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Two Soaps Reach Milestones

J

Joseph_Gallant

Two long-running daytime soap operas are celebrating major milestones.

Today (March 26th), "The Young And The Restless" is celebrating it's 40th anniversary. It's had strong ratings from the beginning, and has been the top-rated daytime soap opera for the past 25 or so years.

Outside of North America, the show's theme music is best known as the music used by gymnast Nadia Comaneci for her floor exercises during international competitions in 1976, including that year's Summer Olympics in Montreal.

Next Monday (April 1st), the longest-running daytime soap opera still on the air, "General Hospital", will celebrate it's 50th anniversary.

In the late 1970's, after an extended ratings slump, Gloria Monty was named the new executive producer of "GH", and she made radical changes to the show (such as sci-fi plots and on-location taping; the latter soon became standard procedure for daytime soaps). The changes worked, "GH" was the top-rated daytime TV soap opera during much of the 1980's.

"General Hospital" almost didn't make it to it's Golden Anniversary: Last year, ABC launched "The Chew" and "The Revolution", and was planning to cut back weekday daytime programming by an hour. "GH" was slated to be dumped, but "The Revolution" (not to be confused with the NBC prime-time series by that title) was a flop and was yanked, giving "GH" a chance to stay on the air and reach this milestone.
 
I started watching Y&R around 1985, big story was John found about Jack & Jill's affair and had a stroke. I watched all CBS soaps (then Guiding Light, As The World Turns and Capitol) but Y&R was the last one I started actively watching. Up into about a year ago, I was DVRing Y&R every day. Suddenly I realized I didn't need to view it daily.

The one thing I never got is why CBS never touted that they had the #1 daytime lineup for the past 25 years. I've seen a couple of promos where fellow network starts gives Y&R congratulations. I doubt it's airing on prime time.
 
"GH" becomes the third soap to hit the 50-year milestone ("Guiding Light"
and "As The World Turns" were the others); now it will be interesting to see
if "Days Of Our Lives" can get there (its 50th would be on November 8, 2015).
 
brian4 said:
The one thing I never got is why CBS never touted that they had the #1 daytime lineup for the past 25 years. I've seen a couple of promos where fellow network starts gives Y&R congratulations. I doubt it's airing on prime time.
Click to expand...

I guess when you're been so dominant in one daypart for so long, you could only promote yourself for so long.

My late grandmother was a big Y&R fan, and I believe she watched the show practically from the beginning, and I'll even watch it every now and then if I'm home during the day from work, which is rather rare. I've mentioned before that in her apartment building she could pick-up Madison's CBS affiliate, WISC, which aired Y&R 30 minutes earlier than our local affiliate, WIFR. In the years since I've moved away from Rockford to Los Angeles, both stations air the show at 11am local time.

She also watched General Hospital pretty often as well; she wasn't much a fan of Guiding Light and Santa Barbara back when those shows aired concurrently way-back when.
 
B. Patrick asked: said:
(I)t will be interesting to see if "Days Of Our Lives" can get there (its 50th would be on November 8, 2015).
Click to expand...

I'm not 100% certain, but I thought NBC has renewed "Days" through 2015.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
My late grandmother was a Y&R fan, too, and asked for it to be put on at noon, YEARS LATER after it was moved from there. :) I know there are stations that air it at different times in EST, but I can't imagine CBS moving it or putting anything else on from 12:30-1:30...
 
Joseph_Gallant said:
B. Patrick asked: said:
(I)t will be interesting to see if "Days Of Our Lives" can get there (its 50th would be on November 8, 2015).
Click to expand...

I'm not 100% certain, but I thought NBC has renewed "Days" through 2015.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
Click to expand...

No, that sounds right and I was just not aware of it.
 
"Guiding Light" was my favorite and I gradually weaned off as
characters were either killed off or demoted to minor roles. It
began when the show killed off Maureen Bauer, the support figure
the others could turn to when they were in trouble; it escalated
when Michael Zaslow (Roger Thorpe) died in real life and another
actor proved he couldn't be replaced; when Jerry ver Dorn (Ross
Marler) was taken off contract and Ross was killed in a plane crash;
when Jay Hammer (Fletcher Reade) left (his scenes with Beverlee
McKinsey as Alexandra Spaulding were priceless); when Peter Simon
(Ed Bauer) and Maureen Garrett (Holly Lindsey) were reduced to
occasional walk-ons. But some of the nutty plots didn't help: Reva
drove off a bridge in Florida and when next heard from she was in
an Amish community in Pennsylvania; the San Cristobel storyline.

It was nice the last week to see Ed and Holly, and Fletcher and
Alexandra, together again, along with the Four Musketeers: Rick
Bauer, Mindy Lewis, Phillip Spaulding, and Beth Raines. But I had
long since given up on the show.

I purposely avoid "Y&R" and "B&B" because to me the two shows
come down to this: on "Y&R" who's running Jabot this week--Victor
or Jack; on "B&B" it's which Forrester male Brooke's sleeping with.
 
