Starting Sunday, December 2, SOAPnet will begin airing movies at 10pm ET. Let's see... movies on an all "soap opera" network? Makes sense, right? NO! Like many fledgling cable networks, SOAPnet lured us in with the promise of classic telvision (in this case "Ryan's Hope"). They encouraged fans to write to their cable companies and demand that SOAPnet be added to our lineup. When the network added beloved "Another World," the campaigning for SOAPnet reached a fever pitch. But over the past few years, something has gone horribly awry. "Another World" was canceled. The airing of "The City" and "Ryan's Hope" was reduced. And the network is overrun with non-daytime soaps like "The O.C." and "One Tree Hill". As a fan, I don't like it. I feel like I've been suckered yet again, like I was with Game Show Network (now GSN) and TV Land and many others.
If by some stretch it can be reasoned that "The O.C." is a soap, there is absolutely no reasoning that a movie night is anything but a slap in the face of viewers. Will it be long before SOAPnet becomes Young Women's Network and forgets soaps altogether?
Excellent post. The first time I saw the promo for "Sunday Movie Night" on Soapnet, it just made me sad. As opposed as I was to the addition of One Tree Hill and The OC (and I still don't see how you can air a show like The OC, which didn't even quite make four whole seasons, five days a week), at least I could kinda, sorta see it, in that at least they're serialized dramas. But movies just have nothing to do with the genre at all. You're right, Soapnet will just slowly turn into a generic women's entertainment channel.
ReplyDeleteI'm continually baffled as to why cable channels are so eager to "re-brand," and scrap the very format that made them so appealing to begin with.