Sean

What surprises me most about Ryan's Hope's performance in these early months isn't that it's at the bottom of the rankings—that seems pretty par for the course for a new soap, with some exceptions (Capitol, B&B). It's that the show performed decently enough for a new show (#10 its first week, ahead of OLTL), held on for a few weeks, and then dropped precipitously as soon as September hits. And, looking back at the 1976 ratings Jason previously posted, it continues to hover near the bottom until June 1976, when suddenly it's in the middle of the pack—and then hits #5 the week of 7/19/76. There's even two weeks in November when it eclipses AMC to be the #1 soap on ABC—less than 18 months after such a befuddling start. It's interesting to think about a hypothetical in which that growth continues rather than stalls after 1978 (though even then it manages another spike from late 1980 through mid-1982). On a related note, the fact that the demo breakdowns we've seen for the late '70s usually show Ryan's Hope punching above its weight and ranking alongside its ABC stablemates always astounds me. IIRC Tom Lisanti's book notes that the headwriter shuffle began in 1982 once Y&R and some of the other CBS soaps began eclipsing it in the demos.

That photo was originally posted on that group as a joke. Per the original poster, "Ok - Dark Shadows Fans - I want to avoid any Fact Checkers calling me out - this is actually a photo of a house in Herculaneum destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 (I accidentally put AD 70 on my original post) OOPS - I was attempting a bit of humor because to ME it looked like the foyer and staircase at Collinwood (in the 'new house" and I was making a sly reference to a story line that never aired because it was never filmed (although it might have been an interesting story line if Quentin stayed on the Stairway Into Time too long and went way beyond the 1795 story line) Cheers !!!"

Mary Ryan on Ryan's Hope went to lamaze classes while she was pregnant with Ryan; they even showed her practicing her breathing technique on at least one occasion. This was during the period when she and Jack Fenelli were separated, and she kept asking him to attend class with her.

Well, as a fan, I'm personally glad they gave Ryan's Hope a few more years. 😉 1984-86 was a dire period, but some of my favorite material aired in the 80s—1983 and 1987-89 in particular were strong. Even if it never attained the heights of AMC/OLTL/GH, it did well for them for a few years, and without a soap as a lead-in for most of that time. Plus it's my understanding that the demos were solid (I think there's a post early in this thread where AMC and it were at the top of the key demos in 1977-78). Once the ratings began slipping at the end of 1982, I can understand why they gave it some time to recover before effectively issuing it a death warrant with the move to noon. AMC was a behemoth on its own, and I doubt a stronger lead-in would have materially changed its performance unless it was something on the level of General Hospital. Launching Loving when they did has never made sense to me—I find it hard to believe that they thought it could succeed in a time slot that hadn't seen a successful soap in years. Plus, based on the fact that it never had a consistent creative direction at any point in its 12 year run, it doesn't seem like they believed in the material, either. At least with Ryan's Hope they fully owned the show and had an incentive to keep it on until it no longer generated enough profit. Was there ever any genuine fear that Agnes Nixon would leave the network if they didn't greenlight a third show?

Pat Falken Smith was headwriter of Ryan's Hope from October 1983 through February 1985, at which point ABC moved her back to General Hospital.

It's been interesting seeing how dramatic the fall in ratings was for Ryan's Hope—I expected it to be a little more gradual. The show was performing at roughly the same level as Guiding Light and As the World Turns as late as July 1982 (it came in at #5 the week of 6/28-7/2). Then it fell to the bottom of the middle of the pack in the fall (during the brief "Kirkland's Hope" period), and now it's been consistently #9 or #10 for most of 1983. 1983 was really a hallmark year for the show—Labine and Mayer refocused it in a tremendous way, cutting a lot of fat and rebuilding the core. The Charlotte Greer mystery that ran from April through August was the kind of well-plotted story that wasn't always present even in the show's 70s heyday. The Jack/Leigh and Siobhan/Bill romances were compelling. It's a shame that it seems to have had virtually no impact on the show's performance. I'm curious to see how the show fares under Pat Falken Smith. There's a SOD article from mid-1984 in which the writer credits a rise in the ratings to her writing, and I wonder whether that will indeed be the case and whether it was sustained for any period of time (of course, any increase was negated by the time slot change in October 1984). Her first 4-6 months as headwriter largely continue stories started by Labine and Mayer, including the initial introduction of Jill's half-sister Maggie and the Bill/Siobhan/Joe/Jacqueline quadrangle—the show doesn't completely shift gears until February/March 1984. A timeline in the BTS changes for anyone that's interested: February 1982: Paul Avila Mayer is fired, leaving Claire Labine as sole headwriter. September 1982: Claire Labine is fired, and Mary Ryan Munisteri's material begins airing. February 1983: Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer are reinstated as headwriters. Much of the newer cast (from the "Kirkland's Hope" era) is fired, along with Kelli Maroney. Roscoe Born leaves the following month. October 1983: Labine and Mayer are fired again and replaced with Pat Falken Smith. A smaller wave of exits ensues, impacting longer-term actors Ilene Kristen, Karen Morris-Gowdy, and Louise Shaffer.

