots. Two years ago NBC announced it planned to cancel Days of Our Lives in 2009. After radical budget cuts and a lot of questionable creative decisions, the show turned itself around and is no longer on the chopping block. If Goutman and headwriter Jean Passante aren’t up for the task, there are legions of experienced currently unemployed daytime producers and writers who are. It would be a shame if the world stops turning because nobody is willing to make the effort to save it.

Name the date and place, Sara, and fans by the hundred will show up to give the show some tough love! Or maybe to lock Goutman and Passanante up in an abandoned warehouse (their own speciality!) until people who actually have some talent have taken over and saved the show. Whatever works.