Soap Opera Fans in a Lather as ‘Days of Our Lives’ Leaves NBC to Stream on PeacockElizabeth Capobianco flew about 500 miles on Friday for just one reason: to make sure her grandmother can keep watching her favorite soap opera.
Starting Monday, “Days of Our Lives” is leaving NBC after nearly 57 years on the air and is moving exclusively to Peacock, a streaming platform owned by NBC parent Comcast Corp.
Minutes after she heard about the move a few weeks ago, Ms. Capobianco, a 35-year-old logistics coordinator from Charlotte, N.C., called her grandmother, who has barely missed a daily episode since the show began airing in 1965.
“She doesn’t know anything about streaming,” Ms. Capobianco said of her grandma, Sidnee Capobianco, who introduced her to “Days” more than 20 years ago. She offered to come to her grandmother’s Long Island home and set up Peacock on her TV ahead of Monday’s launch. They plan to watch the show’s Peacock debut together.
The announcement last month that “Days” would no longer be on TV was greeted with a mix of shock, anger and resignation by fans, many of whom have been watching it since childhood.
Casey Costello, a 31-year-old freelance musician from Rochester, N.Y., said the show holds a special place in his heart because it was one of the rare things that wasn’t stopped by Covid-19. Because episodes are shot so far in advance, “Days” managed to air a new one every day even at the height of the pandemic.
“I really admired the way they carried on,” he said. “So when I heard they were going to this app, I was sort of dismayed.” He said he fears plenty of viewers will turn on their TV on Monday “and wonder where the show went.”
Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit said bringing “Days” fans to Peacock would bolster the streaming service. The company said it ran a series of ads about the move, and noted that people who sign up for Peacock later than Monday will be able to catch up on any episodes they missed.
Despite declining ratings, “Days” is appointment television for about 1.9 million viewers every day, many of whom go out of their way to watch the show live despite the fact that it airs early in the afternoon. Some even tune in from the office, scheduling their lunch break around the show.
Many fans expressed relief that “Days of Our Lives” wasn’t canceled outright—a fate that befell other prominent soaps, including ABC’s “All My Children” about a decade ago. They see the fact that Peacock is already home to recent “Days” spinoffs as a good omen.
Ms. Capobianco is going above and beyond to make sure the show keeps going. She says she already has complimentary access to the premium version of Peacock through her cable subscription, but decided to create another account for herself—for which she now has to pay—with the hope that “Days” will get credit for the sign-up.
“New subscriptions are really what they are looking for,” she said, adding she knew of a handful of fans who canceled original subscriptions and signed on with a new email—making the most of a special promotional offer—to try to give the show a boost.
Peacock’s premium version has 13 million paying subscribers in the U.S., not including people who get it at no extra cost through cable providers. There is also a free version of Peacock, but that one won’t offer “Days of Our Lives” once the show moves to the premium version Monday.
Set in the fictional Midwestern town of Salem, “Days” chronicles the lives—and romantic entanglements—of people from several families. Hardcore fans will usually root for one family, though Ms. Capobianco said people also love cheering for a specific couple.
“I’ve always been a John and Marlena fan for as long as I can remember,” she said. “They really drew me in back in the day, and they pretty much have kept me coming back all these years.”
As with many TV shows, the “Days” audience has been aging fast. This year, three-quarters of its viewers are 55 and older, according to Nielsen, compared with a little over half back in 2013.
In one of the ads flagging the show’s move to Peacock, Billy Flynn, who portrays the “Days” character Chad DiMera, pays a visit to co-stars Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes to help them set up the service. No need, he’s told: They’ve already done so, and it was a breeze.
NBCUniversal also said new episodes of “Days” would be prominently featured on Peacock’s home page. Watching “Days” on streaming instead of broadcast TV will have upsides, fans say. For one, the show will no longer be pre-empted by breaking news. On Friday, the last scene of the final broadcast episode of “Days” was cut short in some markets by King Charles III’s first speech as British monarch.
Mr. Costello said that early in the pandemic, the show was so frequently interrupted by then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus briefings that he wrote a letter to the manager of his local NBC affiliate asking him to stop broadcasting them.
Mr. Costello also hopes the show, which opens with a close-up of a rotating hourglass, reverts to its full-length theme music once it no longer has to meet television’s time constraints. He occasionally plays it on the piano.
NBCUniversal said there are no immediate plans to go back to the longer intro music. Some fans are speculating the show might get a little edgier as it leaves broadcast television. Bryen Miller, a 44-year-old from Goshen, Ind., said he noticed that “Days” actors who appeared on “Days of Our Lives: Beyond Salem,” a recent spinoff made exclusively for Peacock, occasionally swore, which wouldn’t happen on the main broadcast.
“An occasional swear word in some of these situations makes it more realistic,” Mr. Miller said. Not all “Days” fans are planning to make the jump to Peacock.
Asked what he would do on Monday, Bob Price said: “I’m going to start watching ‘General Hospital,’ ” referring to the ABC soap opera. Mr. Price, a 56-year-old land surveyor from Pittsburgh, said he already has Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video and doesn’t want to pay for yet another streaming service.
Nancy Belden, a 63-year-old from Altoona, Wis., said her 94-year-old mother, who has been watching “Days of Our Lives” daily since its inception, won’t be able to anymore starting Monday because she doesn’t have an internet connection.
“ ‘Days’ was her favorite,” Ms. Belden said. “We even had to schedule doctor’s appointments for her around ‘Days of Our Lives.’ ” When her mother found out the show was coming off TV, Ms. Belden said, “she cried.”
In another of NBC’s recent ads, James Reynolds, who plays Abe Carver on the show, said that when he grew up, soap operas were 15-minute programs on the radio.
“In the ’50s, a new technology came along called television, and soaps transitioned to TV,” Mr. Reynolds said. “It wasn’t an easy change for everybody—some people didn’t have television sets.” He said the move to Peacock is a result of “the wave of the future.”
Instead of having to wait for the daily midday broadcast, people will have access to new episodes every morning, possibly as early as 6 a.m. Eastern time, NBCUniversal said.
John Michael, a 45-year-old bookkeeper from Terre Haute, Ind., plans to make the most of it. “You could watch ‘Days’ over breakfast with your coffee and stuff, and get it out of the way before the rest of your day.”
Source:
Wall Street Journal Monday, September 12, 2022
