DAYTIME TRYING NEW TECHNIQUES TO DRAW YOU IN.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

Nearly 50 years ago, television soap operas were a housewife's best friend.

In between doing laundry and preparing dinner for the family, the lady of the house could tune in to tales of romance and family squabbles, love triangles and lost loves.

Seemingly, everybody watched them.

But times have changed. Increasingly, today's women spend their time in school or at work, talk shows rival soaps for outrageous can-you-believe-it shockers, and cable gives viewers many more places to look for entertainment.

While even the viewer-tracking A.C. Nielsen Co. says it's hard to compare today's TV audience with that of nearly a half-century ago, it's clear that fewer people are captivated by daytime drama today.

In May 1953, with only three soaps on the air, the No. 1-rated ``Search for Tomorrow'' drew viewers from 4.6 million households - 22.6 percent of all homes with a television set turned on, according to Nielsen records.

Soaps' popularity continued to grow. In 1969-70, there were 19 daytime serials - an all-time high - on the air. By November 1981, when the teen-age Laura Webber married rogue Luke Spencer on ``General Hospital,'' soap analysts estimate 30 million people's lives ground to a halt as they watched.

Nielsen provides no individual ratings figures for the two days the wedding aired but says an average of 14.7 million people - viewers in 42 percent of homes where TVs were turned on - tuned in during that whole week.

But from such a pinnacle of popularity, where was there to go but down? The number of soaps on the air began to dwindle, and gradually, fewer viewers tuned in.

By May 1998, ``Young and the Restless,'' No. 1-rated among 11 daytime dramas, was pulling in 6.5 million viewers - but those viewers accounted for only 6.7 percent of the total households with television sets turned on, according to Nielsen.

Many blame the O.J. Simpson criminal trial in 1994 - and the networks' pre-emption of fictional daytime drama to air the real-life courtroom drama - as a harsh jolt of reality for soap opera audiences.

``Soap operas are an addiction,'' said Mimi Torchin, editor in chief of Soap Opera Weekly magazine. ``And during the O.J. trial, there were people who found that they weren't going to drop dead if they didn't see their soaps - and they felt kind of liberated. It's a sign of the times.

``Soap operas are a form that take a great deal of commitment, and we just don't have that time anymore. Most people, I think, tape them but don't have the time to really watch. And after a certain amount of time, if you haven't kept up, you've lost interest.''

Soap producers desperately trying to hang onto their hard-core viewers - and lure new ones - have been upping their quotient of evil twins, back-from-the-dead villains and ever-in-peril ingenues, mixed generously with stories of demonic possession, space aliens and natural disasters. But the ratings have barely budged, even for a big soap event that, 30 years ago, would see college students cutting class to watch.

New soaps introduced during this era of declining viewer interest have suffered greatly.

Two new daytime dramas that premiered in 1997 are consistently the lowest-rated in the Nielsens. NBC's ``Sunset Beach'' steadily places No. 11 in the current lineup of 11 soaps. And ``Port Charles,'' an ABC spinoff of venerable ``General Hospital,'' regularly ranks No. 10.

It's hard for viewers with limited time to get emotionally involved in the lives of characters they don't yet know, Torchin said.

``And if you don't care about what you're watching, you have no stake in it,'' she said.

Still, NBC hopes to involve viewers in the lives of four New England families on a new soap, ``Passions,'' penned by soap guru James Reilly (formerly head writer for ``Guiding Light'' and ``Days of Our Lives''). Set to air beginning July 5, it's now casting and will film in Studio City.

The show will replace ``Another World,'' which will cease airing June 25. ``AW,'' which hit No. 1 in the ratings in 1973-74, today usually hovers at No. 9. The show, which has been on the air since 1964, was the first soap to expand to one hour, and was the first daytime drama to give birth to spinoff series - ``Somerset'' and ``Texas.'' Neither show caught viewers' attention for long; both disappeared after a few years.

Ironically, the antidote to a drop in daytime soap viewership might be a second dose late at night.

In mid-January 2000, Disney, which owns ABC, will begin a 24-hour channel for soap opera fans, featuring same-day rebroadcast of the four ABC soaps (``All My Children,'' ``General Hospital,'' ``One Life to Live'' and ``Port Charles'') as well as episodes of vintage ABC soaps and movies ``with special appeal to this audience,'' said Anne Sweeney, president of Disney/ABC Cable Networks. The new service - described as the soap fans' equivalent of sports-oriented ESPN - will be carried on cable and satellite distribution systems.

The all-soaps channel test-marketed well during a six-month trial last year in Chicago and Houston, giving die-hard soap fans a double dose of daily doings, luring in lapsed viewers and enticing new ones, said Sweeney. And the idea of airing old soaps got a broadcast tryout in spring 1997, when ABC gave its daytime ratings a boost by airing past highlights from ``All My Children,'' ``One Life to Live'' and ``General Hospital,'' including Luke and Laura's wedding.

Judging from those responses, there's every reason to believe soaps will always be a popular medium, said Michael Logan, TV Guide's soap opera writer.

``The human race digs the cliff-hanger, digs the continuing story,'' he said. ``I think it's very pivotal: Whodunit? What happens next? Every day, it's an unfolding chapter.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--2) The 1981 ``General Hospital'' wedding of Luke and Laura, above, drew about 30 million viewers, while the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, right, eroded the audience for soap operas.