I think SOD is wrong on this point as well - I wouldn't be surprised if this was sourced from Wikipedia, or vice versa. Here's the text of the article I linked from August 21, 1983: Henry Slesar, who spent 15 years head-writing "Edge of Night" until he was let go, is back on the Soaps. This time he has been named co-head writer of "One Life to Live." The show has been slipping in the ratings, and evidently it was decided that Slesar's touch with mystery is just what was needed to land that show back on top. Sam Hall will remain as co-head writer. Hall replaced Gordon Russell, who left "One Life to Live" to head-write "General Hospital." Unfortunately, Russell died before he was able to make the move. I can't find any references in online newspaper archives to Slesar writing OLTL prior to August 1983. While he also wrote Somerset and Search for Tomorrow while at The Edge of Night, those were P&G soaps - I'd be surprised if P&G allowed him to write for another production company. Not sure how true this is, but I'd previously read that ABC brought him onto OLTL because they were happy with his writing at EON and P&G made the decision to axe him without their buy-in.

The dates for Slesar's tenure on Wikipedia are off by a year. He was at The Edge of Night until May 1983. The soap press then reported that he was joining OLTL as Sam Hall's co-headwriter in August 1983, roughly three months after Kim Zimmer joined the show, so the Echo story was already underway. The Corrringtons were announced as OLTL's new headwriters in July 1984, and by November 1984 Slesar had been signed to write Capitol.

I believe her Ryan's Hope appearances were in January and February 1985 - Elizabeth Maxwell was the head of a cosmetics agency that hired Maggie Shelby to be its spokeswoman. She first gets mentioned in Lynda Hirsch's recaps for the show for the week of January 14-18, 1985.

Given just how low the ratings had dropped and the relative dearth of press coverage even as the show’s quality improved, I’m impressed they were able to net 3 acting nominations (and a win) in 1988, though the Emmys do have some history of nominating shows in danger of cancellation. (The Edge of Night also managed to get a few in 1984 before the axe came down.) The one miss that really surprises me is the failure to get a writing nomination, considering that the show managed to win 4 consecutive WGA awards at the end of its run. I realize those wins were probably helped by Claire Labine’s stature within the WGA—she was even on one of the negotiating committees during the 1988 strike—but to be completely blanked seems strange in retrospect. Acting-wise, it would have been great to finally see a nomination for Ilene Kristen. Given the way ABC highlighted her in promos, and some renewed attention from the soap press, that seems like it could have been in the realm of possibility. I also would have loved to see Diana van der Vlis recognized for her work as Sherry Rowan—she did some fantastic work during the Richard Rowan murder storyline, though she was hardly a big name at that point. It doesn’t look like Pat Falken Smith was actually included among the list of nominees for the show in 1984—I’m assuming none of her material was submitted? Still, would have been fascinating to watch Labine and Mayer accept after being forced out for a second time in 18 months! It’s funny seeing all the disparate reactions to the Rae/Michael/Kim story. There’s a lot of people on the RH Facebook group that swear by the storyline and point to it as the one that got them hooked on the show in the first place. I thought it was fun to watch play out, but certainly not among the show’s best. I’m currently rewatching episodes from September 1979, and I’m wary of Kim’s imminent arrival and her swallowing up of the show. I appreciate that it gave an excuse for keeping Louise Shaffer around after Rae and Frank’s breakup, but as far as scene partners are concerned Michael Corbett and Kelli Maroney weren’t quite at the same level as Daniel Hugh Kelly and Nancy Addison... to put it mildly. I liked it better after Kim was written out in 1981 and Rae was paired more frequently with Jack and EJ, who served as an infinitely more tolerable substitute for Kim (at least in my opinion! I know EJ wasn’t exactly beloved, either). From reading recaps of 1982, it sounds like the show tried to better integrate Kim into the Ryan-sphere by having her pursue Pat... hard to imagine, but wish we could see that play out (as with all the 1982 material).

