will81

Melody Thomas-Scott had both her pregnancies written in and Bill Bell somewhat changed the course of the story for her first pregnancy.

I would legit do that, haha. I think we could actually get this show back on track. C'mon everybody, let's put on a show!!!!

I've actually been thinking about putting together a gofundme for the show. It so clearly needs it.

Quite possible, I guess we don't know for sure, but it's interesting to speculate. I find many take it all too seriously and get defensive about it like they know these people and have to defend their honour or something, lol.

I can't say for certain, it's just a hunch. But many production companies and networks did digitise most or all their inventory. Even if it wasn't highly prized. So the chances aren't zero. It became standard practice for many companies to do everything. Whether ABC have done this, I have no idea.

@FrenchFan has provided most of them in the "Look Into the Past" thread below. I also added a few that I had from 1973. It's a bit out of order though. There are a few missing from 1973 and 1974 but 75 - 77 is all there. Bryna's newsletter started Dec 72 and went up to 1978.

I was looking around at GH stuff. It was actually the Pollocks that named Port Charles according to an article by Jon-Michael Reed. They took over maybe around late Feb or early Mar 1976. Bryna Laub in her Daytime Serial newsletter synopsis mentions Port Charles for the first time in April 1976 when Terri's place opens.

Hey Jason, just looking over this old thread. Have you ever checked out the Ross reports on television? It was a weekly trade newsletter that mostly discussed prime time but also often did monthly lists of all shows in both daytime and prime time. It might be a good place for DuMont programming for daytime if you ever can be bothered downloading and going through them. It's a bit of a slough though, so understandable if you aren't interested. Here's the search query on archive.org https://archive.org/search?query=Ross+reports

And there might be other factors, but maybe P&G just brought in really bad writers, lol. I'd say having non-union writers leads to instability and possibly disgruntled viewers. The kids being home for summer and possibly preferring ABC/NBC shows might be a factor too. To be fair except ATWT, none of the other CBS soaps were doing spectacular numbers between 71 - 75. I wonder if the generational shift was initially heading more towards ABC and NBC. CBS didn't manage to regain more than one show in the top 5 until the 75/76 season.

Apart from the regular interruptions of the Watergate Hearings, all shows were being written by non-union writers, so it likely had a bigger impact on the shows at this point. I think this will be the case through early August.

Maybe they were a soap fan who was sick of missing Y&R, haha And I second the praise Jason, you're an absolute legend and thank you for your great detective skills

Thank you! So this throws into doubt one of the Y&R's pre-emptions. Rest of my post isn't needed now we have the info Ah and the puzzle solved, lol. Too quick

Trish Stewart said she felt it was odd that the Brooks daughters would always go to their father all the time and rarely their mother. I know Bill Bell wanted this second rape story as he wanted it to be during the summer when younger women would be watching. He felt because the Chris story, due to pre-emptions and the writer's strike, had been pushed back to autumn, along with lower ratings, hadn't been as effective and I guess this was a social story he wanted to really get out there.

Unfortunately I only had one or two pages from those months. I believe I posted them but it would only cover one or two shows.

Thank you for sharing. I guess Nancy was catatonic most of her time on the show, so I guess the gasps make sense, lol. I had heard Cathy and Dick DeCoit were supposed to be on the show longer, but Trish Stewart leaving changed all that.

Have you tried this site? It is sometimes helpful, though doesn't have everything. If you pick a month and scroll to the bottom, they have a bunch of special programming. I think the times listed are central timezone though. I had a quick look and couldn't find anything for your dates above. But might be worth a look anyway. https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/siteindex

Thanks for that. It is so odd to me that it barely rated a mention back then. Even the casual style they write about the story in the first article seems so odd. I don't believe prime time was touching topics like this, not really, so I would have thought there would have been more. Though I know soaps were not really talked about much back then.

Yeah they did. They get a ton of things wrong. In 1971 abortions were legal in New York with consent from the husband, Erica technically got a legal one but lied (If I remember correctly) about Jeff agreeing and so really was not legal. By 1973 Jeff was very much with Mary and Erica had been with Jason Maxwell. If Erica had been pregnant in 1973, she wouldn't have needed to go behind Jeff's back and he frankly wouldn't have wanted her to be pregnant since they were already separated. Erica spent that year holding up the divorce. If she had been with baby, she would have used this against Jeff.

I literally have the scripts. It was May 1971 I have almost every script from 1970 - 1984. Jeff and Erica married Dec 1970. She found out she was pregnant soon after. Jeff seemed somewhat agreeable to an abortion but then talked it over with his father Joe and changed his mind. Erica told him she would get the abortion whether he agreed or not. She went to New York and lied about having her husband's approval (it was legal but only with a husband consenting) then ended up with septicaemia. Which is how Jeff found out. Mary Kenicott was introduced around this time.

The abortion happened in May 1971

😂 summer 74 was full on. Did Lorie pose for her centrefold during that time too?

Yep it definitely held on. I wonder if more parents/grand parents got hooked when the kids turned the dial to AMC. I know I got both my grandmothers hooked on soaps, haha Although Y&R had a reputation as the youthful soap, I feel AMC was like that too. Though maybe there was more there for older viewers to attach to and that wasn't as much the case with Y&R. CBS overall was a lot more conservative.

Thank you for going to the effort of typing that up, great to have confirmation. No wonder Y&R and AMC had such a boost over the summer. The kids were home to take over the tv sets, haha.

Oh yeah for sure. There's no comparison. Even somewhat bland material from the 50's - 70's is more enjoyable to me than some of the things that happened in later decades.

@vetsoapfan Though I never saw her material. Any time I hear the name Gabrielle Upton/Gillian Houghton, I shudder, haha. She seemed to be a soap killer. She and James Lipton were definitely on the bottom rung of soap scribes.