Jdee43

I never knew Paul Rauch got his start in daytime by working at CBS Daytime for a couple of years, until late 1971. To go from playing a role in running the daytime division of a broadcast network to running a P&G show on another network is an interesting career change.

Thanks! It would have been interesting to see a soap with a western format! TV westerns were so popular in the late 50s, and the networks were always eager to bring what worked in primetime to daytime. A soap opera version of Gunsmoke would have been interesting!

Wasn't ABC considered something of a joke through the 50s and 60s, for their lack of stations and programming? In 1955-56, their only daytime show was The Mickey Mouse Club. Then 1957, they brought in American Bandstand. What was ABC's first attempt at a soap opera? Was it General Hospital in 1963? I think they had scripted daytime shows earlier, but that they were in the anthology format. Can we say that GH was their first continuing, serialized daytime drama?

Watching through episode 96 (12/11/84), the show is so over Joe. He hasn't appeared since episode 86 and is barely being mentioned. In the beginning, with Dane playing him, Joe was on every day. Mason is definitely more interesting now that everyone hates him. He has a good scene with CC in the beginning of episode 96, where he threatens CC with a broken bottle. Mason quotes Shakespeare in episode 96 too, for the first time I think. I was surprised that the writers went so far as to have Mason leave Peter to die back in episode 87. I never knew he was an attempted murderer. Since Peter later becomes a serial killer, this becomes no big deal or is dropped? Episode 96 features Andrea Howard as Veronica. Like others in the cast, she's beautiful, but just can't act. She's supposed to be playing Mason at Lionel's behest, but you can hardly tell with her performance; she talks to Mason and Lionel in the same way; subtly and nuance was a little beyond her.

Really sad. Nancy was great.

Hugh Marlowe was awful in the 1980/81 episodes uploaded to AOL, obviously reading off cue cards and probably not in good health. I recently saw him in the 1951 western Rawhide, and he was good. Seeing him in 1981, time was not kind to him.

Can anyone shed light on what the NBC execs were thinking when they brought over Search for Tomorrow in March 1982? When they did so, was it pretty much assumed that The Doctors and Texas would be cancelled, or was there a period when they were actually thinking of going with 5 soap operas? For 9 months in 1982, it was 11am Texas/ noon The Doctors/12:30pm Search for Tomorrow/ 1pm Days of Our Lives/ 2pm Another World. Why did they basically abandon the 3pm hour for over 2 years, from March 1982 to August 1984? They had reruns of Chips, then two luke-warm, hour long game shows, Fantasy and Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour.

Yes, thanks for this! Looking online, it's from the September 7, 1968 issue of TV guide. It's accompanied by a photo of Laryssa Lauret and her kids. I wish they would have ran it without her wearing that silly black wig; or included a picture of her as a blonde; I would have loved to have seen her natural hair! Reading it, the article seems more inspired by the Cold War than whatever popularity she had on The Doctors.

Of the major networks, I think soaps were rockiest on NBC. Their best era on the network was the late 1960s. There were some momentary highs in the 70s, but I still think the late 60s were tops, especially creatively. To see how far things fell, look at the line-up 20 years later, in the late 80s, with Days of Our Lives at 1pm, Another World at 2pm, and Santa Barbara at 3pm, all bloated, creatively declining shows. Another World was the best of the three, but it was still a shell of what it once was, and it wasn't getting the ratings. Days was getting ratings, but was pretty much a joke, a cartoon, even then; it had been since 1984 I'd say. Santa Barbara was more of an anti-soap, how a soap, especially at 60 minutes, should not be done, with a small cast and a ton of ridiculous, episodic stories designed to fill out the air time. It should have been 30 minutes. One of NBC's biggest mistakes was not to nurture The Doctors. If they were going to keep it at 30 minutes, maybe find a 30 minute show to pair it with? And give it back it's traditional time slot! I wonder how the late 80s would have looked on NBC with a schedule of Days at 1pm, Santa Barbara at 2pm, The Doctors at 2:30pm, and Another World at 3pm?

