Franko

On 4/16/2024 at 1:09 PM, dc11786 said:

It seems like Tristan Rogers was off the show for a few weeks.

Just speculating, but I wonder if it was related to his role in The Rescuers Down Under. Maybe he was required to go plug the movie for a little bit?

10 hours ago, Khan said:

I, myself, might have been tempted to schedule "Dolly" against DALLAS or FC on Friday nights, if only because both shows were beginning to decline in the ratings.

Bold move.

59 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

Schedule-wise, I could put it at 8 p.m. Saturday, with Once a Hero in the 9 p.m. Sunday slot.

@Franko Sorry can't see Once a Hero Sun @9. The show was kid oriented and was a disaster Sat night.

What can I say? I'm flailing a bit.

59 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

ABC wasted their movies on Thurs night that season.

Oh, absolutely. It's not surprising that they eventually went back to having Sunday night movies.

8 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

@Franko thirtysomething Sun @9? can't see that working well. It was a very niche show.

Variety shows have traditionally aired at 8pm Sonny & Cher, Ed Sullivan, Donny & Marie or 10 pm Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, Jackie Gleason

So maybe Dolly could have aired Fri @8 up against Rags to Riches and Beauty &the Beast or Sat @8 up against Facts of Life and My Sister Sam.

I could see it doing better there, although it was costly and I can't see them putting it on Sat (even though that's where it ended up.)

There just weren't many timeslots available that suited that show.

Yeah, I wasn't especially fond of putting thirtysomething at 9 p.m. on Sunday. It also wouldn't flow that great between Spenser and Buck James. I stand by my assertion that ratings-wise, Dolly would have been at its best at 9 p.m. on Tuesdays. Schedule-wise, I could put it at 8 p.m. Saturday, with Once a Hero in the 9 p.m. Sunday slot. I'm avoiding 8 p.m. Friday because I don't want to put Full House/I Married Dora on Saturday and have a three-way sitcom standoff.

27 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

Dolly Parton's  1987 variety show seemed sabotaged from the get go.

Putting it Sun @9 seemed misguided. Having a terrible lead in with Spencer for Hire and knowing it would battle the strongest theatrical and TV movies on the opposition placed it on the back foot from Day 1. And having an unknown lead out with Buck James didn't help either.

Wk 1

8pm

CBS Murder She wrote #12
NBC Family Ties #11/ My Two Dads #19
ABC Spenser For Hire #60

9pm - 11pm

CBS Movie #48
NBC Movie  The Terminator #30
ABC Dolly #5 Buck James # 27

Wk 2

8pm

CBS MSW #9
NBC Family Ties # 10/My 2 dads # 16
ABC Spenser #55

9-11

CBS Movie #20
NBC Movie #17
ABC Dolly # 21 Buck James # 55

And from then on Dolly continued to slip. ABC shipped it off to Sat night to quietly expire.

Perhaps Dolly should have aired Sun @8 with a movie @9? Although the 8pm competition was fierce.

My other thought was the 2hr Disney movie Sun 7-9, Dolly @ 9 and Hotel @ 10. Slightly stronger leadin/lead out.

Where else would you have placed Dolly on the schedule?

Supposedly, ABC wanted Dolly to go head to head against The Cosby Show, which she vetoed. 

I feel like Dolly would have had its best chance at 9 p.m. Tuesday. The problem is, even though I know in 2024 that Moonlighting's going to go down the tubes, 1987 me can't justify moving it off the Tuesday night schedule. That means that I have to put it at 10 p.m., and now I run into the issue of what to do with Thirtysomething. I guess I'd put it at 9 p.m. Sunday, but keep an eye on the 10 p.m. Tuesday slot.

How long were Zack & Stacey around? I keep wondering if their story was supposed to go anywhere, and if if was, were they done in by either the writers strike or the apparent decision to mostly stick with what they had in terms of hospital-based characters?

On 3/29/2024 at 5:45 PM, Vee said:

Has anyone else seen the early Felicia return material in June of '92 and gotten the distinct impression they were heavily testing Scott and Felicia? They have a number of cute banter scenes with him looking after Maxie (who they keep calling "Max") and have pretty solid chemistry, and their vaguely improvisational energy works well together.

I'll have to give that a watch. Reading the curlyqgrl summaries, I wondered if they were briefly testing them in late '87-early '88.

