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Daytime Budget Cuts

Sara A. Bibel

2008 is remembered as the year American institutions collapsed, leaving Wall Street decimated and the automotive industry circling the drain. Though it had a cultural rather than economic impact, the American daytime drama also found itself in danger of dying an ignoble death by year’s end. As someone who has been part of the daytime television industry as a fan, writer, and blogger, it was like watching a beloved family member slowly succumb to a terminal illness.

I began the year marching in endless circles with my fellow striking writers. A month before our strike started, I was cut from ABC’s All My Children (AMC) after my trial deal. It was humiliating and disappointing to lose my dream job before I even had a chance to prove myself.

Earlier that year, I was let go from CBS’ The Young and the Restless (Y&R), the show that had become a second family to me. At first, striking perversely seemed like an improvement on unemployment. I had some place to be every morning. I got to know the writers of ABC’s

General Hospital (GH), as well as primetime and film writers. The Grey’s Anatomy (ABC) cast bought everyone pizza. But, rather than end after a couple of weeks, the strike kept going and going. Daytime shows continued to be produced, written by a combination of scabs and writers who resigned the union and went fi-core. Writers who go fi-core effectively resign from the union, though continue to pay dues and receive union benefits. This allows them to continue working during strikes. An increasing number of writers decided that a paycheck and saving their jobs were more important than the union.1

Unfortunately, by the time the strike ended, the shows had learned an unfortunate lesson: they could be created by smaller writing staffs without significant ratings declines. When it 2

finally ended, shows used the strike as a way to get rid of writers who had fallen out of favor.

Worse, CBS’ two Procter and Gamble Productions/TeleNext shows, As the World Turns (ATWT) and Guiding Light (GL), and AMC opted to eliminate the breakdown writing position, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. As someone who has worked primarily as a breakdown writer, I know how much of the actual story and show structure comes from this position, whose main role is to structure the show, creating a detailed scene by scene outline of each episode.

Losing this layer of writers will do long-term damage to the genre; indeed, it may have contributed to GL’s eventual cancellation. The shows seemed to recognize this was an error; as

GL’s run concluded, news surfaced that two of its writers would become breakdown writers for

ATWT.

Meanwhile, NBC’s Days of Our Lives (DOOL) was on the verge of cancellation. In

January 2007, NBC Entertainment president Jeffrey Zucker announced that he planned to discontinue the show when its contract expired in 2009. DOOL struggled with budget problems for years, in part due to an ironclad contract with Jim Reilly which forced the show to keep paying him after he was fired, and even after he died. The show languished in the ratings, as new head writer Hogan Sheffer’s storylines failed to engage the audience. During the strike,

Executive Producer Ken Corday opted to replace Sheffer with former head writer Dena Higley.

After the strike, he was stuck paying off Sheffer and all the other writers that were fired. This put a further strain on the bottom line. The show’s internal problems were exacerbated by alleged conflict between Higley and Executive Producer Ed Scott. Corday opted to replace Scott with

Gary Tomlin. Finally, after months of negotiations, the show was renewed for eighteen months in November. The catch was that the budget had to be cut by 40 percent. The first casualties: prominent stars Mary Beth Evans, Stephen Nichols, and Thaao Penghlis, and the iconic Diedre 3

Hall and Drake Hogestyn, who played the respective roles of Marlena Evans and John Black.

Numerous other actors on the show agreed to large pay cuts.

NBC also cancelled Passions in 2008, after moving it to an exclusive channel on satellite provider DirecTV. Some hoped that this experiment would prove that a small cadre of loyal fans could keep a show afloat. Unfortunately, NBC and DirecTV determined that it was simply too expensive to keep producing Passions for such a small audience, although the experiment paved the way for the critically acclaimed primetime show Friday Night Lights to split its production costs between the two companies by airing first on DirecTV and then on NBC.

