Jdee43

Hard to believe, a 57 year old program is going to be ending its run on broadcast TV at the end of next week, not only with little fanfare, but also with a regular episode. They're not doing anything special, nor saying goodbye to their loyal TV audience. Really sad. I wonder, if their contract allows NBC to move the show to Peacock, does it have another clause that allows the show to move back to TV if Peacock fails? I doubt moving to Peacock is going to work out. The app itself doesn't seem to have that much of a future, given all the competition. NBC TV doesn't seem to have anything else on, and most TV stations were ok with the numbers DAYS was bringing in. It would be a miracle, but could there be a one in a million chance?

I'm in June 1968. Nick has gotten way more tolerable. It starts in April 1968 with he teams up with Althea on the Lila Anderson case, and then especially in May 1968 when he helps Althea with runaway Penny. From May 1968, Nick and Althea are gold, the best part of the show! Karen has gotten more tolerable too, especially from May 1968. The only one I haven't come to like yet is Steve. So far, he's just a callow ladies man. It seems like they are setting him up to be killed by one of the unstable ladies he messes with. In the 5/30/68 episode, he flirts/messes with Liz, Penny, and Karen. Nurse Wheeler gives him dirty looks too; seems like she could be another potential suspect! May 1968 is not complete on the website. The episode labeled May 29, 1968 is really from June. The real May 29, 1968 was aired on Retro TV, but so far is not on the site.

I'm just waiting for a trillionaire fan to come along, someone who will write P&G a gigantic check, to get these shows out of captivity and onto a streaming service. Think that will ever happen? How much money do you think it would take to get P&G to relinquish all rights and give the shows to people who care? Maybe someone should reach out to Elon Musk 😅

Another colossally stupid, short-sighted, boneheaded decision from NBC/Peacock/Corday Productions. I think all they had to do was digitize one year or 6 months of older episodes, and that would have been enough to rope in a bunch of new subscribers disenchanted with the current show. They need all the subscribers they can get, especially now, to show support for the show when it makes its initial transition. They could have done 1984, the year of the original prisms story, or 1995, the year of the possession. I would have especially signed up for 1984. Such a wasted opportunity; just more to add to the mountain of other wasted opportunities. It seems like NBC could care less if this succeeds or not; they have not gone out of their way to do anything special or pull out any stops at all..

It seems like DAYS got more media coverage back in 2019 when they released all the actors. It will be interesting to see if there are renewal talks, how they will go. Will they actually be doing most of the negotiations before episodes made especially for Peacock even air? If they get renewed, the first thing to go has to be 5 sixty minute episodes per week. There's no point now.

This show is done. The way this is being handled, with no fanfare, almost casually, like it's no big deal, tells you all you need to know. If they wanted this to succeed, they would have at least given the production a head's up so that they could have adjusted the material. Instead it seems like the production found out the same time everyone else did, and as a result, any adjustment is going to happen 6 months from now. That's not going to work.

I'm in late May 1968, watching on their website, and the show has been great! One thing I don't understand though is the writing for Steve. He's pretty unlikable. It's like the writers are planning on making him a murder victim over his deplorable, heartless playboy ways. Karen, Matt, and Liz could all be suspects; even Carolee could be one! Nick too and Penny! Perhaps for shock value, it would turn out to be Penny who kills him, accidentally of course! Maybe she'd push him down the stairs, a story they'd later do with different characters! It's hard to believe at this point that they don't go this way. It's even harder to believe that, instead, Steve becomes one of the leading characters on the show who stays all the way to the end!

No way are they going to upload every episode they ever made. But if they were to put up just one complete year from the 60s, 70s, or 80s, I'd sign up. Maybe 1984, or 1976, or 1965/66?

Prior to ATWT going off the air, P&G seemed to really care about their old shows and their history. They donated a lot of episodes to various museums and archives, including the Paley Center. They were the first to try and stream classic episodes of their shows and set up a classic soap blog. They got reruns of Another World on the air with Soapnet and then put them on Hulu and YouTube. When ATWT ended, everything changed. It seems P&G folded their entertainment division. So all these old shows went to the parent company, and they obviously could not have cared less about them. I'd guess the parent company not only saw these old shows as contributing nothing to the bottom line, having nothing to do with their bread and butter, but probably also saw them as an embarrassment. I would not be surprised if corporate, out of ignorance, arrogance, and embarrassment, not to mention cost-savings, had them liquidated. It's the corporate world for you..

