Ms. Phillips had written Another World when the ratings were poor.   Poor ratings were nothing new to her.   I doubt that these ratings on Love Is a Many Splendored Thing would have phased her or been the sole reason to leave the show.   But interference from others would have.

I seem to recall that in his book Eight Years in Another World that either the writer (Lemay) or executive producer (Rauch) desired to expand.   The Alice/Steve wedding was tried as an experiment, and, after it was a ratings success, the plans were made to expand.

I thought that I was right about this, but I am sure that I will be told if I am correct.

Natalie was very unstable in the first months that she was introduced.   She tried to kill Erica at one point.

Ms. Philips had worked for ABC twice in the 1960s:  developing Peyton Place and editing storylines for A Time for Us.

No performers on The Edge of Night ever had their names in the opening.

The only performer on a Procter and Gamble show who had a name in the opening was Beverlee McKinzee on Texas.

I don't THIINK that the name of Eileen Fulton was in the opening credits for Our Private World.   I am not sure, though.

I looked for information about Warren Swanson.  I found this obituary:

Of course, Ms. Nixon was writing The Guiding Light prior to becoming the head writer of Another World.   She even continued to write both of those shows for quite a while.

And, didn't she continue writing Another World after the premiere of One Life to Live?

I am almost sure that her story projections for The Guiding Light were used for MANY years after she departed her job on that show.

The return of Leslie's mother on The Guiding Light (shown iln the 1970s) and the return of Nina's mother on All My Children were so similar.    I also think that the adoration of Victoria and Meredith for their mother was similar to these two storylines.

I was thinking about writer Don Ettinger.

I lhad thought for a long time that he had created or co-created A Flame in the Wind.   I now know that he did not.

He did write for that show as well as Love Is a Many Splendored Thing and either (or both) Love of Life and The Secret Storm.

I am speculating that it was he who created the Hale family on Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.

He had worhrked with actor Terry Logan on A Flame in the Wind/A Time for Us, and he may possibly have brought Mr. Logan over to play Dr. John Hale (my favorite member of the Hale family) on Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.

But, the reason that I am writing this in the section about performers who could have played other characters well is that I remember the actress who played his Terry Logan's mother on A Flame in the Wind/A Time for Us, the Oscar-winner Anne Revere.

Diana Douglas Dill, in her autobiography, wrote that Love Is a Many Splendored Thing writer Ann Marcus saw her and told her that she did was not like anything that she had imagined when she created Lil Chernak Donnelly on that show.

It occurred to me that Ms. Revere may have been a very good Lily Chernak Donnelly!  I don't know if Ms. Revere was playing either of her roles on The Edge of Night or Search for Tomorrow at the time that Lily was introduced.   I do think that she would have been good in the role!

(Ms. Revere later played a short role on Ryan's Hope.)

I am really not sure as to when (during what year) that Erica and Mona were created in the mind of Ms. Nixon and the show was offered to others to take to the airwaves.

Could it have been between the years during which she worked on As the World Turns and the end of The Brighter Day?

In it was in between those two times, then Erica could have been in inspiration for Rachel and both Ada and Rachel were based on Erica and Mona.

I have wondered so many times why Wishner Washam never worked on Loving.

I read that Ms. Phillips mentored Warren Swanson.   Did he write for any other shows other than As the World Turns?    Possibly Somerset?

Her opinion that shows needed time to develop (as did As the World Turns) could possibly explain why Another World on NBC was not an immediate hit.  

I had been led to believe that Ms. Phillips used drastic tactics to (unsuccessfully) boost the ratings of Another World.  Maybe her plans for that show's ratings were just what she was envisioning!

I know that, at the end of its first twelve months, some executives wanted to cancel the program.   Robert Short of Procter and Gamble successfully convinced others that the show had great potential.  

Irna Phillips was replaced by the late James Lipton, who brought in a whole new family to Bay City.  

The next writer, Agnes Nixon (who was also writing The Guiding Light) wrote off the new characters and recognized that character Alice Matthews was not being used properly (in the storylines) and gave her a new romance by introducing what may have been the first anti-hero in soap operas (which resulted in a great surge in ratings).h 

She also took two new characters which had been created for Thoe Brighter Day (Rachel and Ada Davis) who were made into Another World characters.

She based Rachel after the already-created Erica Kane from the soap opera that she had created but had not premiered yet.

I hated Ms. Rush on Peyton Place and thought that her acting was terrible!

However, later, I thought she did a GREAT job when she was appearing on All My Children!

Doris Quinlan was a great producer, and Robert Ellis/Eugenia Hunt was a great writing team.

They scripted what was probably my favorite soap opera mystery, the Stanley Norris murder on The Guiding Light!

The show was in wonderful hands.

I had never heard rumors that The Doctors could possibly have been moving to the NBC studios in Brooklyn before.

Here are pictures of actress Sharon Laughlin, the original actress cast as Victoria Lord.  She is appearing here in Dore Shere's One by One on Broadway.

ABC began the FYI five-minute program.    (maybe it was less than five minutes)

The two lowest rated programs on the ABC Daytime schedule.   Instead of giving the role of host to Hal Lindon (who was a daytime veteran having appeared on Search for Tomorrow and who was then starring on Barney Miller), the network should have named Joel Crothers or Forrest Compton as the host.

They would have been promoting The Edge of Night, the show that the network wanted to succeed and could have used the boost.

There are places here to post about both NBC Daytime and CBS Daytime.    Therefore, let us begin one concerning ABC Daytime!