4 hours ago, Vee said:

I can't see it working for long, but letting Bill run another 6-12 months as a kind of antagonist to L&L with Geary doing both roles might've been real interesting.

Interesting idea, although I wonder if the soap press would have criticized it, since 1993 was also the year of Michael E. Knight playing Tad and Ted on AMC.

19 minutes ago, Vee said:

You would never have put GH back on the map in such a big way in the '90s without Luke and Laura. It just would not have happened. It was exquisitely written, performed and brilliantly promoted. It was everywhere that fall and it's what brought me to the show as a kid.

7 hours ago, titan1978 said:

And I think of all the star characters to lure back to GH at that time Luke and Laura were the right ones. They had that Marland/PFS foundation grounded in reality that later characters did not have. It fit the tone better.

It really was an event. No other return would have worked. I will say that it might have been great to have Denise Alexander (and eventually Chris Robinson) back under Labine's pen.

Shot in the dark ... were they considering Michael to play Eliot?

May she rest in peace, and I'll also add to the sympathy for Crystal. This was the first clip that came to mind.

https://youtu.be/Pfp1r1t_6jQ?list=PLFC14180D252D2E37&t=546

37 minutes ago, All My Shadows said:

I can't see it being a full hour, and AFAIC, Let's Make a Deal has never had any business being a 60-minute show. Cut that back to thirty minutes, slot The Gates at thirty minutes, and somehow find a way to pair it with Y&R. The TPIR/Y&R combo (whether back to back or with the news in between) has been an institution for decades now, but in order for this show to succeed, it has to feed off of Y&R.

I've been spending the last few minutes trying to think of a recognizable, not currently active, preferably with some history on CBS, game show that could be revived and run in any spare 30-minute timeslot.

Concentration? The Joker's Wild? Tic-Tac-Dough? Sale of the Century? Scrabble?

I'd personally love to see a Tattletales or Hollywood Squares revival, but who do you get as stars in this day and age? Also, some shows were already revived too recently (To Tell the Truth, Match Game, Card Sharks).

1 hour ago, DramatistDreamer said:

That message from Melanie is so thoughtful. Thanks for sharing this @Soapsuds. It’s so funny that Kim Johnston Ulrich was also there alongside Melanie because I always imagined that if they were going to bring back Betsy in the final years of the series, Johnston Ulrich likely would have made a great Betsy recast. I can only imagine how great their scenes could have been with Melanie and Kim playing off each other.

That would have been an interesting (and first of its kind?) situation, since Kim played Betsy's rival, Diana, during the Meg Ryan years.

Thinking about 1983-84 Days for a moment, and remembering back to when the Soaps of Yesteryear Tumblr was active. One particular item stands out -- that Deidre was going to get a raise and/or a better storyline, thus ensuring that she'd stay. I still wonder: if that hadn't worked out, would Marlena have been a Salem Slasher victim?

1 hour ago, Contessa Donatella said:

No idea. But there are some scenes where background people are shown & I don't have time right now to freeze it on those scenes & look. Maybe you or someone else wants to? 

Oh, what fun! I'll take a peek.

The clip didn't give me a lot to work with, but Lynn *might* be the woman sitting to the right of Shawn.

51 minutes ago, Contessa Donatella said:

Poor guy, we used to call him, ahem, TightyWhiteys. 

Was that based on an episode or scene, or just that he would walk like his briefs were too snug? I was about to say that I was surprised that daytime would still let a guy wear briefs, but there was Matt Bomer on GL a few years later.

1 hour ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Hey guys, is the promo y'all were talking about? The one that looks like it's set at Bay City's hottest gay nightclub 

 

YES! This is the one. And it's just as equally cringe-fabulous as I remembered.

I always thought the lyric was "wings to another world."

9 hours ago, Khan said:

I'm just glad no one decided to bring that particular opening into the late '90's.  The last thing we needed was a '90's boy band version of "(You Take Me Away to) Another World."

"Because of the horrible situation that happened earlier today, we even debated about closing The Lucky Lady for tonight. But Jessica Simpson is not only a remarkable performer ..."

We're now up to the "Beef up The Banner" storyline that was talked about in at least one 1991 issue of Soap Opera Digest. I'll be curious if it actually goes anywhere, or if it's just filler for the end of the Rauch run.

I don't want to start or continue a prolonged fight, but I will say that while there is nothing wrong with having an all-purpose conversation about soaps, I think that it goes against the years of show-specific conversation that these show-specific threads have had.

