Broderick

I expect she'd be interesting to speak with. (I've never found most actors interesting enough to "faint" over, lol. But I do sometimes get intimidated by writers, who are generally way more intelligent than I am.)

Welcome. I don't know enough about it to be "staunch" (as Little Edie would say), but I just figured from Day One any distribution package Colgate-Palmolive assembled for Retro-TV would be 1967-1980, with possibly a few outlier episodes here and there from the public domain. The rest would be NBC's little red wagon to sell, and Retro wouldn't be getting it easily. Retro never seemed very certain (or very forthcoming) about what they'd acquired from Colgate.

The way I've always heard it, NBC owned it from 1963 until 1967, with Colgate-Palmolive as the primary sponsor. In 1967, Channelex (which was CP's little version of "P&G Productions") purchased it from NBC, produced it and distributed it to NBC until fall of 1980, and then threw it back to NBC. Here's a newspaper blurb indicating that's the case. (They're discussing Hugh McPhillps who was the casting director of the show.) This is from 1974. "McPhillips, whose main job with The Doctors is handling the casting of each of the 250 half-hour episodes taped every year, has been with the soap since the mid-1960s. A director for 17 years at NBC, who introduced the program, McPhillips left the television network when The Doctors was purchased outright in 1967 by Colgate. He is employed now by Channelex, Inc."

Just theatrics, I expect. I believe his last appearance was in the autumn of 2020? SURELY they weren't still wasting a dressing room on him? "Sorry, folks, you can't go in there --- that's Doug's dressing room! We're expecting him back in 2029!"

Sorry to hear Lauralee Bell is such a terrible "writer", lol. If Doug Davidson had just hushed-up five years ago, he'd probably still be getting a couple of episodes a month like Christian LeBlanc does -- instead of nothing.

No one knows if a concept will work until they try it. But the 90-minute expansion of Another World seems so bone-headed. Who on earth is going to devote 90 minutes of their weekday to watching a movie-length television show? And what writer has the capability of creating 90 minutes of compelling drama daily? Edge of Night made such good use of the 30-minute format. Granted, that's a "niche" soap (mystery and suspense), but every scene appears to serve a distinct purpose. Two people don't just meet randomly and chit-chat. If two characters end up in a scene together, a pertinent bit of information or a clue is going to be exchanged between them. There's an "economical quality" to the writing, and there's never much blatant padding. A lot of that conciseness is lost in a 60-minute show. A 90-minute show seems like a disaster waiting to happen (and it was).

lol. Several years ago, they made a BIG production of "we're going to begin airing episodes from 1967 when the show went from black & white to COLOR!!" I suppose that sounded better than the truth: "NBC owned the show from 1963 to 1967, so we don't have the rights to air a blooming one of those pre-1967 episodes. Sorry, folks!" And now they come along with this song & dance about 1981 & 1982, for the same fairly obvious reason.

They can "up-seed" a player if they want to. But I doubt there's any danger. There are about 1,500 points separating them from the #3 & #4 players.

Same -- that was sheer torture! As the years have rolled by, I find Cricket less annoying than I originally did, and I can now stomach her in (very) small doses.

"After exhaustive research and discussions with the Colgate team, it could only be determined that those tapes were reused by NBC back in the day and thus, the beloved final two years of The Doctors no longer exist." Pfffftt. Let's rephrase that. "After exhaustive research and discussions with the Colgate team, it could only be determined that those tapes do NOT belong to Colgate-Palmolive, and we do NOT have the funds to enter into into negotiations with NBC to purchase the rights to air them." I expect those tapes will "miraculously reappear" if NBC decides there's money to be made in digging them out of their own storage facility and digitizing them.

I *guess* #6 is about as low as Y&R will go before ultimately beginning its climb back to #1.

MUCH has been written about the phenomenal success of Y&R and the ABC shows in the late 1970s, but I often forget how well Search for Tomorrow was performing, only to be kicked to the curb by CBS less than three years later.

I've often wondered how the voiceovers were done -- whether she had to go to the studio daily to do them, or whether she recorded several of them at a time, on a day when she happened to be there.

