Radio: Daytime Classics

Radio may have to change the stock answers which it has given to critics of its daytime serials. It has always reminded such critics that they may not like soap operas, but some 20,000,000 U.S. women do. But last week a critic who had to be listened to (Hooper survey’s Dr. Matthew N. Chappell) confronted the networks with some cold serial facts and an intelligent reading of them:

From last May through October, when the tire and gas situation was keeping people at home, the daytime serial audience expanded 13% over 1941. But the audiences of all other sponsored daytime network programs (on at nonserial periods) expanded an average 44%. Moreover, serial listeners have spent 20% less time listening to them since last June than they did in the same months of 1940.

Daytime serial characters are invariably trapped by troubles, struggling with frustration and failure. This rationalization of defeat was avidly received by the people for whom it was devised in the early depression ’30s. It is out of step with the mood of a wartime U.S.

Dr. Chappell’s conclusion: If the amount of sponsors’ products sold is any indication, the daytime serial is “just about the greatest molder of attitudes, beliefs, ideas, convictions and behavior of women that we have in our society. . . .” But if the 60-odd daily soap operas hope to regain and increase their popularity, they will have to find a new formula.

That all is not well with daytime programming was tacitly admitted by CBS fortnight ago. For nighttime fans, CBS sets aside half an hour one night a week (Monday 10:30-11 E.W.T.) to display some of its daytime wares. Purpose: to get more daytime listeners.

From now on nighttimers will be offered samples of such daytime “classics” as Big Sister, Second Husband, Bachelor’s Children, Joyce Jordan, Pepper Young’s Family. CBS Critic-Author Gilbert (The Seven Lively Arts) Seldes, spent a fortnight listening to “every bloody thing” on the daytime networks before choosing 14 of CBS’s daytime serials to offer night listeners. Says Seldes: “Our daytime programs are beyond criticism—socially speaking.”