The Effects of 9/11 on Daytime Drama (College Paper #1. Written from Oct 2001-Feb. 2002)
The Effects of 9/11 on Daytime Drama
“The terrorist attacks against The United States on September 11th, 2001 may have forever altered the American way of life. They may have also changed the way that soap operas entertain us.
While big budget movies have been forced to edit scenes or postpone their release dates, soap operas continue to tread onward, providing 45 hours of original episode each and every week. However, some changes have been made in the wake of the attacks.”
-Soap Opera Central, posted Oct. 7", 2001
Soap Operas form an everyday part of life for many, and for some, the characters in a soap can become almost like an extended family. Part of the fun in a soap is the very loose relationship it has to reality. Unlike the viewer, things like rent, head lice, or politics rarely burden the characters on a soap. Their problems are on another level- where people have endless affairs, start/run/lose international corporations, and end threats of global domination. Life on an epic scale. While the viewer can generally assume no psychopath bent on world domination will take over the weather, what happens when our problems, through some unseen course of events, dovetail with the problems of a soap opera? When tragedy strikes, soap operas must decide if the current story lines, which may reflect similar situations, are suitable viewing. In addition to worrying about longtime viewers, the network has a vested interest in part time viewers, and attracting new watchers to the fold. If what you show on your station is wildly inappropriate for the times, you seriously risk the bottom line. In the aftermath of September 11, soaps had to examine their materiel, and make choices about what to do. In the case of 9/11, several soap operas had story lines in progress that needed to be modified or replaced. The two most affected soaps were Port Charles and General Hospital, but most had to make at least small changes. This paper will examine the various effects September 11thhad on the story lines of network daytime soap operas, and by extension, the writers, producers, editors, and actors working on those soaps.
My goal is to focus on the soaps shown on the ABC network, and of those, most greatly on General Hospital, and Port Charles. This is because these particular soaps were affected on a far grander scale than any of the others, and the problems faced by all of the soaps are likely encompassed within the challenges overcome by those two. What were these challenges? To begin with is the decision whether or not there is a need to make a change. Is the story inappropriate? If so, how should it be modified? Should one address the tragedy within the context of the soap? Who gets to decide? All of these are questions that I hope to address in the following pages.
Our first question is this: Who gave the order to change the existing storylines?
According to Soap Opera Central, the decision was made by ABC executives, which should come as no surprise. Bringing in an approximate average of 12.6 million viewers over the course of a day (Soap Opera Central, Posted 02/12/02), ABC is not in a hurry to alienate their soap audience. Having decided that three of their soaps, General Hospital, Port Charles, and One Life to Live, had story lines in need of modification, the question becomes what and how to change.
To understand how difficult this could be, the reader must remember that the writer of a soap opera sometimes plans in advance of a year. Changing the story line means not only changes in the immediate future, but potentially changes much further down the road. The writer, faced with the dilemma of re-writing, would likely attempt to alter as little as possible, so as not to destroy all of their hard work.
This is also practical for the purpose of re-shooting scenes. Under the crunch of a production schedule, and considering the money involved, no one wants to make an already expensive, time consuming problem worse. In the case of ABC, two of their soaps needed major overhauls, so we can safely assume that the fastest, cheapest, and smoothest transition was the goal of everyone involved.
Hoping for a return to General Hospital’s former glory days, the writers and producers of GH put together what was a nightmare for the residents of Port Charles (the soaps fictional town), but hopefully great drama for the viewer. Following 9/11, it became clear that a storyline focusing on world domination through biological terror was no longer “trendy.” In the wake of terrorist attacks, the viewer was more likely to want the comfort of traditional soaps, with romance and predictability, rather than a bio-toxin plot that oh-so-suddenly mirrored their own lives.
“…in the wake of the terrorist attacks against America, General Hospital is prepared to jettison the dark storylines in favor of more traditional soap opera storytelling. According to a set-side source, ABC executives ordered the show to ditch its mobsters, bombs, excessive gunfire and biological warfare storylines as soon as possible. The show is complying, according to sources, but it's been quite an ordeal behind-the-scenes. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a General Hospital performer tells Soap Opera Central that scripts have been re-written overnight and entire storylines have been scrapped. The most noticeable storyline to have been shelved involves Stavros Cassadine.”