I wasn't a big fan of 1970s World Turns, though it was often playing in our living room. I remember Dan's funeral pretty vividly, and how composed Kim was for the sake of Betsy. It struck me as being shockingly real. (But I was too young for anyone's demo, so my opinion didn't matter lol.)

Oh, yeah. What appealed to me about the show was "nouveau rich folks who live on a ranch". We'd often see Bobby or Ray SWEATIING outside after rounding up calves, and people would do "mundane" jobs indoors, such as Miss Ellie cooking chili in the kitchen for the Ewing barbeque. They were people whom rural Americans, whether Southern or not, could relate to. They might have a fancy Lincoln Continental, Mercedes, and Corvette in the driveway, but they were often seen doing "normal" things around the place that anyone -- millionaire or not -- would do on a farm.

I guess I probably DO need you to press my button. lol. Seriously, I just haven't gotten around to watching them again, but I will. In my opinion, these were the best years of Dallas.

This was absolutely compelling material to many of us. On one hand, you're thinking, "It's inevitable Jill will marry Mister Brooks. He represents everything she lost when Phillip Chancellor died -- a father figure, combined with financial security." And on the other hand, you're thinking, "SURELY, the harlot won't do this to her own mother. Jill is an awful person, but she won't REALLY marry her mother's boyfriend. Will she? And if Jill does this terrible thing, will Liz finally wash her hands of Jill once and for all?" (Very frequently, Liz was the only person in town who attempted to justify Jill's horrid behavior; that could potentially come to an end.) Every single beat of this storyline was playing on-screen. Kay Thurston considered Liz Foster to be her best friend. If Mrs. Thurston would simply "release" Derek from his (reluctant) marriage to Kay, then Jill would drop Mister Brooks in a New York minute to be with Derek, ensuring Liz and Stuart's happiness. But we all knew how Kay Thurston's mind worked -- she was FAR too vain, selfish, and cruel to release Derek from their marriage, as Kay wanted a younger man (like Derek) in her bed. So in a very real sense, it was Kay's self-pitying vanity that would ultimately lead to the breaking of sweet Liz Foster's heart. Brock Reynolds was Jill's best friend. Would Brock talk Jill out of marrying Mister Brooks, even though it would ultimately lead to Kay losing Derek Thurston and potentially becoming a drunk again. Lorie Brooks was about ready to snatch Jill's hair out of her head. Lorie had been the kind-hearted "voice of reason" four years earlier, who leaned on Stuart Brooks to keep Jill's name out of the Chronicle during Phillip Chancellor's death and the Phillip Chancellor Foster paternity trial. Lorie's patience had come to an end, and she was kicking herself for EVER giving Jill the benefit of the doubt, now that Jill was pulling the same stunt -- a pregnancy scare --- on Stuart Brooks that she had pulled earlier on Phillip Chancellor. Suzanne Lynch was the loose cannon in ALL of this. She wanted Derek Thurston for herself, and we assumed she'd pull any stunt in the world to make sure Jill Foster was removed from the competition pool, by lying, omitting facts, and concealing information to make sure Jill married Stuart Brooks and left Derek alone. If Suzanne succeeded in this endeavor, then how on earth would Suzanne then get rid of Kay Thurston? Also, keep in mind the ages of all these characters -- Stuart Brooks was 48. Liz Foster was 49. Kay Thurston was 50. They were the same age that Nick Newman & Sharon Newman are right now. The decisions those three characters were about to make in early 1979 would impact practically the entire canvas -- all four of the Brooks girls, the Foster boys, and of course Jill. All of the younger characters had a "stake" in the game. Everything on Y&R was clicking in early 1979, and Bill Bell was doing his best to postpone the network's demand to expand the show to an hour, because Bell knew what he was doing, and he didn't want anyone ordering him to do it differently.

I've not seen them in High Definition yet, but they were awfully pretty in "plain ole TV" back in the day. People aren't running around looking for emeralds in a jungle or making billion dollar deals. They're sitting around the swimming pool discussing a trip to the stockyard. Or riding around in a convertible. Or feeding a horse. Just regular stuff, which is what made that show seem somewhat relatable.

John Conboy was always convinced if a storyline wasn't working very well, or if a scene dragged a bit, someone needed to deliver their lines nekkid.