The network’s daytime problems were the result of decades of mismanagement, leading to consistently bad decisions. One prominent example was NBC’s 1970s expansion of Another

World (AW) to ninety minutes, making it impossible to maintain the show’s quality while producing a greater volume of material. Then, in the 1980s, NBC allowed New World to fire

Santa Barbara’s creators just as the show’s ratings were starting to rise. Subsequently, Santa

Barbara’s ratings fell and never recovered. The network then canceled this critically acclaimed soap (my all-time favorite) in 1993 and replaced it with game shows. Several years later, the network launched Sunset Beach – another soap set in Southern California. The show was consistently the lowest rated soap; however, when the network decided to cancel a soap to make room for Passions, they chose to keep Sunset Beach and cancel AW, a show that had been on their lineup for decades. One problem is that NBC’s daytime line-up performs better in smaller media markets than in the big urban centers where NBC owns stations. ABC has the opposite viewer profile, doing well in the places where it owns stations. As a result, NBC has less of a financial incentive to promote and invest in its soaps. However, DOOL’s ratings have risen, and 4

the show was consistently ranked second in key demos by mid-2009. As of this writing, it appears that DOOL has improbably saved itself.

The outlook might be particularly bleak for the future of the genre on NBC, but the situation hasn’t been much brighter for the other network line-ups. Elsewhere in this book,

Patrick Erwin looks at the changes that were put in place at GL in light of the budget crunch and

GL’s eventual cancellation on CBS, while the network’s other shows have been tightening their taping schedules, eliminating longtime actors, and casting an increasing number of parts to non- contracted roles.

Meanwhile, things are no better for the Disney/ABC Daytime soaps, which should theoretically be most secure because the network owns its three soap operas directly. Even

SOAPnet, the Disney-owned cable network dedicated to the soap opera genre, turned its back on daytime in 2008. I was thrilled when the channel launched, envisioning it as a showcase for classic episodes that would honor and uplift the genre. I imagined a line-up of classic episodes,

Entertainment Tonight-style news about the genre, and original soap operas. Instead, since the head of ABC Daytime took over the channel, it has veered away from soap operas and toward becoming a lowbrow, general interest women’s channel. For instance, the second season of the network’s GH spin-off General Hospital: Night Shift received tremendous critical acclaim on

SOAPnet, yet it has seemed unlikely the network will eventually pick up a third season. Also, in

2009, when CBS declined to air the Daytime Emmy telecast, SOAPnet seemed like the obvious home for the show. The channel was not asked to air the telecast itself but declined to air a red carpet show or a rerun. The awards instead eventually landed on the CW Network, which has no daytime television line-up. SOAPnet’s new programming instead included Sunday night 5

telecasts of old movies and a variety of reality shows. Although none of the new shows did well in the ratings, it seems clear the network is preparing for the post-daytime television universe.

On top of NBC’s struggles and SOAPnet’s move further away from traditional daytime soaps, a Portfolio magazine article caused major waves at the beginning of 2009 by implying that the soap opera was an endangered species and breaking the news that daytime’s biggest star,

AMC’s Susan Lucci, agreed to a substantial pay cut (Lidz 2009). Soaps have been quietly cutting actors’ salaries during contract renewals for several years. When it happened to Lucci, it generated headlines in the mainstream entertainment press. GL went through similar across-the- board salary cuts several years ago, and it seems that every show will experience significant cutbacks during the time of this book’s publication.

Recently, The Young and The Restless started demanding that its highest paid actors take paycuts before their contracts expired. Melody Thomas Scott and Jess Walton briefly left the show before agreeing to work for lower salaries. Sony also took a hard line with Eric Braeden, allowing him to walk away from the show for weeks until he agreed to a substantial reduction in his salary. There is speculation that Sony took note of DOOL’s ratings growth after the departure of Hogestyn and Hall and concluded that veteran actors are expendable.

Though talent may be the most publicized focus of budget cuts, these measures affect every aspect of a daytime drama, from the writing team (as I mentioned earlier) to the sets. These budgets have been slowly declining since the 1990s. Falling ratings transformed the shows from extraordinarily profitable entities that helped keep the networks in the black to loss leaders. With significantly lower ratings, daytime ad revenues dropped significantly. The networks responded by cutting the shows’ budgets. In the late 1970s, GH allegedly generated one quarter of ABC’s profit. Now ABC is but one piece of the Disney empire, and GH is a show with fewer revenue 6

streams than many of its other properties. Gone are the lavish sets and location shoots. Popular actors can no longer count on near seven figure salaries – standard for almost any actor in a successful primetime series.

What do these budget cuts actually mean for the production of these shows? When I worked in the production office at Y&R, we went through a less extreme belt tightening. Like any long-existing business, there were some genuine inefficiencies. People were accustomed to doing things in a certain way and didn’t adopt newer, better technologies when they became available. I was shocked to learn that Y&R, and most other soaps, employed script typists well into the 1990s even though there was affordable, user-friendly screenwriting software available.