I would not be surprised to hear that P&G junked all their tapes. The size of their archive and the radio silence since 2013 has been disturbing. Yet junking them didn't necessarily have to be destroying them. That seems so vindictive. Why not donate them to a museum? Or just give them away or something. It's so sad. The loss to television history is immeasurable.

If they were to put every episode of DAYS that ever aired up on Peacock, why would they bother making new ones?

Totally agree with all that's been written. So the final broadcast episode, after 57 years, is going to be some normal crappy episode? Is that really going to inspire people to pay to see more crappy episodes online? You really have to wonder about the future of the Peacock app if they are depending on Days of Our Lives to move the needle. I wonder which announcement will come first, the folding of DAYS or Peacock? And shame to whoever negotiated the contract for DAYS with NBC, that they didn't include a clause to prevent NBC from doing something like this. DAYS negotiators should have gotten a guarantee that DAYS would be on broadcast TV for the life of that new contract.

Bethel Leslie's last appearance is Friday, May 10, 1968. She plays a big part in the middle and end of the episode. Her portrait is still seen in Matt's office on the Monday May 13, 1968 episode. She is actually credited for the final time on Thursday, May 16, 1968, the episode after her replacement first appears! Lydia Bruce first appears on Wednesday, May 15, 1968, in the middle of the episode with Althea and then later in a scene with Matt. Neither call her Maggie, nor is there a voice over saying she's now playing the character. Only the end credits reveal she's Maggie, and she doesn't get the special credit Bethel Leslie did. I wonder if all this was a little confusing to audiences back then, or if Retro cut something out? I'm sad to see Bethel go; she was really good. I'm surprised with the career Bethel had, appearing on so many primetime shows in the late 50s and early 60s, that she chose to do a daytime drama for over 2 years in the mid to late 60s. She did return to guesting on primetime shows in the early 70s.

I agree with what's been said. For DAYS to survive on Peacock, it needs to fire all the writers and switch to being at least PG-13. What they are producing for NBC broadcast just isn't good enough to go behind a pay wall. If they are forced to air what has been shot so far as is, they will be done. This is such a short sighted, stupid decision. They couldn't have waited a year, or given the show and audience more of a heads-up? It's like canceling a show mid season and burning off the unaired episodes in the summer, except here they have 8 months of poor episodes to burn through online. And when this idea inevitably fails, there'll no going back; there's no way to restore DAYS to the NBC schedule once these affiliates move on. The show is going to be canceled. Again, with the speed and lack of planning, this is a true bone headed decision.

That they are going to make Days a premium program is what's going to kill it. Not enough will pay to see it. I personally would definitely not pay to see any new episodes either. But if they were to upload their old episodes from 1965-1995, then they'd have a customer 😊

Wow, so sad on so many levels. The last of the NBC soaps. 57 years on broadcast TV. It's final broadcast episode should be something special. I'm sure it won't be though. Since its already in the can, is it going to be like a normal episode? This is pretty much a cancelation. I don't see this lasting on Peacock beyond the year. To see Days of our Lives die like Passions, but with even more of a whimper, just a few years short of its 60th birthday, again, really sad.

There were so many characters they could have brought back from the late 60s: Sam, Lahoma, Missy, Bill. The first three went to Somerset; were they played out so much on there that they couldn't be brought back? Is the Somerset spin-off one of the reasons Another World lost its history by the late 70s, 80s? Some of its late 60s history went to that show, never to be heard of again. Also I'm sure the writers and producers being ignorant of that history was another important factor.

My last post on Another World was too strong; Victoria Wyndham wasn't Mary Stuart from Search for Tomorrow. Another World was never built around Victoria Wyndham to that degree; it was more of an ensemble. She also never received a special cast credit, the way Mary Stuart did. I do think by the mid-to late 70s though, Victoria Wyndham was the unofficial star of the show, and pretty much the main character into the 1980s. The proof of the pudding are the cast lists at the end of the show. You can find them pretty regularly on youtube starting with 1979. Her name is always first, followed by Douglass Watson second, and then the rest of the cast, usually in the order in which they joined the show. Her name comes first all the way to the last episode. Interesting to compare on youtube a cast list at the end of a September 1974 episode to one at the end of an October 1979 episode. In the one from 74, Victoria Wyndham is 3rd from the top; Alice is #1 and Steve is #2; and Douglass Watson is third from the bottom. In the October 1979 episode, Victoria Wyndham is number 1; Douglass Watson number 2, and that's the way it stays until Watson's passing in 1989.