It's really stunning how little they seem to value female voices, by letting that environment go on, and getting rid of, or allowing to go, those not on board. I hope they realize that they need female actors to have a show.

Equally icky was Lionel and Eden. I just watched episode 94 and were they really going to go there? Was CC/Santana/Mason going to be followed by something like Lionel/Eden/Warren? Lionel and Eden had no chemistry. Lionel did have chemistry with Augusta and Sophia. Episode 94 shows how bad the show was in late 84. An episode with just 6 characters, Ted and Laken, Eden and Lionel, and Brick and Augusta. Only the latter two had any life, especially Augusta. The show seemed to be designed to put people to sleep.

NBC went to the well of Another World one too many times. In a 10 year period, there were 2 and half spin-offs, each of which took valuable characters from the mother show that never returned. And there were 2 expansions, each of which diluted the show even more. Hardly a surprise Another World was in such poor shape by late 1980. The only interesting thing the show really had left by then was Rachel and Mac. Too bad NBC never realized this. The 90 minute expansion and the Texas spin off were so unnecessary.

I would have liked to have seen them write Ava Lazar's Santana like they would later write Robin Mattson's Gina. The characters of Santana and Gina did seem to switch personalities with the recasts. So they fired their lead alpha male star after the first 3 months. They gave their lead alpha female star an extra month, but then fired her too, after 4 months. Rough!!

I'm watching those episodes now. Lane Davies and Charles Bateman are terrible together. They just don't seem like father and son. Their looks and acting styles are so different. Also, the way Bateman's CC is written with regards to Mason is too broad, with no nuance; it's always so cold and negative; or maybe that's just Bateman's performance. I just finished watching episode 92 (12/5/84), with the departure of the original Santana, Ava Lazar. It comes out of no where; she just decides to leave town in the middle of the episode. There was no hint of her leaving in any of the episodes leading up to this, and I'm not sure it makes that much sense in regards to where the story is. She actually decided to give Mason a chance back in episode 89; they were together all of 2 episodes and then she hates him and is gone. Next to Dane's Joe, it seemed like Ava's Santana was the main character of these 1984 episodes. While at times her acting could be weak, Ava Lazar was very beautiful, and she had charisma. With a story that suited her more, she could have really shined. I doubt the Dobsons would have been receptive to rewriting their story so that it would play more to Ava's strengths, though. Probably another strike against Ava is that she really didn't have that much chemistry with most of her co-stars, especially the CCs. Having her hook up with CC, and there being three different CCs, really sunk her. I think her strongest chemistry was with Mason, but it seemed like the writers never wanted to really go there. It might have been fun to see the writers take Mason and Ava's Santana in a comedic direction, do a love-hate type of marriage, but it didn't seem like comedy, light or dark, was something they wanted to do with those two.

On air, DAYS has been a joke for the last 20 years. One can only imagine what goes on behind the scenes.. With this story, no wonder DAYS hasn't been able to retain a lot of its female talent.

That's very interesting! I guess a parallel would be the game show Concentration, owned by NBC but produced by Goodson-Todman from 1973-1978 and 1987-1991. Those tapes exist, but couldn't be aired without working out a deal with NBC. The Buzzr channel finally did it, airing the 87-91 shows beginning in 2018; the 73-78 shows starting in 2020. The 70s shows were taken off in 2022, while Buzzr is on track to air all the 87-91 shows. Maybe the 70s shows weren't getting the ratings to justify the licensing cost, so back in the vault they go? Assuming Retro does need to pay NBC something to air 1963-1967 and 1980-1982, perhaps they set up the pay site hoping to generate enough revenue to do that? When they realized it was a pipe dream, they'd never make enough money to do it, there wasn't enough interest, they made the site free and said the rest of the episodes are missing? Again, it's an interesting theory!

Like so many things with that show, I think the comedy on Santa Barbara was over-rated. It was usually just an excuse for an actor to overindulge themselves and go over the top (Lionel, Keith, Gina, Pearl, Mason). In 1984, the only attempts at humor were some scenes with Lionel and Augusta, and stuff with the 4 college kids. The former usually worked, while the latter was dreadful. The culmination of the latter was their teacher My Favorite Martian Ray Walston accidentally finding himself in a hotel room with a hooker and the kids bursting in, taking pictures, and blackmailing him to leave them alone, all meant to be hilarious. This was done over two episodes and dropped, never to be mentioned again; mercifully so, it was so embarrassing.