During “my” budget cut, logical improvements included switching from Polaroids to digital cameras for continuity photos (used to make sure actors’ hair, make-up and wardrobe match throughout multi-episode soap days), saving thousands of dollars a year. Less pleasant was the end of annual cost-of-living salary increases for much of the staff.

In daytime, actors, writers, directors, and producers are paid very well relative to the average American. Most of the crew is unionized but hourly, which guarantees them a solid middle class salary as long as they work enough hours. Those who work in the production office

(assistants, production coordinators, receptionists etc.) do vital work. Their salaries are low, especially for Los Angeles or New York. Some of the staffers are recent college graduates who are hoping to move up the ladder and understand that entry-level positions in the entertainment industry have terrible salaries. Nevertheless, plenty of people have chosen to stay with shows that they love for many years for the equivalent of junior secretarial salaries. Actors who make

400 grand a year can afford to take a 25 percent salary cut without significantly altering their lifestyle. They also have the ability to pursue additional income opportunities, including guest 7

starring on primetime and public appearances. People who work sixty hours a week for $30,000 a year can’t afford a pay cut and don’t have the time to work a second job. The result is that talented and ambitious young people who could be the future of daytime are going to flee for greener pastures.

Soap wardrobe departments make good use of Loehmann's and department store sales, but it wouldn’t be plausible to outfit characters who are supposed to be millionaires in clothes from Target. The same holds true for the sets themselves. I used to fantasize about living in Cruz and Eden’s Santa Barbara beach house. I can’t think of a single newer daytime set that is similarly visually enticing. Nor can I recall the last memorable soap couple’s love song – music licensing fees are expensive, as is hiring a composer to write something original that the show owns. Television is a visual medium. Production values matter. Good storytelling does not require a lavish location shoot in Rome, but a bedroom is often necessary.

Budget cuts also mean that shows have less time to tape each episode. This is bad for the actors, who no longer have time to rehearse scenes. Further, the condensed schedule means viewers can forget about seeing fun party scenes and big weddings. They take all night to shoot.

Shooting an episode in eight hours instead of ten means no overtime for the crew. That’s great for the bottom line but lousy for the staff who counted on that income.

One of our mandates on Y&R was to minimize the number of set moves – the sets that changed from one episode to the next – because it takes significant time and manpower to move them. If we could go a whole week without any moves, no stagehands were needed – and they didn’t get paid. This trend is why viewers are driven insane watching characters have private conversations in the middle of crowded restaurants and sex scenes on living room couches. It is also why GL moved to standing sets. 8

I realize that, in order to survive, daytime must find a way to deliver high quality entertainment for far less money, especially since talk and court shows are less expensive forms of programming that have proven popular with the daytime audience. In 2009, I visited GL and watched the non-union crews tape actors at lightning speed, both on tiny, standing sets and on location. After an incredibly rocky start to its new production model, the show improved dramatically in its final few months on CBS. I’m beginning to think its model just may be the future of daytime. Another strategy might be to include persuading actors to take large pay cuts in exchange for the freedom to pursue other projects. DOOL’s ratings have held steady despite firing two of its biggest stars, indicating that shows may not need all of their veteran actors to maintain their audience. These ideas are the opposite of what most fans would say that they want, but daytime shows are facing a tough choice: change or die.

With SOAPnet apparently out of the picture for bringing new life to soaps, the Internet is another possible delivery system for daytime dramas. CBS streams all four of its soaps on multiple Web sites hours after their broadcast airing, and Y&R does particularly well, ranking in the top ten shows for time spent online as of December 2008 (Nielsen Online 2009). GH episodes are available on ABC.com, and DOOL episodes are available at NBC.com and for purchase on iTunes. Given that soap opera fans are incredibly active online, this approach seems strategic, but it’s been difficult to monetize Internet television viewing, especially with the impact of the recession on advertising revenues. If the genre has any hope of surviving, it must find a way to become profitable through a combination of broadcast airings and on-line streaming.

Sara A. Bibel is a soap opera writer and author of the “Deep Soap” column on Fancast (http://www.fancast.com/) since May 2008. She was a member of the 2006 Emmy award- 9

winning writing team for The Young and the Restless, where she wrote from 2003 to 2007, and has also written for All My Children. She started watching soaps as a child during the 1980s.

1 For more on the writers strike, see Metzler’s essay in this collection.