kalbir

@VanessaReardon The ratings posts are a great look back at daytime history

On 11/5/2019 at 4:08 PM, edgeofnik said:

@Franko LLB did a promo for KMOV that proclaimed that STL was the #1 market for Y&R. The move to 4 pm was in reaction to Oprah and the ratings for Y&R was quite huge. It lasted almost 30 years in the slot until a new company bought the affiliate and moved it. It's too bad because when I'd go back to visit my mom, it was always a good 'shared' experience at that time of day. 

I wonder how many other CBS affiliates aired Y&R outside the usual 12:30-4/11-3 block in order to beat Oprah. I remember reading during the New Orleans remote that their CBS station had the most Y&R viewers. 

Bill Bell used his first name and names of his family members for Y&R/B&B characters: ie. William (Bill) Foster, Phillip Chancellor II, Brad Elliott, Lauralee Brooks, Brad Carlton, William (Bill) Spencer, William (Billy) Abbott. I once read Bill Bell took the name Ridge from a college classmate of Bradley Bell.

In an another I can't believe it's happening moment, November will mark Peter Bergman's 30th anniversary on Y&R. I wonder if we will get a Jack-focused episode around Thanksgiving.

11 hours ago, Darn said:

Seeing Blake again in the 90s reminds me how badly cast I always thought Elizabeth Keifer were. I started watching the show years after she was on it and I refused to believe she was meant to be Holly's daughter. They looked the same age! And Maureen Garrett acted more youthful!

I wonder who else was considered for the Blake recast in 1992. I think it was posted either in this thread or the "They Almost Became" thread that Elizabeth Keifer originally auditioned for Eve but was cast as Blake instead. I can't think of any other soap names that were available during spring/summer 1992.

10 hours ago, BetterForgotten said:

The right ingredients of actress and character writing just came together with Sherry Stringfield. She'll always be my Blake and the one that left the biggest impression on me 

Same here.

9 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

Now I wonder if the casting of Kiefer was to make Ross seem more youthful.  

I don't think so, seeing as how Elizabeth Keifer was already 30 when she started on GL.

B&B didn't air on all CBS affiliates until maybe the mid-1990s.

12 hours ago, Bright Eyes said:

Back to being morbid, on a British soap message board they had a thread about who they think will probably pass away in the next decade. Any takers or is it too far?

I'm thinking the next major daytime drama passing will be one of the Daytime Emmy acting winners that are age 80 or older: Helen Gallagher (93), Henry Darrow (86), Elizabeth Hubbard (85), Stuart Damon (82), Larry Bryggman (80), Susan Flannery (80). 

Marcy Walker's first episode

1 hour ago, Franko said:

Good point about preemptions and out of pattern timeslots. I stand by my call that CAP is an obvious weak link circa '85-'86, but it does seem like the affiliates played a pretty big role for the shows at the bottom of the heap.

I would think pre-emptions were due to affiliates airing 1 hour noon newscasts or syndicated talk shows in the morning and late afternoon. I don't find it a coincidence that CBS gave up the 4 pm ET slot the same year Oprah went national, yet they stubbornly held on to the 10 am ET slot until 1993 despite the rise of talk shows in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

How Daniel Goddard managed to stay employed for nearly 13 years is beyond my comprehension. He had to have had something on someone at CBS/Sony.

On 10/23/2019 at 1:47 PM, sheilaforever said:

Susan Flannery was amazing as Leslie Stewart on DALLAS: I have no idea why they didn't use her beyond that 1st (?) season. She worked so well with Larry Hagman.

 

La Flannery was quite the minx in 1970s. Her role on "The Moneychangers" (I saw the mini-series just last year on DVD for the first time) was also quite sultry, but also a very sharp attorney. Then after DALLAS it seems like she took a prolonged maternity leave which basically killed her career (or she did not want to work at that time???) - until Bill Bell hired her for B&B.

On 10/23/2019 at 10:31 PM, Marquise said:

@sheilaforevermaternity leave for SusanFlannery? i thought she adopted much later like in 1988-1989 or something. As far as i remmeber Blaise is younger then me she is now like 30. Am i mistaken?

Susan Flannery was on Dallas in 1981 for 13 episodes.  Between Dallas and B&B, she was in a couple of made-for-TV movies; her IMDb page has no entries for 1984-1986.

