mikelyons

Last time I heard, their budget had settled to $60m per year. I wouldn't be surprised if it was $50-$55m right now, but that's a guess, based on what I'm seeing on screen.

All right, let's talk budgets! When SEARCH FOR TOMORROW and LOVE OF LIFE launched in 1951, their budgets were $8,750 a week ($437,500/year). By 2014 or so, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS' budget was $100m per year, one of the highest in television, and then fell to $80m per year. (For context with another highly rated daytime show, OPRAH was produced for $50m per year.) (Note: I found Y&R's budget in documents from the Sony hack.) It appears ALL MY CHILDREN and ONE LIFE TO LIVE cost $40m to produce (each) per year by the time they were canceled (that $80m went to KATIE). DAYS' budget has been about $750k per week ($37.5m/year) for a while now. What other hard budget numbers (weekly/monthly) do we have or know?

The Christine/Paul storyline was Kay Alden, not Bill Bell.

Yeah... I'll need to use a VPN, lest I sign up for CBS All Access...which is still the stupidest name for a streaming service...

Does anyone have today's episode of Y&R (4/28/2020)? Newsom interrupted after the first half of the show just as I was super invested... *sigh* I'm thisclose to calling his office to ask them to interrupt The Talk or Dr. Phil. 😑

Oh, yes! That's Daisy! I noticed it, too!

I really wish my governor would interrupt DR. PHIL instead of classic episodes of Y&R. 2/3 of the way through the ball, here comes Newsom... *sigh*

Jack forces Jill to present Dru with a modeling contract, much to Jill's chagrin. Olivia confides in Neil about tests. Christine gets an offer from her law firm as Michael makes an unwanted advance.

I've always wanted to see the ball. I love how they used the characters in costume for the ball as the inner illustrations for the Y&R 25th Anniversary book.

Haha. I grew up in an ABC Daytime household. My best friend would lend me her Y&R tapes so I could catch up and SOD helped, too!

I watched the classic episode tonight and it was an absolute treat. Victor, Nikki, Jill, Dru, John, Neil, Jack...Miguel!!! This episode showed the best of soap opera. What a soap can be and what it should be. The production values were top notch. The writing was par none. The dialogue was perfect. This is the Y&R I’d watch for half an hour before tuning into AMC. How I miss it...

The LA market's broadcast of today's episode was interrupted three times. If anyone has the full episode, I'd love to see it...or I'll have to check CAA.

Yep, that was the "Genoa City Theme". Such a great episode.

Anything from 1973-78 would be most welcome. They could easily slot a half hour episode into their hour long slot without cutting a single word and having an actor pad the other two or three minutes of air time.

+1,000 You can say that again. I remember when they slightly toyed with giving Colleen an issue with food in a scene at Crimson Lights. It would have been a great story, but, ya know... 🙄

I always loved Doug and Leila’s friendship. It was unique, non sexual, and refreshing on soaps. Furthermore, I did enjoy the character even when he was written as a busybody fuddy-duddy.

Y&R very nearly went to air with the title “The Young and Restless Years”. The original Screen Gems contracts have that name for show. Thank goodness someone lobbed off “Years”.

Thanks for all of these LOVING episodes! It was the little soap that could. We have to remember that the show had a different EP and head writer every year it was on the air! How the crew and cast managed to keep things going to this standard is remarkable. My guess would be that LOVING had a budget on the same scale as B&B did during the period, hence the quality. Both were sold overseas and extremely popular in Italy. Fremantle handled the international sales for LOVING (as well as PRICE IS RIGHT) while the Bells had B&B. This is a guess, but knowing they were each owned by their creators, not the network, and rented one studio from the network, they were probably well-funded due to their international sales in addition to their domestic licensing fees (aka budget).

SFT from August 19, 1953

Agreed! And they keep MULTIPLYING!!! I turned off Emmerdale about a year and a half ago because of the Dingles. I recently saw the news today that the actors playing Lisa, Bernice, Meghan, Graham, Robert, and a few more QUIT! I was shocked. What are they doing to Emmerdale?

Here are three images from script #828 of THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS written by William J. Bell and Kay Alden. I acquired this script online many years ago and have since sold it. I wanted to share these brief script snippets in case they're of interest to anyone. I can't remember if I scanned the whole script, but I'll take a look this weekend. Enjoy!

These scenes in the Jabot boardroom were epic and on YouTube for years under the title “Does Anyone Have a Spare $75 Million?” How I wish they would resurface. Brad, Jill, Jack, Nikki... Good times and great storytelling.

Iain MacLeod shouldn't be allowed to produce a local panto let alone a top-rated drama. The way he ruined EMMERDALE... I remember EMMERDALE fans warning CORRIE fans that he was a disaster. He's the UK equivalent of Jill Farren Phelps.

I'll have to go to UCLA and see those episodes. They have a few ATWT episodes from 56-59 and they're quite wonderful.

I've been listening to THE ARCHERS on BBC Radio 4 (via TuneIn) and on Apple Podcasts and was surprised there wasn't a thread for it on SON. Is anyone else listening to the world's longest running soap opera?