Outcry in Ohio                                            

When Soap Characters
Started Meddling in
Community Business

A cable station in Athens, Ohio, has riled the local populace by mixing melodrama and real people into one sudsy plot

By Allen Murray

What happens when a small-town, local soap opera turns its characters loose in the real community? Confusion. Controversy. Laughter. Outrage. All adding up to dedicated viewers.
      A group of friends in Athens, Ohio (pop. 20,000 and the home of Ohio University), are using the access channel of the town’s 5600-subscriber cable system to tear down the barrier between soap fantasy and local reality. In the process, they’ve ruffled some community feathers.
      Described as a "Doonesbury" come to life, a Mary Hartman  gone berserk, the soap opera began after two neighbors took a free video workshop. After five months of "harder-than-we-had- anticipated work," the highly publicized 15-part, tongue-in-cheek, half-hour weekly soap premiered in June. Its title: 45701 . . . the town zip code.      "An unfortunate coincidence, I’m sure," says producer Scott Gordon, "but we may sue the post office."

      The action in 45701 centers on Connee, a simple, trusting, down-to-earth cocktail waitress, who’s trying to raise Ditch, a 16-year-old orphan with amnesia. Her friends include Alan Starr, a flashy talent scout; Lil, an international singing star; Ludeen, a local beautician who works undercover for the police; and Ludeen’s partially bionic sister, Nadeen, who has a machine fetish and loiters in appliance sections of department stores.
      Ditch is kidnapped. Connee disappears. Alan Starr is the prime suspect. Chase scenes through the city and surrounding countryside provide plenty of local scenery before Starr is captured with a grocery sack full of circumstantial evidence.

Reviewed in the December 22, 1984 issue of TV Guide Magazine. Copyright © 1984 by Triangle Publications, Inc.

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