Susan's daughter was born in either 1986 or 1987; her age is given as 21 in this early 2008 interview: https://www.nowtolove.com.au/celebrity/celeb-news/b-and-b-susans-aussie-daughter-23248

@vetsoapfan From the 1970s I'd watch the Katherine/Jill feud and the early storylines of Paul and Nikki, but that's really it. I'm not drawn to the original 1970s characters as much as most people here are, probably because they were phased out by the time I discovered Y&R. 

@Donna B It was posted in the "They Almost Became" thread that Terry Lester was offered Buzz but turned it down to take Royce on ATWT. I think I remember Terry himself saying this in an interview around 1992 or 1993; maybe someone has the Soap Opera Digest/Soap Opera Weekly/TV Guide w/ this interview.

@VanessaReardon 1986 will see Y&R getting closer to #1. That year was so good, except for the permanent arrival of Cricket who proceeded to eat the show for the remainder of the decade.

4 hours ago, BoldRestless said:

Imagine if they are only setting up this storyline to familiarize current viewers with the first decade of the show because CBS/Sony are about to announce that classic Y&R is coming to streaming. A girl can dream....

From your keyboard to CBS/Sony. I would love to watch 1980-1990.

FINALLY 

20 hours ago, katie_9918 said:

Anytime they tried to give Justin Deas lead actor material he managed to ham it up to kingdom come, but I thought he was pretty valuable when he was relegated to supporting material. Unfortunately, he wasn't relegated to supporting material nearly enough to make him worth the loss of Maureen Bauer in my opinion. And I agree that Nadine was also a much more valuable character to keep around than Buzz, who Brent Lawrence actually had a reason to have a beef with rather than randomly having to kill like what happened with Nadine. 

 

I really do very much enjoy watching both Marj Dusay and Ron Raines as the '90s/'00s Alexandra and Alan, but they both play completely different characters than the characters who were originally conceived as Alexandra and Alan Spaulding. 

14 hours ago, katie_9918 said:

Dusay and Raines were serviceable recasts because we couldn’t have the originals. 

 

Deas, frankly, was not worth the investment that Jill put into him and the mistake of hiring him was worse than her decision to let Frankie die on AW because the reverberations of Buzzard lasted a lot longer than Frankie‘s death did. And even that death wasn’t as graphic or as troubling as Nadine’s was.

6 hours ago, KMan101 said:

But watching Raines and then going back to Bernau and Pilon, it's startling how much they sound alike at times. Even in the face I can see why they recast with him.

 

The problem with Marj and Ron were they just weren't Bernau and McKinsey (shoes just too hard to fill), but if I were a casting director, I totally understand why they cast them.

 

Justin Deas isn't a lead actor, IMO. I never understood why Phelps was so hot for him? But then they'd give him actually good material and he'd be more understated and I'd come around but then he'd lose me again. It was just too much.

To think that Justin Deas might not have been the original choice for Buzz yet JFP got him hired and he earned a supporting actor Daytime Emmy in his first year,  a lead actor win his second year, and a second lead actor win two years later.

Maybe JFP tried to get one of her friends cast as Alan but CBS/P&G overrode her.

2 hours ago, soapfan770 said:

I seriously doubt Bell would have moved have moved both Y&R and B&B to another network(knowing Bell's success we'd be discussing FOX Daytime!) I think Bell recognized the challenges of launching a new soap even  in the late '80s he had analyzed what the odds were, especially if B&B had debuted in the Capitol slot. Not to mention both Bill himself and Lee Phillip Bell actively campaigned in every market that had preempted B&B  that by 1995 even single CBS station in the US was airing B&B. 

 

Aside from dropping the 10AM game shows in 1991(Bob Goen's Wheel of Fortune lol) CBS Daytime had the exact same consistent line-up from 1987-2009 with no change. 

CBS kept the 10 am ET slot until September 1993; Family Feud Challenge was the last game show in that slot. I remember Bob Goen's Wheel of Fortune. CBS really cheaped out on WoF; $50 and $75 spaces on the wheel LOL. Like Family Feud and Now You See It earlier in 1989, WoF also had a CBS soap week but unfortunately those episodes haven't surfaced online anywhere (I remember they aired sometime during Fall 1989).

32 minutes ago, divinemotion said:

This show was a DIAMOND. And now it's a cheap roll of toilet paper.

That's because Bill Bell was a genius and Bradley Bell did not inherit his father's talent.

The first three years you can see the elements from 1970s Y&R, but once the Spectra gang becomes a bigger part of the story and Bill Bell writes off the characters that weren't working, it's full steam ahead to the end of the 1990s.

