Intrigue, Lust and Merchandising
The parents anxiously await the DNA results on their switched-at-birth child, a missing woman miraculously stumbles into her own funeral, and a teenager discovers her mother hid an Internet Web camera in her boyfriend's apartment.
Welcome to Soapland. The never-never daytime world where everyone looks great whether they are comatose, locked up at Statesville prison or getting married to the evil twin. Yet, even as a character is in the midst of falsely confessing to murdering a daughter's lesbian lover, it is hard not to notice that her house, her clothes and her jewelry all look marvelous.
The dedication soap operas engender in some fans has as much to do with the fabulous fashions and divine decor as the sometimes ludicrous plot twists. Fans keep tuning in, day after day, some for more than 30 years, watching such characters as Erica Kane of ABC's "All My Children" wind through nine marriages to six different men. (Her real soap name should actually read Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick. )
Think of all those engagement rings.
The market potential of this zealous fan devotion has not gone unnoticed. Network television stores are putting aside the traditional logo coffee mug and T-shirt because the real money, it turns out, is in allowing viewers to create their own piece of the TV towns of Salem, Pine Valley, Llanview, Port Charles and Harmony.
ABC debuted its Shop the Soaps feature last summer in "All My Children's" steamy Pine Valley by having the character Dixie Martin wear a "wishing star" necklace. The first commercial break directed viewers to ABC's Web site, informing them they could own their own wishing star necklace. The necklace, along with three other pieces of jewelry featured on the show, drew respectable sales on ABC.com and on the Home Shopping Network, which handles customer service and merchandising for ABC.
Before Dixie could be saved from a mysterious death under questionable circumstances, the Shop the Soaps line was vastly expanded. Now viewers can purchase items showcased on three ABC soaps, such as a pair of 14-karat gold, faux-diamond drop earrings for $69.95. If the "One Life to Live" story line is any guide, these earrings are a must if one happens to find out the baby one was told had died during childbirth is alive and living in one's home as an adopted son.
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