-Soap Opera Central, posted Oct. 7", 2001
General Hospital was forced to change a plot that had been building up for over six months, bringing it to a fast conclusion. Only those directly involved know exactly how much was changed, and whether the eventual outcome of the plot was the same, but the viewer is aware of these changes. Once busy characters were dropped with no further mention, the plot for world domination was shifted into a final battle for revenge between two families, and a much-heralded, recently returned character, Stavros Cassadine, was rapidly killed off (I will discuss that in more detail later).
In the end, not only did General Hospital change a long-term storyline, and paid dearly to do it, but on Dec. 23rd they did a tribute. It is pretty well unheard of for a soap to acknowledge the real world in such a direct fashion. While all soaps attempt to incorporate current social issues, such as homosexuality, AIDS, breast cancer, and so forth, they have never referred specifically to an event, so it was a landmark occasion. When discussing the episode, Head Writer Megan McTavish said, “We wanted to say what we wished for the world, what we all need so desperately, which is peace," (ABC Soaps in Depth, pg. 50).
Port Charles was also greatly affected by the events of 9/11. “It is rumored that Port Charles had to edit, re-shoot or scrap approximately 100 scenes related to the explosion storyline,” (Soap Opera Central, posted Sept. 22, 2001). Having just begun a storyline in which a center stage character’s past as a terrorist was revealed, they were forced to re-write an entire storyline.
“As a result of the recent terrorist attacks against The United States, Port Charlesis scrambling to edit some of its storylines. While the show's current book title, Tempted, conjures up images of possible infidelity, there was to be a side story that focused on terrorism. Viewers may recall that in a previous story arc, lan and Eve were presumed dead when a car bomb exploded. That incident was to have been revisited in Tempted, but the network decided that the issue was no longer appropriate. According to an ABC spokesperson, the entire side story will be edited out of the show.”
-Soap Opera Central, posted Sept. 22, 2001
Having recently changed format of the show to resemble Spanish Telenovelas, PCwas in an unfortunate position. Each new storyline (or “book”) focuses on several key characters, while the rest remain in the background. This makes changing the story especially difficult, because rather than having to change only a particular vein of the show, nearly half of the plot had to be re-done. Fans at the time felt the hasty reorganization left the book in poor shape. Instead of two stories, all the characters were shifted into the same plotline, leaving those who were not enamored of it with no place to go.
Usually, soaps operate storylines on three levels. The first is intended to draw in new viewers, the second is to update viewers who have been out of touch, and the third is to provide new information for every day, longtime viewers. When all the characters are involved in the same story, this balance becomes hard to maintain. (One additional change: during the episode on September 17", Port Charlesfeatured the cast holding candles.)
The other two shows on the ABC network were only negligibly impacted. One Life To Live had to make minor plot changes involving a plane crash, which was altered to mere turbulence. All My Children made no change that I am aware of. In addition, ABC posted a warning at the beginning of each of its shows alerting viewers to possible offensive material.
Beyond the obvious difficulty of shifting storylines, what does it mean for the network to trash suddenly old material and re-shoot days of episodes? The studios at Guiding Light, as did most of the New York based studios, closed for the entire week following the attacks. They reopened and began shooting where they had left off, the following Monday, September 17th. Here is a week of time that will had to be made up for, production wise, in addition to the story threads that had to be re-shot. Considering that, as a general rule, soaps are taped at least three weeks in advance, General Hospital and Port Charles had to have been working episode to episode for some time. Since this likely necessitated overtime for all involved, you have immediate additional cost in salaries. Additionally, it must be taken into account that three weeks of work had to some extent been made worthless, so the studios lost money simply because they could not use what had been done prior to 9/11.
To illustrate these problems, I have devised a hypothetical set of circumstances. Let us say that there is a soap named, Love's Saga, that is currently deeply involved in a plot in which climaxes in the dramatic collapse of a high rise, leaving the fate of many of its principle characters uncertain. The soap has been making ominous references to the structural insufficiencies of the building and to the party to be held there for weeks. The collapse of the building is a turning point for the soap, leading to the reconciliation of a long-estranged couple, Jessica and Tom, the down fall of the soap’s evil villain, Jordan, and the possible death of another principle character, Cassandra, which in turn unites two enemies, David and Ryan, in their search for her.
