CBS President Shares Details of New Soap THE GATES
Soap fans were surprised — pleasantly so! – when CBS announced that it was developing a brand new daytime drama with the NAACP titled THE GATES. While it’s still early days yet, George Cheeks, the president and CEO of CBS, has shared some additional details about the show that indicate they’re serious about bringing a new soap to the CBS Daytime lineup.
“It’s super real,” Cheeks declared to Vulture. “And just to give you a little bit of the backstory, when we hired Sheila Ducksworth to run the NAACP venture, she and I had multiple meetings talking about what different genres she was going to lean into, and we talked a lot about daytime.
“One of the things that the data made very clear to us is that daytime soap operas over-index with Black women,” he continued, “and yet when you look at soap operas, it’s usually sort of a white-led family with supporting characters that reflect more of our society. So we just thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to flip that and make the core anchor family a Black family, and then make the other characters reflect more the broader scope of society?”
Ducksworth brought in writer Michele Val Jean, who has numerous soap credits on her resume, including GENERATIONS, GENERAL HOSPITAL, and most recently, THE BOLD & THE BEAUTIFUL. “She came up with a pitch, and we loved it,” Cheeks enthused.
While the exec did say that THE GATES is in “accelerated development,” and that “it’s being developed as an hour” as opposed to a half-hour soap, he also explained that he has no specifics as to when the show will go into actual production and premiere.
“The actual timeline and when we’re going to do it is still uncertain because we want to get this right,” Cheeks confided. “I mean, there hasn’t been a new soap opera launch since I can’t even begin to tell you when. But we have great success with BOLD & BEAUTIFUL and YOUNG AND RESTLESS, and so we think we’re the right folks to be launching a new soap.”
Keep checking back here at SoapsInDepth.com for future updates on this exciting developing story!