2 hours ago, Franko said:

Look at Y&R pulling ahead there. Related to Victor & Nikki's wedding, I'm guessing. A harbinger of things to come.

The GOAT wedding was April 1984, and not long after the seeds were planted for the eternal feud and eternal triangle.

1 hour ago, soapfan770 said:

When Bell created B&B, he pretty much made the demand that the show get aired directly aired after Y&R. 

If Bill Bell didn't get the post-Y&R timeslot for B&B, do you think he would've taken both shows to another network?

Apparently during the 1985/1986 season, Mark Goodson demanded that CBS give Bob Eubanks's Card Sharks the pre-The Price is Right timeslot then occupied by Press Your Luck otherwise he'd take both TPiR and Card Sharks to another network so CBS caved as they didn't want to lose their #1 game show (I think TPiR was also CBS's top rated daytime program but I could be wrong). As we all know, Press Your Luck was sent to the 4 pm ET death slot in January 1986 where it remained until it was cancelled that September, thus CBS being the last network to program the 4 pm ET slot.

So during the 1980s CBS caved to Mark Goodson and Bill Bell but not to P&G. Imagine if CBS lost TPiR in 1986 and Y&R/B&B in 1987. I would guess their daytime division wouldn't survive past the 1990s. That 11 am-130 pm ET lineup of TPiR/local news/Y&R/B&B played a big part in CBS being the #1 daytime network.

52 minutes ago, KMan101 said:

Not a friend of Jill thing, just something I've thought about recently because I'm watching old episodes on Youtube, but I know folks often didn't like Ron Raines as Alan but, like Marj as Alex, I can see why the would have cast him. His voice sounds similar to the other two Alan's (Bernau and Pilon). The problem was with both Pilon and Raines, they weren't bad, they just weren't Bernau, which I completely understand. But I didn't mind Raines or what I've seen of Pilon. And also with Raines Alan, they often just made him a scapegoat and ultimately a bellowing cartoon much like Alex. It was a shame. They weren't awful recasts, they just weren't Bernau and McKinsey, who were just simply amazing, and couldn't be topped, in the roles.

I'm surprised Alan wasn't recast with a Friend of Jill. I figured a pivotal role would've gone to a well-known soap name. Wasn't Ron Raines a musical theater actor before GL?

I record Y&R daily to watch after work. I watch Let's Make a Deal and The Price is Right on days off. The Talk I'll record to watch if the guest is someone I like.

1 hour ago, pdm1974 said:

And on Loving there was Kate/Ava...there was definite parallels to all three...the long suffering single mother and the scheming social climbing daughter.

Bill Bell also used that same element with Liz/Jill and Beth/Brooke.

On 10/16/2019 at 4:50 PM, katie_9918 said:

I still wish Marcy Walker hadn’t been so misused as Tangier’s Hill. Under better circumstances I think she could have done well. She had a good vibe with the rest of the cast.

On 10/17/2019 at 7:26 PM, katie_9918 said:

I might be outing myself as an idiot, but for all I’ve privately bemoaned GL utterly wasting Marcy Walker, I never really thought about who else she could have portrayed. 

 

I like Khan’s idea, or if they wanted to connect her to Roger, maybe she could have been a foster child or adopted child that Adam and Sara would have had and then come to Springfield because she found out and then was curious about the biological child Adam never talked about.

Marcy Walker arrives in November 1993, correct? So the YT channel that has Fall 1993 should have her episodes soon.

It was posted in the "They Almost Became" thread that Marcy Walker turned down B&B and joined GL instead, but I have no idea how she would've fit on B&B in 1993 as their cast then was quite full of females around her age.

Which 1993 Friend of Jill incident is the most egregious, Justin Deas, Marj Dusay, or Marcy Walker?

On 10/13/2019 at 5:53 AM, Forever8 said:

Victoria Rowell

Victoria Rowell wrote a memoir, The Women Who Raised Me (2007), and two "novels", Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva (2010) and The Young and the Ruthless: Back in the Bubbles (2013). All are excellent reads. VR's television series The Rich and the Ruthless was based on the "novels". The "novels" are the closest we're going to get to a tell-all about the Bell shows. Those of us who have read the "novels" and are regular viewers of Y&R/B&B will recognize the characters/situations.

Other excellent daytime drama memoirs are Not Young, Still Restless (2012) by Jeanne Cooper (RIP) and I'll Be Damned: How My Young and Restless Life Led Me to America's #1 Daytime Drama (2017) by Eric Braeden.