I don't think Mason becomes likeable or a lead until 1985. I think it takes the character of Mary.

Can anyone shed some light into why NBC bought the show in September 1980? Did Colgate want out? Instead of canceling it, NBC took it over, so I guess that means they still saw some value in it. You'd think, as owners paying no licensing fee, they'd give The Doctors better treatment and have more patience with it, but ultimately that just wasn't the case.

Great link!! Thanks!! Retro should turn to the fans and put up any recordings they might have of episodes from 1981 and 1982. Since Retro's recent site update, the video quality of fan recordings would probably be only marginally worse than Retro's digital transfers from the actual masters.

Watching episode 90 (12/3/84), there were two confessions, Brick learning Amy's secret and Mason learning Santana's. The Brick and Amy stuff went over like a lead balloon. A more believable reaction from Brick would have been so much better. Brick and Amy have the potential to be the most likeable characters on the show. I don't understand why the writers would saddle them with this kind of story, her pregnant by another man, a man who just dumped her. So many other places they could have gone. The Mason and Santana stuff was better. The next episode, 91, is probably Lane Davies's best on the show so far, as he tries to talk truth to Santana. Poor guy, in the course of two episodes, Santana goes from finally wanting to be with him to pulling a knife on him and never wanting to see him again! And this after his father just pulled a gun on him too, in episode 89! The writers at this point seem to really like portraying Mason as quite the loser!

Peter Mark Richmond might be my favorite CC. I would have liked to have seen what Lloyd Bochner could have done in the role though. The pilot was good, but it was not sustainable. Interesting to see how they were setting up Augusta in the pilot to be this big baddie, petting a dog while paying goons to shotgun Joe. That potential never materialized. She was never that evil again. When Lionel showed up 5 weeks later, her character was watered down even more. By then, how she acted in the pilot pretty much made no sense.

Stunning!! I was expecting this to be the case for the 1963-67 episodes, not the 1980-82 ones!! But hearing the story, it does make sense. NBC brought the show, and, I presume, was no longer required to send copies of episodes to Colgate-Palmolive. Sounds like Colgate never bothered to inventory what they had; they just assumed that they had everything! Did they forget that they had sold the show to NBC at the end?! Here's hoping 1981 and 1982 episodes will pop up on youtube from time to time from home recordings, and when they do, that Retro TV won't be overly aggressive in taking them down! I wonder what this means for the 1963-67 episodes?? Assuming they have them, if they don't meet broadcast standards, is that the same as not meeting streaming standards?? I would love for them to put whatever they have on streaming, no matter the quality. If they did have the episodes, though, you'd think by now they'd have done something with them, like put up Elizabeth Hubbard's first episode or something. The two 1963 episodes they had on the site came from the Paley Center for Media. The Paley Center also has a 1966 episode; maybe that will come to the site one day.

I guess we have Lin Bolen is to thank for the hour long soap opera and Wheel of Fortune? Those are the two things that she put on the air that are still around! Her legacy? I think the 60 minute format was ok for established shows. Trying to introduce new shows at 60 minutes was a mistake though. It's never worked long term. Santa Barbara came the closest to success, at 9 years, and even that show would have been so much better, and perhaps lasted longer, at 30 minutes. Interesting that from 1965 on, all the new soaps NBC tried to introduce failed. In hindsight, perhaps they should have just doubled down and focused on the health of their old stand-bys of DAYS, The Doctors, and Another World.

I only started watching Santa Barbara regularly as a kid in 1988. Then in 1990, it was moved to noon, and I lost touch. I never realized until watching the 1984 episodes how essential Nicholas Coster was to the spirit of the show, one of its pillars. It's a shame that they ever got away from that. I think Santa Barbara definitely was his best soap role; no where else did he play a character as humorous and multi-faceted as Lionel.