Watching April 1968 on the website, there's at least one episode missing and a few mislabeled. As it is now, 4/17/68 and 4/22/68 are missing. What's labeled as 4/19/68 is probably 4/22/68. Retro TV aired the real 4/19/68, but that is not uploaded to the site. An episode that could be considered 4/17/68 was never aired by Retro, so that's either a true missing episode or a preemption. If there was a preemption, I think it would have made more sense for it to happen on 4/9/68, the day of Martin Luther King's funeral. If that day was the true preemption, then what's labeled on the site as 4/9/68 through 4/16/68 are all off by a day. Hopefully some day they go through the site and clear everything up. May 1968 looks complete. For six months of a 54 year old soap, having only 2 missing episodes (3 if there wasn't a preemption), isn't too bad. 2/14/68 and the real 4/19/68 could eventually be added to the site, as they aired on TV.

I guess the most important decision in the history of the show came in the mid-70s when they decided to center it around Victoria Wyndham and her character, totally obliterating the history of the show up to that point, and eventually making it a show about groups of best friends as opposed to core families. Any background as to why they did this? Was Victoria Wyndham friends with the producers? Was she really that charismatic to build a show around? Another P&G soap, Search for Tomorrow, was basically centered around one character. Why would the producers think that this approach would work for Another World?

Back in 1979 before he was famous, Gregory Itzin was a contestant on the CBS game show Whew! on an episode where his opponent threw his knee out jumping up and down celebrating:

The April 2, 1968 episode contains a classic blooper. At 7:00, talking about drop-out Edward Stark, Gerald Gordon can't get his line out and ends up saying, "I know it's rough, but what are we going to do, speen.. uh.. spoon the guy, you know what I mean?" James Pritchett smiles and responds, "Spoon feed him?", to which Gordon says "Right!" They then continue the scene as if nothing happened 😁

I've watched from December 1967 - March 1968 on the website. The quality is excellent, and the run so far complete, with the exception of 1 episode, 2/14/68, which did air on Retro TV. Hopefully they get around to uploading that episode.. The charisma of the actors more than anything is what keeps me watching! Most of them give really good performances, rising above the clichéd material. I feel like the more long term your character is, the better writing you get. Short term characters Ruth Winters and John Rice have the worst stories. The best stories seem to be for Matt and Maggie. James Pritchett is great in these episodes, so anchored and grounded. And I really appreciate Bethel Leslie! I also just saw her on a 1964 episode of GUNSMOKE called "Innocence" (1964); she plays a no nonsense saloon girl, giving out a whole bunch of those looks that she would later give to Liz and Karen on The Doctors

For classic TV buffs/ Santa Barbara fans: The first two actors who played C.C. Capwell share a scene or two together in an episode of the 1960s TV show 12 O'Clock High. The show stars Paul Burke. The episode "The Jones Boys" (Season 2, Episode 13) has Peter Mark Richman as one of its guest stars. It's hard to believe that Paul Burke, the lead in two classic TV shows from the 60s, Naked City and 12 O'Clock High, could be so god awful acting on Santa Barbara, but seeing is believing. Peter Mark Richman made some poor acting choices too as C.C. Capwell, but at least he had the gravitas, and I would have liked to have seen him continue for a little bit more.

I've been really enjoying The Doctors from Dec 1967 - Feb 1968! James Pritchett does such a great job of anchoring the show, really impressive! There are things that take me out of it though. I guess the main thing is the look of the Karen Werner character. It's obviously an actress in a bad wig trying too hard to sound foreign. I wish they would have let the actress use her own hair (or get better wigs) and talk closer to her normal voice, or recast with someone that looks more natural in the role. Compare Karen to the naturalness of Carolee, or any of the other characters; it's so night and day! Also weird are the silent extras; no one but the main cast can talk; it's like the Twilight Zone; very weird if you pay attention to it. Also strange is Matt's office. It looks a converted medium sized closet; no windows for the Chief of Staff? These are all minor things. The show is really good, and beautiful to watch, in such clear, vibrant colors, from 1968; such a treat!