Like sands through the hourglass, so go the soaps of our lives.
This month ABC killed off “One Life to Live” and “All My Children.” All eyes were on the obvious suspect, ABC Daytime president Brian Frons, who joined a long line of CBS and NBC execs who have been bumping off shows like “As the World Turns,” “Guiding Light” and “Another World.” He told Deadline.com he “pre-entered the witness protection program” before bringing down the ax.
But a good soap needs a twist, a nefarious power behind the dastardly deed. The ultimate villain, lurking in the shadows, is . . . collective bargaining.
The soaps’ failure, and the rise of the cheap reality TV shows that will replace them, is just the latest episode in a story that was old when “Days of Our Lives” hit the air in 1965. Whenever a business is bleeding, there’s often a union holding a bloody knife and a dazed “Who, me?” expression — like 6-year-old Michael Myers in “Halloween.”
Unions drive up costs and customers flee to non-union competitors like JetBlue or imports like Toyota. GM and American Airlines declare bankruptcy and renegotiate union deals.
The soaps are effectively an industry heading for bankruptcy, and even union members realize it.
In the last decade, soaps have been trying to cut costs to the bone. But those bones are covered in the impenetrable gristle of AFTRA (the daytime actors union), WGA (the writers guild), the DGA (directors) and the backstage union IATSE.
“One Life to Live’s” diva Robin Strasser, who started a hilarious Twitter feed to swat at the network for canceling her show, says that in recent years, “The actors took huge pay cuts. Our directors, people who have won DGA awards, cut their salaries back to DGA minimum. They took a bullet for the team.” But costs can only be cut so far. Union minimums and benefits are set in stone.
Soaps are “certainly not expensive by other entertainment gauges,” says former producer Michael Laibson, a leader of the creative teams at “All My Children” and “Guiding Light.” But “they don’t pay the people [on reality TV] the same kinds of wages. The acting, the above-the-line costs [for creative talent] are much higher on soaps. Generally, on a soap there are about 30 actors that are under contract so they have a guaranteed number of performances per week and a guaranteed salary per performance.”
Union super-minimum wages lead directly to high unemployment. AFTRA requires each of the main performers to be paid at least $913 a day, but stars get much more.
Seventeen Writers Guild jobs disappear when the two ABC soaps go dark. They aren’t getting paid in Palmolive, either. Head writers (of whom there might be more than one) get at least $35,345 a week. Writing expenses are minimal on reality, which the WGA hasn’t successfully penetrated yet.
Soaps still have fans — category leader “The Young and the Restless” reels in about 4.6 million viewers — but the speed with which the soap audience has been both shrinking and aging has caught the networks by surprise. In recent years, says Strasser, “We were told we were safe.” In 2009, “All My Children” moved from New York to Los Angeles to save on set costs and “One Life to Live” took over the “All My Children” production space on West 66th Street.
Says Strasser, “People pulled up roots, took their kids out of school with the valiant belief that it was being handled.” Everyone settled in, figuring the network wouldn’t move two patients it intended to smother — which it did less than two years later.
Are the soaps like the US textile industry — doomed to be killed by cheap competition?
Not really. The soap industry is highly skilled, and “Days of Our Lives” is a more polished product than “The Biggest Loser.” Soaps are more like airlines. The value of their product has dwindled rapidly, but unions don’t provide flexibility for trimming costs to keep up. Since soaps aren’t a separate industry, they can’t use bankruptcy as a wedge to reopen contracts and make cuts. An AFTRA source who didn’t want to be identified says, “We’re certainly mindful of the challenges the industry faces,” although not mindful enough to back down on their main goal: “We want to increase pay and benefits for our members.”
Hundreds of IATSE members are going to be out of work. Even unionized reality programs like ABC’s upcoming soap replacements “The Chew” (Mario Batali cooking show) and “The Revolution” (a “Biggest Loser”-style weight-loss show) will bring far fewer jobs in makeup, costumes, set moving, etc.
Maybe renegotiating the daytime serials portion of the contract would have beaten layoffs. But from the unions’ perspective, any concession sets a dangerous precedent. If they take a hit on daytime, isn’t that an invitation to cut prime-time contracts? So unions will continue to shrug at reality and the marketplace will continue to punish them.
At some point, union cost differentials become so absurd that productions get outsourced. Showtime’s “The Borgias” was shot in Hungary. China was happy to not only host production of the remake of “The Karate Kid” but to write a large check for the opportunity.
So what’s next in soapland? “General Hospital,” Frons told Deadline, is safe “for the time being,” meaning it’s being fitted for a toe tag. Fans are “enraged,” says Soap Opera Digest editor Stephanie Sloane. “There’s myriad emotions here. They care about the story lines, they care about the characters. They’ve been watching for the entire run of these shows.”
Now there are only four daytime soaps left. Cable networks can’t afford them. “Will there be soaps on the air by 2020? I can’t say with certainty,” says Sloane.
As befits a grande dame, though, Strasser is making a dramatic exit. “I’m kicking up dust on my way out to pasture,” she says. “I’m good, I’m very comfortable. And I’m still 20 years younger than Betty White.”