According to an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal published in July 1975, Labine & Mayer became headwriters of LOL in September 1973. There was a writer's strike from early March through late June 1973, so it's possible they may have taken over directly from the scab writers (or an interim writing team post-strike). They signed with LOL the same week they formalized their development deal with ABC for what would later become Ryan's Hope: [Labine and Mayer] wrote dialogue for CBS's "Where the Heart Is," later became its head writers while developing the ABC project. In September 1973 they became head writers for "Love of Life." They have resigned from those jobs, now that "Ryan's Hope" is a reality. .... Q. How long have you been working on this? A. When "Where the Heart Is" was cancelled in 1973, our agent got us in contact with ABC. We had a couple of meetings and they said, "Hey, fellas, would you like to develop us a serial called 'City Hospital'?" And we said, "Not very much, thank you, but we'll think about it." So, we liked the "city" part a lot, and we came back with a big-city serial. So, they gave us what they call a development fee to sit down and work with an idea and to come up with a thing called the canvas, the basic characters and the situations in which they find themselves when the story begins. Plus, you write a projected long story, six months to a year. So you have the beginning of a show right there. In serials, you don't do pilots. You do bibles, or presentations. That was what we were hired to do. This does not mean that they are going to buy it, You just get paid for developing it. In August of 1973 we said we would like to write this bible, and the very next day CBS offered us the head writership of "Love of Life," an old, old show that had been on 22 years, I think. At that time, it was in very bad ratings trouble. When we left this year in May, the rating situation was much improved and we were very proud, though we were not solely responsible for that. While this was going on, we were doing the development deal for ABC. We had an "out" in our contract to do "Ryan's Hope" if it was bought. And it was, in March of this year.

Rest in peace, John Gabriel. Seneca could be insufferable at times, but JG always ensured there was something softer just beneath the surface even when Seneca was at his worst. JG seemed like a classic showman, and in an earlier era I could easily see him as a major Old Hollywood movie star. He seemed to love performing, and in reading press coverage from his stint on RH it was clear just how much he enjoyed promoting the show, attending fan events, and the like. The Nell/Seneca storyline was the highlight of the show's first year to me, along with the initial Jack/Mary romance. John Gabriel and Diana van der Vlis did some fantastic, truly compelling work together those first months of the show. I do think "controlling" is a fair descriptor and applies to all three of his marriages. Beyond her health, Nell's reason for leaving Seneca and coming to Riverside was in order to get out from under his control and do the kinds of medical research she'd always wanted to pursue. Seneca then tried to dominate Jill throughout their marriage, insisting that she put aside her career to have another child with him after Edmund's death and proceeding to nearly rape her. Seneca's attraction to Kim seemed to arise in part because he thought she would be easier to control than either of his past wives, though of course that didn't end up being the case. I don’t think he received a proper on-screen sendoff, at least based on the newspaper and SOD recaps I’ve read. The last time he appears in the episodes that are available on YouTube is at Maggie and Dave’s wedding, where Maggie thanks him for starting her modeling career (he’d hired her to be the face of Riverside Hospital in a charity campaign back in late 1983). If his absence was ever directly addressed, it must have been in passing. Tom King & Millee Taggart had a habit of dropping characters without explanation throughout their tenure as headwriters—see also Leigh Kirkland, Bill Hyde, and some more short-lived characters like DJ LaSalle, Betty Sherman, and Gloria Tassky. By the time he was let go in June/July 1985, Seneca hadn’t been involved in a major storyline since Kim’s departure in March 1983. He and Rae interfered during the early days of Frank and Jill’s marriage, but Louise Shaffer was then dropped to recurring and Rae disappeared shortly thereafter. Aside from that, he was mostly entangled in some hospital politics with Roger and Max Dubujak that was basically treated as a C/D-level story. His last significant relationship was with Judith Barcroft's Barbara Wilde, which ended in January 1982; that same year they hinted he might get back together with Jill during his custody battle with Kim, but that was squashed when Frank returned in the spring of 1983. When he showed up again in December 1988, he was working at a hospital in Quebec and came back to New York to perform emergency surgery on Robert Rowan at Roger's request, at which point he became intrigued by Robert's mother, Sherry Rowan, who was played by the former Nell Beaulac herself, Diana van der Vlis.

According to this, he's listed as one of the writers in the credits for the first daytime episode of Capitol, though I don't believe that episode is on YouTube currently. It's my understanding that Capitol experienced some abrupt changes in writers that first year, with the Corringtons replacing the Karpfs as headwriters before the end of 1982, so I wonder how long he lasted. I know he was first credited at Ryan's Hope in late May 1984, a little over six months into PFS's tenure there.