I twant to say that ABC was (for me to see) the first network to include daytime performers as celebrities on game shows.

The first one that I remember seeing is Stephanie Braxton from All My Children (Tara #2) on The ... Pryamid.    Later, Susan Lucci (Erica), John Danielle (Frank) and Candice Earley (Donna #2) appeared on the same show.    I am sure that there were more that I cannot remember.   (I do remember that Meg Bennett from Love of Life also appeared.)

ABC's Family Fued seemed to be the show that invited daytime teams from the soap operas, and all five of the serials airing on ABC particpated.

Some daytime performers may have appeared on game shows prior to Stephanie Braxton, but I am not aware of these appearences.   Please share here if there were earlier ones!

Leslie Charleston was so good as Iris!    But I have read that she was offered the role and began playing the step-daughter of Donald Hughes (after having appeared on A Time for Us), but she left the show because she refused to sign a two-year contract.

So, I have been curious about why she signed a contract to appear on Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.

"I didn't know that actress Sharon Laughlin was cast as Victoria Lord but replaced by Gillian Spencer before the show began."

The hiring and dismissal of Sharon Laughlin was discussed on this board earlier.   Evidently, she did appear on some of the commercials for One Life to Live before its premiere.

I would like to know more about this actress.

One Life to Live hired a lot of newcomers to daytime television for the 1968:  Ellen Holly, Lillian Hayman, Paul Tulley, Nikki Flacks, Jack Snell, Peter DeAnda) who were also seen with veterans (Robert Milli, Gillian Spenser, Lee Patterson, Doris Belack, Antony Ponzini, Millee Tagart,  Ernest Graves, Terry Logan).

The decision to hire Ira and Jane Avery as writers on this show was a very good one.

Although I did not view their work on The Secret Storm, I hear that they were great writers on that thow.

I did see their work on Love Is a Many Splendored Thing following the departure of Irna Nixon, and they created some really, really wonderful storylines!

I understand that this show was originally a production of Twentieth-Century Fox.    That company owned Peyton Place, on which Irna Phillips worked in the early devolopment.  I also understand that the company sold daytime's Love Is a Many Splendored Thing to CBS (which later purchased Love of Life and The Secret Storm from American Home Products).   Who long did Twentieth-Century Fox own this show before CBS owned it?

I would love to read a reprint of the T V Guide article about Kathryn Leigh Scott.   I remember reading back in the 1960s, and it was the first article about a soap opera star in that magazine that I ever noticed.

Could someone share that article?

The above synopses are from the period that Irna Phillips was the head writer.

Maybe CBS should have introducted Where the Heart Is the same way that ABC introduced Ryan's Hope.   They could have moved Love of Life to 10:30 (11:30 ET) and placed Where the Heart is thirty minutes later.   Then, after a year or so, switced the time slots.    That is the way that Ryan's Hope and All My Children did over on ABC.

Ms. Monty had left The Secret Storm and had worked on Bright Promise a number of years before The Secret Storm left the air.

The Edge of Night, after being moved to ABC, may not have "flourished" ratings-wise, but it did flourish artistically.  April, Steve, Deborah, Logan, Calvin, Miles, Denise, Raven, Schyler, Jody, Winter, Derek, Gavin, Jinx and Kelly were all introduced while the show was on ABC and were beloved by the show's audience.

The demise of CBS as the leading network in daytime television was caused by two-fold reasons.

CBS had either purchased or introduced Love of Life, The Secret Storm, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing and Where the Heart Is.  The shows were in the company of the Procter and Gamble shows Search for Tomorrow, As the World Turns, The Guiding Light and The Edge of Night.

The early 1970 years brought about a "cancellation fever" at ABC.    Cancelled early were The Best of Everything, Dark Shadows and A World Apart. 

Procter and Gamble Productions (which was probably planning an expansion of its Another World on NBC) wanted a big block of its shows, so CBS was persuaded to comply with this.  Search for Tomorrow and As the World Turns  remained in their former time slots (These two starting times had always existed.)  Following were The Guiding Light and The Edge of Night in new time slots.   Love Is a Many Splendored Thing had a new timeslot (the one during which The Edge of Night was a ratings success), and the show eventually moved into a storyline about politics, etc.

Procter and Gamble even had its Somerset aired twice by NBC during the daytime.   In addition to its 4:00ET/3:00 CT slot, it was also aired at noon.

This did create a block of soap operas owned by Procter and Gamble: Search for Tomorrow, Somerset, As the World Turns, The Guiding Light, The Edge of Night and Another World.

Ratings for the CBS shows fell following these changes.  One executive at the CBS network wanted to cancel all of the shows that the network owned.    However, the only ones to be cancelled were Love Is a Many Splendored Thing and Where the Heart Is.

Even Procter and Gamble wanted to use the 1:00ET/12:00CT time during which the affliates are local news for expansion to forty-five minutes for Search for Tomorrow and As the World Turns.   (This was after two programs had been expanded on NBC).

Later, (in 1973) The Secret Storm was cancelled (and left the air in 1974) and Love of Life continued for the rest of the decade.

The decision by Procter and Gamble to create its block and the expansion of the thirty-minute shows were the reason that CBS lost so many rating points.

I do not believe that at the time of the network switch, Procter and Gamble would have voluntarily allowed the cancellation of its serials (Somerset) to allow the pick-up of another of its serials (The Edge of Night).

The purpose of the network switch was to keep The Edge of Night and to preserve its continuity.