Soap Operas Are Bubbling, Bouncing Back From O.J. : Television: The lengthy murder trial cast a shadow over daytime dramas. But since its conclusion in October, the series’ numbers have rebounded.

The greatest TV soap opera of them all, which for most of this year threatened to maim all the others, has been dark now for more than two months. And the executives who nurture all those fictitious daytime dramas, who just last summer were fretting about the long-term health of their programs, are a bit stunned by the resiliency of their aging serial fantasies.

The long-running murder trial of O.J. Simpson--carried full time on CNN, Court TV and E! Entertainment, and frequently on the very channels the network soaps call home--took away about 10% of the usual audience for the daytime dramas. But since its conclusion last October, the cumulative ratings for the soaps on all three networks have rebounded to just about where they were “pre-O.J.”

“I actually thought it would take longer for them to come back,” said Lucy Johnson, senior vice president for daytime programming at CBS. “But there is a deep loyalty and devotion and investment in these shows that just doesn’t vanish no matter the scope of the outside distractions. People will always enjoy what has proven to be the most endurable form of entertainment that we know, which goes back to the days of Charles Dickens, back to sitting around the campfire and sharing stories.”

Viewership of CBS’ “The Young and Restless,” “The Bold and Beautiful” and “The Guiding Light” is near pretrial levels. NBC’s “Days of Our Lives” and “Another World” have actually gained a couple of share points from where they were a year ago. Only ABC’s “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and “General Hospital” are still lagging, by about two share points compared to the fourth quarter of 1994.

The news is better for ABC’s new soap, “The City,” a pared-down version of “Loving,” which has been able to maintain the 25% increase in female viewers aged 18 to 49 that a serial murder story built during the fall, according to Pat Fili-Krushel, president of ABC’s daytime operations.

“We were worried about what would happen with the audience the trial drained from us, but I’m not really that surprised that they’ve returned,” said Susan Lee, senior vice president for daytime programming at NBC. “I think the O.J. trial was one of the best soap operas ever seen on television, and a lot of soap opera viewers were compelled to watch it because it was real.

“Suddenly people had the opportunity to see a real-live soap opera that had all the hooks and teasers and things you couldn’t believe happening every day. It tapped into the exact same desires that bring viewers to our soaps. And once it was gone, people still wanted those same things, and so they’ve come back.”

Both Johnson and Lee said that all of their programs made concerted efforts to time some dramatic and climatic story lines for the fall, in hopes that the trial would end at about the same time. NBC also increased its promotion of the daytime programs after the trial ended.

“We had to get people talking about these shows again and we had to show them that the stories were moving fast so that they would start thinking that if they missed even one day, they would miss a lot,” Lee said.

ABC’s Fili-Krushel attributed her network’s sluggish ratings primarily to two factors: putting the bulk of its promotional dollars to the launch of “The City” and to a downbeat teenage AIDS story on “General Hospital” this fall that alienated some fans.

The network soaps have been suffering ratings losses for the past two decades as more women entered the workplace and more competition came along, both from additional channels and from the growing popularity of talk shows. In 1970, for instance, there were 20 afternoon serials on the three networks; today they’re down to 10.

While CBS’ Johnson believes that the ratings for the network shows can still rebound a bit more, she admits that the soaps will probably have to content themselves with living with fewer devotees.

“We all can survive beautifully at these levels,” she said. “Ratings for soaps are still better than the talk shows. It is still the strongest form in daytime.”

And both Johnson and Lee believe that the overabundance of talk shows, combined with the backlash against their tawdry subject matter coming from some politicians, advertisers, station managers and viewers, will only help the soaps grow stronger.

“I think we overreacted when we first started losing people several years ago to talk shows and we said, ‘Oh, my goodness, we better do something fast,’ ” Johnson said. “So you saw some soaps doing a kidnapping every Friday or a wedding every Thursday, and that kind of stunting really isn’t what captures the audience.

“The talk shows are force-feeding some of the harsh, ugly realities of life, and what we’ve realized is that we do best offering a true escape from those harsh realities. So, in a way, we’re going backward to that. We’re still contemporary--you have to update the style and look and the kinds of stories you tell because some things do go out of fashion. But we’re not going to reflect the tougher side of life, but instead the more moving and poignant and romantic.”