One Story to Tell: The Problem was NEVER the Story

I haven’t really watched Sesame Street since about 1987.
Well — that’s not entirely true. I know I watched a few episodes when the boys were younger.

And here’s the funny thing: it only took about ten minutes to pick right back up where I had left off more than thirty years earlier.

Same street. Same rhythm. Same format. Familiar characters doing familiar things.

That’s not accidental.

People were trained — from a very early age — to enter long-running stories midstream. We learned how to listen for context. We learned how to catch up without everything being explained to us. We learned that you don’t have to start at the beginning to belong to a story.

Which is why I don’t think the problem with soaps was ever the story itself.

That doesn’t mean every storyline worked. It doesn’t mean soaps were immune to creative missteps. One Life to Live included its share — especially toward the end, when it felt like the show was trying to engage a younger audience by speeding things up, sometimes at the expense of patient character development. That shift mattered.

But those flaws weren’t unique to soaps. Other genres are allowed time to course-correct. Soaps rarely were.

Given enough time, One Life to Live might have found its footing again. Historically, soaps always did.

The larger issue, in my opinion, was the avenue.

Middle-of-the-day television. One hour. Endless commercials. Five days a week.

Who has time for that now?

But take the exact same format — long arcs, familiar characters, slow-burn storytelling — and put it on a streaming platform. Let me watch after the kids are in bed. After the chores are done. When my brain is ready for something familiar and absorbing before sleep — something that engages without demanding.

You’ll have a loyal viewer until two or three in the morning.

The problem was never the story.

It was how — and when — we were asked to watch it.