Not to "spoil" (😉) anything from the blog, but from what Jon-Michael Reed and Linda Hirsch reported at the time it seems like Kelli Maroney was intended to be in the role long-term, while Marsha Clark was always meant to be temporary. This is from a JMR column, published around October 8: "ONE LIFE TO LIVE" has been announcing for the past year that actresses have been cast to play the returning role of Tina Clayton. For some reason they've never worked and never appeared on the screen. But the big surprise is that "OLTL" has cast Kelli Maroney, (formerly Kimberly Harris on "Ryan's Hope"), one of the more uninteresting actresses to ever appear on a soap. Although there weren't many defenders of her talent she managed to have a fairly long run on "RH." She will appear as Tina Clayton, again, around mid-October. (JMR was really not a fan of Maroney's - he made similar comments when she re-joined the cast of RH in the spring of 1982.) On January 17, Linda Hirsch reported that Clark's stint was temporary and that Andrea Evans was on her way back: With the exit of Kelli Maroney from the role of Tina on "One Life to Live," the show's producers have been looking high and low for a replacement. They brought in Marsha Clark, last seen as Hilary on "Guiding Light", for the short term, but she was not interested in taking over the role on a permanent basis. The producers have now decided to go with Andrea Evans. If the name is familiar, it's because she created the role of Tina several years ago. She left that show and was then seen as Patti in "Young and the Restless."

You make a very fair point, and from what I've read the ratings in 1982 can only be considered disappointing in light of how well the show was doing during the summer and fall of 1981. ABC's disappointment in the ratings and itchiness behind the scenes is understandable only in that context. It does make a certain kind of perverse sense that they'd begin to feel that Claire Labine was replaceable given the success of the show under the scabs. A while back, the monthly ratings reports from Daytime TV were posted in this thread. They're not always the most reliable indicator as (1) the reports seem to be linked to specific weeks rather than specific months and (2) they were published a few months behind and not consistently so—based on the specific shows that are listed, some are only 2 months behind and some are up to 4 months behind. With those caveats out of the way, in the Daytime TV ratings reports Ryan's Hope seems to peak around August 1981, when it ranks in fourth place with a 7.8 rating—that's the last month of the strike, around the time Kim gave birth to Arley and the Monte Carlo Room opened at the Crystal Palace. For the remainder of 1981, the show is consistently ranking in either fifth or sixth place. Somewhere in that thread there's a separate breakdown of the key demos for the fourth quarter of 1981, and Ryan's Hope was also in the top 5 for that report. I have to imagine ABC was pretty happy with that performance, given that the ratings had been stagnating a bit around 1979-80. By the time you get to early 1982, the show dips down to seventh and eighth place, with a small bump back up to sixth place for May/June 1982. So by the time Labine is dumped in favor of Munisteri, the show is down compared to 1981 but basically back to where it was in 1979 and 1980. ABC's decision to make this change in writers really only makes sense in the context of the ratings drop relative to the strike material, as well as the tumultuous relationship that Labine acknowledges she had with the ABC brass at the time. Of course, by the end of Munisteri's brief time as HW the show has dropped even more, with ratings now in the 5s and dropping to ninth place. The ratings don't seem to move at all throughout Labine & Mayer's 1983 return, with the show consistently ranking either in ninth or tenth place and sometimes dipping into the 4s. Under Pat Falken Smith that ranking remains unchanged and the ratings continue to atrophy until the show ends up at the bottom of the ratings basement with The Edge of Night and Search for Tomorrow after the timeslot change. As to why ABC allowed PFS to go more than a year as headwriter when they were so willing to make quick changes in the writers' room in 1982 and 1983, I assume that they were giving her a wider berth given her track record at General Hospital and given the degree to which the show's character was altered. It may also be that they were becoming less invested, particularly with the timeslot change. (IIRC, Soap Opera Digest was speculating as early as spring 1983 that ABC was going to cancel RH in favor of Loving, though that seems drastic given that it had been in the top 5 only 18 months earlier.) To be fair, I feel like by 1986 you really had no choice but to make Little John college-aged, given that LJ was always a few years older than Ryan and that they'd already aged up and married off (!!) Ryan by the time Jason Adams was cast in the role. Of course, no need to make Frank and Delia grandparents! I had a longer response drafted to this that was unfortunately eaten by the board, but I'll just join DeliaIrisFan in singing the praises for 1983. It's definitely one of the show's most consistent periods, alongside 1976-78 and 1987. The Charlotte Greer and early Maggie/Bess storylines are really well-done, and the show is smart enough to play the Faith/Pat reunion as a B-story—it helps make the show feel more like itself, without spending too much time actually regurgitating well-trod plot points. I hated seeing Delia's role reduced, but the only material I truly loathed was when they had her frame Little John for stealing money in order to get Frank's attention—mercifully, that was abandoned after all of one week. (Her exit after L&M were fired also sounds bad.) I did like how Delia was incorporated into the Charlotte Greer story at times, and they also played up her friendship with Siobhan which I enjoyed—that friendship seemed to go by the wayside during Ann Gillespie's time as Siobhan.