kalbir

4 hours ago, Gray Bunny said:

Wow, the way these numbers yo-yo is quite remarkable, along with their ever-changing rankings. 

Lots of jockeying for position.

4 hours ago, Gray Bunny said:

Also, everyone's back in the 8's and 7's when just a couple months back, their May sweeps numbers were down in the 6's/5's. 

Remember too that numbers get higher in the summer with the kids off school.

On 12/29/2023 at 5:34 PM, Soaplovers said:

only if Larsa is fired.  I just cant look at her

Ahh, you're not down w/ build-a-body WAGs 

Larsa and Marcus are the only reason I'm watching Miami. I'm also Team Michael Jordan's lawyers.

3 hours ago, Khan said:

I feel like AMC could own this thread at least in part.

So could Y&R.

Darlene Conley had two runs on Y&R as Rose Deville, 1979 to 1980, then 1986 to 1987. 1989 Bill Bell cast Darlene on B&B as Sally Spectra and the rest is history.

Thank you @BoldRestless and @DRW50 for sharing these 1980 episodes.

1979 and 1980 episodes that feature Roger/Holly storylines are ones I look forward to because they set in motion everything we saw a decade later.

This is early in Douglas Marland run and he hasn't missed a beat from where the Dobsons left off, at least based on the episodes I've seen from 1979 and 1980.

From the 1980s ratings thread we saw that the Potter/Marland era held its own against pop culture phenomenon General Hospital but the cynic in me can't help but think that it was CBS's highest-rated soap only because Y&R was a mess from it's expansion until the first half of 1982. Remember prior to the expansion Y&R was challenging General Hospital for #1 but then the expansion, time slot changes, EP change, cast changes derailed all its momentum. Also notice Marland 1982 departure overlaps w/ Y&R getting back on track.

6 hours ago, tybuki said:

Problem for nighttime TPIR was that most affiliates aired it against Wheel or J!, expecting it to vie for the top of the rankings and knock Wheel and/or J! off its perch, which it didn't come close. Subsequently, most affiliates banished it after the new year.

In the daytime, The Price is Right and Wheel of Fortune were time slot rivals and I'm pretty sure The Price is Right was killing Wheel of Fortune.

36 minutes ago, Khan said:

Absolutely!  As a matter of fact, @kalbir, depending upon whom you ask, many GL fans consider the Dobsons' era to be superior to the other two!

Two storylines from the Dobson era that impacted GL until the end were Roger/Holly and intro of the Spauldings. Its too bad so little of the Dobson era has surfaced. I haven't seen any 1976 episodes and AFAIK only two 1977 episodes and a partial 1978 episode have surfaced. 1979 and 1980 have a few episodes out there.

17 minutes ago, Khan said:

Bridget and Jerome Dobson seemed to have revitalized GL by that point, so I could imagine CBS/P&G being very eager to expand the show to sixty minutes. 

Do GL fans consider Potter/Dobsons 1976-1980 to be another golden era on the level of Potter/Marland 1980-1982 and Calhoun/Long/Curlee 1989-1991?

CBS approached Bill Bell in 1977 about creating a second show for the daytime lineup but as well all know Bill Bell wouldn't have a second show ready until 10 years later. The only soap schedule change CBS made in 1977 was expanding Guiding Light to 1 hr. If Bill Bell had a second show ready in 1977, would Guiding Light expansion have been delayed or would Love of Life have ended?

3 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

syndicated shows from the 80s?

As of September 8, 1986, the only syndicated show that mattered was Oprah. I am 99% sure Oprah clobbered everything from when the show went national until the end of the decade.

1 hour ago, JAS0N47 said:

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 4/25/77-4/29/77 

April 25, 1977 All My Children expands to 1 hr.

ABC new daytime schedule (ET) starting w/ soaps until the end of the day 12:30 pm Ryan's Hope, 1 pm All My Children, 2 pm $20,000 Pyramid; 2:30 pm One Life to Live, 3:15 pm General Hospital, 4 pm The Edge of Night. 

New soap time slot rivalry As the World Turns vs. All My Children vs. Days

ABC next and final soap expansions were One Life to Live to 1 hr and General Hospital to 1 hr on January 16, 1978.

Guiding Light going strong, it's expansion to 1 hr a little over 6 months away.

If my math is correct, we can divide Days first three decades or so into three pivotal eras and two transition eras:

Bill Bell years 1966-1973

Post-Bill Bell/pre-supercouple 1973-1982

Supercouple era 1983-1990

Post-supercouple/pre-Reilly 1990-1992

Reilly years 1993-1997

Jordan arc much like Cameron return gave me bad Lifetime movie energy.

4 hours ago, Khan said:

That might be the best daytime promo ever produced.

I think it is too.

4 hours ago, Khan said:

But CBS owed Angela Lansbury the opportunity to close the show on her terms after everything she had done to help the network through what you yourself called some very awful years in the late '80's and early '90's.

100% this. Murder, She Wrote was CBS's rare bright spot in that third place primetime mess era. After carrying CBS primetime on her back for the better part of a decade, Angela deserved so much better at the end than what she got. There's a special place in hell for Les Moonves for the way he treated Angela and for his comment about her years later.

