A REAL SOAP
CLIFF-HANGER



By; Michael Logan

Will NBC cancel its hit soap Days of Our Lives? At press time, such a seemingly insane scenario is looking like a very real possibility. Here's the 411: The soap's contract with NBC is due to lapse in spring 1999, and negotiations between the network and Days' executive producer, Ken Corday, have not gone well. Though neither side will comment, Corday, who co-owns Days with Columbia TriStar TV and openly refers to it as the ER of daytime, is said to be demanding an astronomical licensing fee that would leave NBC little or no profit. The timing for such hardball tactics couldn't be worse: Columbia TriStar recently made a clandestine deal with DirecTV to air Days in same-day, commercial-free, pay-per-view repeats, a move that shocked and rankled NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer and went over like a lead balloon with NBC's 200-plus affiliate stations, which naturally assumed they had exclusive rights to the soap.

Theoretically, Corday has the upper hand: Days is NBC's highest-rated daytime program and, most weeks, the second highest rated of all 11 soaps. However, it has never provided a strong lead-in to the remainder of the network's suds lineup, Another World and Sunset Beach. And Days' Nielsens have dropped dramatically since the fall 1997 departure of its acclaimed head writer James Reilly, whom Ohlmeyer offered -- much to Corday's fury -- a multimillion dollar deal to quit Days and develop a new, NBC-owned soap (it's a young, hip dramedy tentatively titled Passion). The relationship between NBC and Corday has remained strained ever since.

Now, here's where it really gets juicy: On May 28, NBC in essence told Corday to stick Days where the sun don't shine by suddenly announcing a nationwide talent hunt for Reilly's show, even though it has not received an official pickup. Simultaneously, the network let it leak through the industry grapevine that the new soap will be ready to hit the air when the Days contract runs out.

Though NBC might cave in to Corday's demands, it is insisting that the DirecTV deal be terminated. If Columbia TriStar does not comply and NBC replaces Days with Reilly's show, Corday could peddle his demographically desirable cash cow elsewhere. In fact, he may already be doing so: Corday has allegedly told some of his Days stars that he's talked with CBS about a pickup. (CBS would neither confirm nor deny this, but it's well known that Corday had similar talks with ABC when the Days-NBC contract was up for renewal in the early '90s.) If NBC does renew Days, it could spell doom for the low-rated Another World. The network is determined to get Reilly's show on the air no matter what, and it's unlikely that its already antsy affiliates will take four soaps. Though Sunset Beach is even lower-rated than AW, it has become a cult hit with growth potential and is clearly preferred by the NBC brass.




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