Anyway, I watched the Jan. 29, 1980, episode, getting a kick out of Dee & Ian living it up at the Italian disco. And "Rise," of all songs, playing.

4 hours ago, Vee said:

It is a bit wild to me that Tess came on as Trucker's(?) nanny and then became an advertising tycoon in record time. I still don't get how that happened.

With a brief turn as Alden Enterprises secretary in between.

I almost didn't include the possession in my roundup of Reilly's hypothetical '80s run, but I could also see a story like that being dragged out during the '88 writers strike.

Over on the '90s ratings thread, I wondered about what would happen if James E. Reilly started writing for Days five years earlier, in late 1987. I thought about it initially in the sense of if the ratings rise would have happened sooner, and what it would mean to NBC Daytime as a whole.

Now I want to talk about the idea of Reilly 1.0 plots playing out with or being tweaked for the late '80s and early '90s cast. Like Diana being the one buried alive. Anjelica stealing Adrienne's embryo. Eve drugging Frankie to have his baby and getting punched out years later by Jennifer. Kayla getting possessed. Isabella getting involved with her lookalike and their identical siblings.

2 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Unfortunately for NBC that shake up didn't flow through the lineup as ABC had done previously.

It makes me wonder what would have happened if Reilly wrote for Days in the late '80s. Would the rising tide effect have happened with Another World and Santa Barbara? Would we have gotten a variant of Aremid or Passions instead of Generations, or as the Santa Barbara replacement?

(There's other implications, which I'll save for the classic Days thread.)

3 hours ago, kalbir said:

Also noticed Santa Barbara clearanced dropped during the Fall. I don't recall any new talk shows that launched Fall 1992. When did NBC announce Santa Barbara end?

"'Santa Barbara' is 1 of 2 daytime casualties at NBC" (Sept. 30, 1992, L.A. Times)

Acknowledging the unprofitable economics of its daytime programs, NBC will turn some time periods over to its affiliates as part of a major overhaul of its schedule.

The move, the second time in a year that NBC has cut its daytime programming, is the strongest evidence yet of the network’s retrenchment efforts in the face of stiffer competition from syndication, cable and other networks.

NBC will drop its struggling afternoon soap opera “Santa Barbara” on Jan. 15. It will also cancel its medical advice show, “Doctor Dean.” Both shows ranked near the bottom in daytime ratings.

In the last several years, NBC has cut back a third of its daytime programming, to four hours from six hours. The decision to drop “Santa Barbara” was prompted last week when John Rohrbeck, president of NBC-TV’s stations division, refused to continue carrying the soap opera after key affiliates in Boston, Philadelphia and St. Louis dropped the show, sources said.

Affiliates will be handed back the 11 to 11:30 a.m. time period to fill in with syndicated shows. Network executives are still pondering how to fill the “Santa Barbara” 3 to 4 p.m. slot. Among the replacement shows apparently under consideration are an expanded version of “Classic Concentration,” a youth-oriented game show, and a talk show hosted by Sassy magazine editor Jane Pratt.

The cancellations underscore the rapidly changing economics of daytime television, which only a few years ago could account for up to 70% of a network’s profit.

Traditionally, daytime programs cost much less than prime-time shows to produce and attracted healthy advertising because of their success in reaching a largely female audience.

But in recent years, the daytime marketplace has become increasingly crowded, with syndicated shows pulling viewers away from the weaker network shows.

“NBC has been hurting in the daytime race,” said Bill Croasedale, president of national broadcasting at the Los Angeles-based ad agency Western Media. “They have been running a really poor third against ABC and CBS.”

NBC’s problems have been compounded by the fact that impatient affiliates, facing their own financial pressures, are no longer willing to stick with ratings losers when they can acquire more profitable syndicated shows on their own.

NBC, which had been the prime-time ratings leader for five years before being bumped into second place by CBS this last season, is now retrenching from several ambitious expansion plans launched in recent years.

Network staffers have been buzzing for several weeks about an “October surprise” that could entail further cutbacks and might include the long-anticipated “strategic” transaction hinted at by NBC’s parent, General Electric.

As for syndicated talk shows that debuted in fall 1992, there were Vicki Lawrence and Jane Whitney's shows. Jane Pratt was actually between shows at the time of the above article. She went from FOX stations to Lifetime, then was done by 1993. (If Jane Pratt had stayed, it's interesting to consider what that would have meant for Ricki Lake.)