It happened kinda slowly. Sue Ellen was pregnant with John Ross over several episodes in the 1978/1979 season. There was a short-term arc about Pam's pregnancy that culminated in that tear-jerker "Lost Child" episode, in which Pam lost her baby and Bobby's little sidekick-boy moved to Wyoming. They were beginning to do more and more "two-part" episodes in 1979/1980 that concluded with "to be continued ...", including the episode in which Digger Barnes died after admitting he'd killed Hutch McKinney years before. By the very end of the 1979/1980 season, in "A House Divided", they'd pretty much decided they were a true continuing drama.

Well, there was PLENTY for everybody. They'd show Nikki wiggling around on-stage to Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby", and then Cash would be auditioning a line-up of new male escorts. ("Okay, guys, let's have a look at all of you without your shirts on.") And then Lorie Brooks would meet with her attorney but forget to wear her bra. And then Snapper & Chris's air conditioner would break, which would inspire Chris to suggest getting a better apartment, but Snapper would just shuck off his shirt and say, "We'll get by, Babe." (I attributed most of the gratuitous skin displays to John Conboy, but Bill Bell was clearly pretty complicit.)

I feel sure that's what he had up his sleeve when he kept making such a point of mentioning "Todd's in seminary, preparing for the priesthood." The Thorn Birds novel was MUCH discussed in 1977 and 1978. Bell started crafting his Williams family in 1979, and by that time the novel was being drafted as a two-hour movie starring Christopher Reeve, then Robert Redford, then Ryan O'Neal, and then it was announced it would be reworked entirely as a miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain. It was constantly in the entertainment news in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and with Bell's previous interest in Marie Horton's celibacy requirements, it was a pretty good bet he planned to tell the tale with young Father Todd. [And I'd have preferred that story over "Clare Lawrence is in a coma" or "April has a twin sister" or whichever story ultimately took its place.]

It's hard for me to remember the timing of the switchover, exactly. Steve Williams left town for good -- was it SPRINGTIME of 1981 ? -- after Peggy Brooks jilted him at the altar. The Bayou storyline was beginning to take shape simultaneously. Andy Richards -- if I remember right -- started out as a bartender at the Bayou before ultimately transitioning to Jonas's club, where he worked with Paul Williams and Danny Romalotti. I'm not sure if Paul and Andy had actually crossed paths yet, when Steve Williams bit the dust. But I'm sure Bill Bell could see immediately that with Steven Ford's Andy Richards character, he had himself a handsome, fresh-faced, young leading man type character who wasn't burdened with all that (ridiculous) "virginity" nonsense that had plagued the Steve Williams character from day one. (And Andy Richard came with a *bonus* -- "President Ford's son is on Y&R!")

😂 If they were, they were sorely disappointed! "Make love to me, Paul, for I am your spiritual mother!"

It seems they were mostly lost due to not-so-great casting. And a couple of lousy storylines. While I appreciate the "concept" of Steve Williams -- the yuppie guy saving himself for marriage and is kind of do-gooder like Brock (who was soon to depart) -- the storyline with Steve refusing to boink Peggy Brooks during their engagement was a bit silly. Wasn't she the same girl who couldn't be a "real wife" to Jack Curtis because she'd been raped and because Jack was divorcing his plump wife to be with her? But a few years later, she magically transformed into a horn dawg who was begging Steve for sex, and then prancing around butt-nekkid under her fur coat so Jack Abbott would pork her. After that embarrassing mess, it was probably wise to cut Steve from the cast. And Bill Bell clearly wasn't terribly interested in Patty once Lilibet Stern left. (In hindsight, Andrea Evans really wasn't TOO bad, but at the time, I thought she was horrid and was ready to see her go as well.) [I expect the purpose of Todd Williams was to tell some version of the 1977 bestseller The Thorn Birds, about a young priest wrestling with his chastity vows. But with Steve making a hasty exit in 1981 and Lilibet Stern bolting a couple of years later, that probably put the nail in Father Todd's coffin.] Bell was probably wise to notice that the real chemistry and most accessible storyline potential lay with Paul, Andy Richards, and Amy Lewis, switching from the Traditional Williams Family to the Detective Office Family.