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Crossover Crisis

© Sarah Lee

Last week in dealing with evaluating the current state of One Life to Live I had to address the current crossover story it has with All My Children. Crossover characters has become an ABC soap staple over the past ten years or so. From spinning off members of Loving to The City or from General Hospital to Port Charles, ABC has tried to create interest in newer stories, characters, and soaps with crossovers for some time now. Then they really stretched it with the re-introduction of Rae Cummings, at one point a brief character on OLTL who then appeared on all ABC soaps for months as she searched for her mother and daughter. Then said daughter Skye, who had already been moved from AMC to OLTL, ended up on GH (where she actually fits rather well). ABC is not the only network to do this. The companies who produce the CBS soaps have had their own fun with moving characters around. The Young and the Restless' Sheila Carter had move from terrorizing Genoa City to Los Angeles on The Bold and the Beautiful. And long before that, Guiding Light's Mike Bauer became a resident in Another World's Bay City for awhile. This simply isn't new; soaps have never had many qualms about transplanting one character from one soap to another and back again (or sometimes permanently).

But as of late despite crossover craziness, most, if not all, are failing with a huge thud. The most likely reason why recent crossovers have more often than not been an absolute bust is they're done for the wrong reasons. Sure, I think P&G hoped people who had never checked out AW would follow Mike Bauer, but I honestly don't think they were relying on it. Today it is done to shamelessly try to get viewers to sample other soaps from the network or production company. There is little to no thought involved in what this does to the canvas creatively, just what it might result in ratings wise. ABC especially has used the crossover gimmick to help heal their bruised ratings or to sell a character and that is just a backward way of going about it. Rae's crossover wasn't just a crossover; it was cross promotion quadrupled. The whole point was to get attached to the character plus all four shows. It was shameless begging to watch ABC soaps. Of course the main flaw in that plan was that it relied on people caring about Rae. But I don't even know why soaps bother. Not a single stunt is ever going to get soap ratings as high as they were ten years ago for any soap, let alone soaps constantly in the bottom five.

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