Amusing bit of trivia: in August 1963, Yogi Berra made a cameo appearance on General Hospital--as a brain surgeon.
Click to expand...

Some of his lines: "Nobody goes to this hospital anymore...It's too crowded", and of course, "90 percent of brain surgery is half mental". Also, I think once Y&R is canceled, the cast will still do the show in Eric Braeden's basement.
 
bpatrick said:
"Guiding Light" was my favorite and I gradually weaned off as
characters were either killed off or demoted to minor roles. It
began when the show killed off Maureen Bauer, the support figure
the others could turn to when they were in trouble...
Click to expand...

GL was my favorite. I first started watching, with my older sister, in the late 70's. When I started traveling for work, and didn't have a VCR, I couldn't watch as much. Eventually I went cold turkey when I moved to Italy for two years. I 100% agree that Maureen Bauer's death was a huge blow to GL.

I DVRed the last week of GL (and As The World Turns) and thought both ended well.
 
udfan07 said:
I used to watch the soap Another World.
Click to expand...

So did I. Still miss it, even now after all the years. A real loss; there was so much story that could have been told, in the hands of the right writer(s)/executive producer(s), and OUT of the hands of a network that just couldn't leave well enough alone......

Another World would have been 50 next year in May.
 
easttxtv said:
udfan07 said:
I used to watch the soap Another World.
Click to expand...

So did I. Still miss it, even now after all the years. A real loss; there was so much story that could have been told, in the hands of the right writer(s)/executive producer(s), and OUT of the hands of a network that just couldn't leave well enough alone......

Another World would have been 50 next year in May.
Click to expand...

I am with you on that. I miss it a lot. I miss it so much that I actually follow anotherworldtoday.com which has a continuation of the story.
 
udfan07 said:
easttxtv said:
udfan07 said:
I used to watch the soap Another World.
Click to expand...

So did I. Still miss it, even now after all the years. A real loss; there was so much story that could have been told, in the hands of the right writer(s)/executive producer(s), and OUT of the hands of a network that just couldn't leave well enough alone......

Another World would have been 50 next year in May.
Click to expand...

I am with you on that. I miss it a lot. I miss it so much that I actually follow anotherworldtoday.com which has a continuation of the story.
Click to expand...

Besides Eddie's long-running AW Home Page, there is also an AW Facebook fan site as well. (Hmmm, wonder how I know, hmmm ;) ;) )
 
A list has been posted online of all 50 episodes of SoapNet's General Hospital marathon and when they'll air. It starts tonight, with the 1963 debut episode airing first, and finishing up with Edward's (the late John Ingle) memorial service episode.

And the linkie?? http://abc.soapsindepth.com/2013/03/tune-in-for-soapnets-gh-marathon.html

(rant)
( :mad: :mad: :( :( :'( :'( If they can save GH's debut on tape/kinescope, and Days' debut as well, they could have AND SHOULD HAVE saved Another World's debut episode..... yeah I know, AW was done live at first, and many tapes from it and other soaps were wiped, but still, someone in May 1964 should have had some foresight!!!)
(/rant)
 
easttxtv said:
A list has been posted online of all 50 episodes of SoapNet's General Hospital marathon and when they'll air. It starts tonight, with the 1963 debut episode airing first, and finishing up with Edward's (the late John Ingle) memorial service episode.

And the linkie?? http://abc.soapsindepth.com/2013/03/tune-in-for-soapnets-gh-marathon.html

(rant)
( :mad: :mad: :( :( :'( :'( If they can save GH's debut on tape/kinescope, and Days' debut as well, they could have AND SHOULD HAVE saved Another World's debut episode..... yeah I know, AW was done live at first, and many tapes from it and other soaps were wiped, but still, someone in May 1964 should have had some foresight!!!)
(/rant)
Click to expand...

There are many examples of the recording and broadcast industry's astounding shortsightedness when it comes to destroying history to save a few bucks on videotape or storage space. The most infamous example is NBC's decision to reuse the tapes of Johnny Carson's first years on The Tonight Show, which infuriated him when he found out years after the fact. The few poor copies of those early broadcasts we have today were saved by accident. I believe he stipulated in every subsequent contract with the network that all his shows be preserved in living color.
 
Unless something's changed that I don't know about,
only the audio portion of Johnny's first "Tonight Show"
(October 1, 1962), where Groucho introduced him, survives.

The oldest "Tonight Show" clip from the Carson years I've
seen is the Ed Ames and the tomahawk segment from 1965.
Does anything from prior to that exist?
 
Unless something's changed that I don't know about,
only the audio portion of Johnny's first "Tonight Show"
(October 1, 1962), where Groucho introduced him, survives.

The oldest "Tonight Show" clip from the Carson years I've
seen is the Ed Ames and the tomahawk segment from 1965.
Does anything from prior to that exist?
Click to expand...

There are several on YouTube, the oldest being a clip with Bob Hope as a guest in early 1963, I think.
 
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