NEW YORK -- 'Generations,' the new NBC soap opera, comes in black and white as well as living color -- it is the intertwined stories of a black family and a white family in Chicago.
The half-hour show begins to unfold on Monday, March 27, and the network is feeding it to affiliates so that they can show it either at noon or 12:30 p.m. EST.
Those stations that run it at 12:30 p.m. will be pitting it against the most popular soap on television, CBS's 'The Young & The Restless.' That means that Sally Sussman, 'Generations'' creator, executive producer and head writer, will be competing with the soap she wrote for five years -- 'The Y&R.'
To make room for 'Generations,' NBC cancelled two game shows, 'Super Password' and 'Sale of the Century,' and will return one of those half hours to local programming.
'The reasons are financial,' said Brian Frons, NBC's vice president, daytime programs. 'The syndicated market for game shows has reached saturation levels. The viewer can find game shows all over the place -- on virtually every independent, affiliate, cable or network station.
'The only place you can see a soap opera is on the networks.'
'Generations' is the story of the Whitmores, who are white, and the Marshalls, who are black. Among its stars are some refugees from prime time -- Taurean Blacque, formerly of 'Hill Street Blues,' Pat Crowley ('Dynasty'), Lynn Hamilton ('Sanford and Son') and Joan Pringle ('The White Shadow').
The link between the Marshall and Whitmore families goes back three generations, to the time when Ruth Marshall's mother worked as a housekeeper and nanny in the Whitmore home.
The Marshalls have come a long way and now own a successful chain of ice cream stores, and the families have remained close.
'This show is closer to traditional soap opera than some,' Sussman said, adding it would include none of the eccentric twists the genre has taken lately -- science fiction, fantasy, action-adventure.
'We will concentrate on the family structure, telling basically relationship-oriented romantic stories. Action-adventure is fine for some other shows, but it's not what we're doing.'
Both Frons and Sussman agreed that it was time for blacks to be a core family in a soap opera.
'There are black characters on every soap opera and there have been some very good black story lines,' Sussman said. 'The time has come to go one step further. They have the same concerns and problems as any other families.'
The black story lines obviously will give Sussman a chance to deliver messages without having to reach for them or to seem preachy.
'I think that's very important to us -- we have the situation and dynamics to give a lot of positive messages,' she said. 'We're not trying to create fairy tale situations, but if we can give the audience something positive, from the viewpoint of our characters, that's important.'
NBC also has other reasons for using a black core family. Frons said the audience for daytime drama is about 70 percent women over 18, 20 percent men, and the rest are kids and teens. He said blacks 'are disproportionately high viewers relative to their percent of population.'
The Marshalls will not be discriminated against financially -- just like the white families on soaps they will enjoy a distinctly upscale lifestyle, complete with chic wardrobes, luxuriously decorated homes and sparkling crystal.
'They'll have very nice crystal, indeed,' Frons said.
He said NBC decided to start with a half hour -- although hour-long soap operas are now standard on television -- because the shorter format makes the daytime drama easier to launch.
'We were the first network to start from scratch with an hour-long soap opera, 'Santa Barbara,' and we found we had underestimated the physical problems,' he said.
'It's easier to launch as a half-hour, and we hope -- we are assuming -- that it will be a success. Then we can expand it to an hour in about 18 months.'
Sussman agreed, saying, 'I'm very comfortable with the half-hour. It demands less commitment from the audience, which is a lot easier to get for a half-hour than an hour.'
Both Frons and Sussman refused to describe the show's opening, saying they wanted it to be a 'surprise.' Oprah? Jesse Jackson? Dan Quayle? Tune in, if you want to find out.
