Daytime soaps are in peril and it just may be that prime-time is riding to the rescue.
While soap opera audiences continue to dwindle, SoapNet, the Disney-owned cable channel devoted to sex-and-suffering serials, is embarking on a mission to revive the genre in the evening hours.
In a bid to lure new fans as well as to goose the performance of daytime soaps, the network this month will begin production on its first original drama, "General Hospital: Night Shift," a spinoff of the long-running daytime show premiering in July that will serve as a weekly companion to the ABC series.
"Night Shift" marks the first time a daytime soap has spun-off a nighttime counterpart.
The show is being described as an episodic medical-mystery drama -- think equal parts "General Hospital" and "House" -- starring one of the mother ship's hottest new couples, Drs. Robin Scorpio and Patrick Drake (Kimberly McCullough and Jason Thompson) as resident physicians on the Saturday night shift.
Will it flat-line?
It's a risky operation: Although SoapNet will save in production costs by using some of the same cast, crew and sets as "General Hospital," the TV landscape is littered with prime-time's soap opera casualties.
Rookie channel MyNetwork TV last fall gambled its launch on a pair of telenovelas, a sort of limited run prime-time soap format, and flat-lined. Ditto "Monarch Cove," a weekly format tested out by women's network Lifetime. Newer daytime entries, including "Sunset Beach," "General Hospital" spinoff "Port Charles" and NBC's soon-to-be-canceled "Passions," have also ended in short-lived runs.
Meanwhile, daytime soap audiences continue to fall. Year-to-date ratings for the nine afternoon serials are down 4% versus the same time period in the previous year. Among the key women 18 to 49 demographic, figures have fallen 6%.
But SoapNet is hard at work on what it hopes will be the remedy. "Night Shift" will not only feature existing characters from "General Hospital," which is on a ratings high following the show's February hostage crisis story line, it will also expand the focus from a soap's trademark tangled web of romance to include the patients and their illnesses.
"We're hoping to attract not just lapsed fans but viewers who aren't hooked on a soap yet," said Jill Farren Phelps, executive producer of "Night Shift" and "General Hospital," and a 20-year veteran of producing daytime serials.