1 hour ago, beebs said:

Well you can definitely see why NBC pulled L&F so quickly with those numbers. YIKES.

Five month run, NBC reacted w/ the quickness. As we saw earlier in the thread, the replacement For Richer, For Poorer didn't fare any better and that had a 9 month run.

5 hours ago, JAS0N47 said:

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 3/21/77-3/25/77 & 3/28/77-4/1/77:

The daytime schedule (ET) starting w/ soaps until the end of the day was

CBS: 11:30 am Love of Live, noon Y&R, 12:30 pm Search for Tomorrow, 1 pm Local programming, 1:30 pm As the World Turns, 2:30 pm Guiding Light, 3 pm All in the Family reruns, 3:30 pm Match Game, 4 pm Tattletales

ABC: 12:30 pm Ryan's Hope, 1 pm All My Children, 1:30 pm Family Feud, 2 pm $20,000 Pyramid; 2:30 pm One Life to Live, 3:15 pm General Hospital, 4 pm The Edge of Night

NBC: 12:30 pm Lovers and Friends, 1 pm Local programming, 1:30 pm Days, 2:30 pm The Doctors, 3 pm Another World, 4 pm The Gong Show

So the soap time slot rivalries were

Search for Tomorrow vs. Ryan's Hope vs. Lovers and Friends

As the World Turns vs. Days

Guiding Light vs. One Life to Live vs. The Doctors

One Life to Live/General Hospital vs. Another World

On 12/26/2023 at 9:34 PM, soapfan770 said:

atrocious Season 8

Started going off the rails in season 7 and it was fully cemented as off the rails in season 8, plus budget mode kicked in. Season 8 was a chore to get through.

On 12/26/2023 at 9:34 PM, soapfan770 said:

—I can easily see why SOD and the critics where so harsh 

Most ruined show in SOD Best/Worst of 1989 issue. I'm sure you've seen the write up. Then again 1988/89 was an awful season not just for the primetime soaps, but I think for primetime in general. I chalk that up to after effects of the writer's strike and changing times. 

On 12/26/2023 at 9:34 PM, soapfan770 said:

newest storyline of Richard vs. Angela was horribly stretched out.

It was an awful storyline and also ruined all the progress the characters had made during the course of the series.

On 12/26/2023 at 9:34 PM, soapfan770 said:

woman named “Cookie”

There's only one primetime soap female named Cookie that matters, and she was some 25 years away

On 12/26/2023 at 9:34 PM, soapfan770 said:

(yet I liked the infamous Season 9…)

Did you change your mind about season 9 on a rewatch? For me it was too dark and too sad and I found it painful to watch.

14 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

Didn’t Y&R try to do a reboot of this last year or so?

Summer 2022, but I can't find a video of it anywhere.

8 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

Greg Rikkart is making Joshua Morrow tolerable.

To think Greg Rikaart has been employed nearly 21 years and Joshua Morrow has been employed for nearly 30 years.

2 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

During their vow renewal ceremony Lauren told Michael that they raised two extraordinary sons. I only recall them raising Fen. Surely, they’re not trying to rope in Scotty into the mix?

Scott Jr. was an adult in 2005 when Lauren and Michael got married. At that point, we hadn't seen Scott Jr. on screen for over a decade.

@soapfan770 @YRfan23 No talk of CBS daytime promos is complete w/o a mention of 

Among Gail Kobe, Joe Willmore, JFP, Michael Laibson, Paul Rauch, John Conboy, Ellen Wheeler, which was the lesser of seven evils?

1 hour ago, YRfan23 said:

But kudos to whoever wrote Jordan’s line: “that dumb son of yours!”

Hahaha, yes.

36 minutes ago, TEdgeofNight said:

Ellen Wheeler was the most inept producer. Kim Zimmer said that Ellen cried all the time. Ellen, we cry because you killed GL!  Peapack!! Worst idea ever!!

Yet Ellen Wheeler was EP for some 5 1/2 years. Of all the EPs GL had in its final 25 years, Ellen Wheeler had the second longest run after Paul Rauch (6 years).

41 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

some of the strongest stories of 91-92 being set up by the previous producer.

I will forever maintain that Robert Calhoun laid all the groundwork but JFP got all the credit.

It disappoints me that the ratings didn't improve during Robert Calhoun's run. JFP first year got the ratings up but there's also the factors of ABC's big three tanking at various times during that year, and Days being a mess in that post-supercouple/pre-Reilly era.

Now that we have 1980s and early 1990s ratings data, it seems to me that the real issues w/ GL began when Douglas Marland departed in 1982. Yes, that first year of Gail Kobe/Pamela Long got the ratings back up, but it was too much chasing 1980s trends which wasn't sustainable and that was reflected in the ratings from Fall 1984 onward. 

41 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

the exodus of many of the show's most popular or strongest actors

Summer 1992 departures of Kimberley Simms, Sherry Stringfield, Beverlee McKinsey w/in weeks of each other left a huge void in the canvas. January 1993 departure of Ellen Parker was the beginning of the end.

I figured Kimberley and Sherry departures as finish initial contract, move on to other things while still relatively young. Beverlee was a shock I didn't expect. I didn't see Ellen departure in real time but the reasons behind it have been talked about in this thread.

Thank you @soapfan770 and happy holidays to you as well