At the time of September 11th, the collapse and subsequent scenes have already been filmed. These must be thrown out. Now the writers and producers ofLove’s Saga need to find a way to take out the collapse without jeopardizing the plans for the rest of the year. First, they salvage what they can from already filmed episodes, such as peripheral scenes not directly related to the collapse. Next, they find a way to address the collapse without much energy, such as a line, said between to characters like, “We actually have to move the party! The building was found to be unsafe. Oh well.” As the weeks pass, Jordan is found responsible for the structural insufficiencies, and is thrown into prison. Rather than Cassandra disappearing in the collapse, Jordan orchestrates Cassandra’s kidnapping from prison, sending David and Ryan after her. Instead of Jessica realizing her love for Tom when she believes he may have died in the collapse, Jessica mistakenly believes Tom is dying of cancer, due to erroneous test results. She realizes she loves him and they are reunited (and after a twist or two, they learn he’s not dying, of course). As you can see, the same eventual outcome occurs in every scenario, each of which involves the same characters the collapse focused upon, meaning that concurrent storylines involving other characters do not need to be changed, which saves time and money. Lastly, the plotlines the collapse set in motion remain untouched. While it’s easy enough to come up a way to fix Love’s Saga in the broad strokes, in practice, we would have to enact those fixes while trying to adhere the same overall timeline and weekly structure. The characters must remain true to form, and re-shoots must be in continuity with the framework around them. Hopefully this example demonstrates the challenge that faced industry professionals as they worked to ensure their soaps were appropriate viewing in the face of 9/11.
As mentioned, none of the other daytime drama were affected as much as the ones on ABC, but the changes that were made are as follows. On NBC’s Days of Our Lives, a planned plane crash was edited out, and on Sept. 17th, the cast members sang “America The Beautiful” to the end of the program. On CBS, The Bold and the Beautiful did not have to alter any stories, but did postpone a planned location in Europe due to safety concerns for the cast and crew. As The World Turns did not make any changes to their planned content, but they did issue warning to their views that the show contained occasionally violent content, and might be objectionable to viewers. Guiding Light is said to have made some content changes, but did not comment on what those changes were. The Young and the Restless was unaffected.
A miscellaneous effect, resulting from the abrupt ending of General Hospital's bio-toxin plot line, known as “Endgame,” was the dismissal of Robert Kelker-Kelly, as the writers were unable to find him another niche in the show. As previously discussed, storylines are planned and led into months in advance. In setting up the bio-toxin storyline, Kelker-Kelly’s character, Stavros Cassadine, was made unredeemable, murdering a beloved character, and generally causing harm. This meant that when his role in Endgame was no longer viable, there was no way to integrate him into the new canvas of the show.
When what might the long-term effects on soaps be? It's impossible to say. It is nice to think that soaps will continue in a more peaceful vein, but it seems unlikely. Networks continue to lose more and more viewers to cable, so while the loyal soap viewer may always be there, the push to grab the attention of a new, younger viewer is still high, and the more daring the plotline, the better the network’s chances.
As time goes by, people will become less likely to see similarities between plot lines and the tragic events of 9/11. When this happens, I believe that soaps and media in general will return to the type of programming that was seen before the attacks*. There can be debate on whether or not the changes made not only to soaps, but to other television shows and film, were unnecessary and that an executive producer in his or her office cannot possibly understand the needs of the public in general, but that is a subject for another paper. What we can say for certain is that September 11th has changed the way people in America view the world, and these changes have trickled through every aspect of our lives, including, rightly or wrongly, the soap opera.
“The long-term impact of the attacks on the entertainment world cannot yet be determined. While changes are being made, no one can say for certain that things won't at some point return to a pre-attack "normalcy." It's also unclear if American appetites will ever crave the type of plot devices and storylines that have been used in recent years.”
-Soap Opera Central, posted Oct. 7, 2001
*Note from 2019. I was right.
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