te.

I think it's unfair to compare anyone to Donna - she's clearly had great styling, plastic surgery and the ability to know when to quit and not go for the "too youthful" route. She looks like herself, even if it's blatantly obvious she's had quite a bit of help over the years. I think the biggest issue with Morgan's wig is that the hairline looks so very off. Donna's looks like it's based in her own hairline while Morgan is clearly going for the straight-on fake look.

Eh, in the same tv guide interview where she announced she was leaving she also stated that she'd "do some episodes". It seems like a classic case of Joan playing word games plus not wanting to admit that they wouldn't pay for her to do the entire season.

To be fair, I don't think they expected Dynasty to do well in the slot - usually when they move an aging show the hope is that it'll do well-enough to at least act as a band-aid while they focus on other time slots (as you said, China Beach and thirtysomething were clearly priorities for the "new era" ABC). In Dynasty's defence, it was usually the best rated show on ABC for that night, but of course that maybe just shows you what a trainwreck Thursdays were for them. If Knots hadn't been in the 10 PM slot on CBS they might've moved up Dynasty for another season if they could've gotten it for a low enough budget to attempt to make something work on that night. But obviously, they saw a few years earlier what happened to The Colby's when it and Knots went head-to-head.

Hell, in a recent interview Nicolette Sheridan pointed out that Knots was a night time drama. People still have an aversion to the term soap for whatever reason.

Well, yes. Central Park West probably would've been more successful if it had been on Fox as an example as the only thing that was "wrong" with that show was that it was on the wrong network. Savannah was off-brand for the youthful The WB and was too expensive since it didn't repeat well and they couldn't afford doing more than 22 episodes per season. NBC is the one network that never found their "brand" of prime time soaps - though you could argue that the Dick Wolf brand of Chicagos are soaps...

Actually, looking at it, I wonder if Morgan was originally set to play the role Loni's playing (which would go well with her whole "always the bridesmaid, never the bride" type of success with prime time soaps) and they might've wanted another name (Dame Joan probably) for the role Morgan ended up with?

She definitively must've passed on Loni's part. They likely wrote the script once they had secured the talent tbh. These movies aren't exactly hard to write. I do agree Loni was an after-thought. I assume they must've been turned down by Dame Joan at least.

NBC Daytime is just falling apart at this point. Ouch.

I'd imagine that one advantage with DAYS' for actors is the amount of dark weeks since it allows them more time off to do other projects or just plain holidayin'. Considering the insane taping schedule when they do tape I'd think it's a trade-off essentially.

I want a Don and Marlena reunion now with a surprise pregnancy! Never Say Never!

07/27/83 - 13.8/25 08/03/83 - 9.2/17 08/10/83 - 8.9/16 08/17/83 - 10/18 08/24/83 - 9.6/17 It normally didn't even keep it's repeat lead-in of Fall Guy, which was usually around a 13-ish rating.

Is there any information available on Tribes in those Nielsen books?

It actually looks like they used the model that stood in for Alexis in the print ad.

Well, they kind of had their "who shot Alexis" in season 4, only changed the word "shot" to "framed".

With The City and Sunset Beach it's more the fact that they're so aggressively targeted towards Generation X (ie at the time 18-35 year olds), who just wouldn't be likely to be at home to watch television when they were on, hence they missed the boat entirely. Generations and Ryan's Hope weren't specifically target towards that group; who knows who Loving was targeted towards (and of course, The View is targeted towards stay-at-home moms, which fits the time slot like a glove). If there's one good thing to say about The City, it's that it had a very strong presentation about who their audience was; if they managed to convey that in the writing can be discussed. (Incidentally, I'd argue that moving what was perceived as an old-fashioned soap like Love of Life to 4:00 PM was also a bizarre move as the hausfraus who've followed that likely would've been busy with afternoon activities)

I think the biggest issue with The City was that it was aired at 12:30, yet obviously aimed at the Gen X crowd. Same thing with Sunset Beach - even if the intended audience would've been interested, they wouldn't have been at the television to watch it.

I know the guys behind the website and they do what we all do - compile ratings from various known sources. They've never posted anything false.

In hindsight, it does seem like a bit of a waste to keep Another World behind DAYS especially those times when DAYS had ratings resurgences. Maybe not when General Hospital was murdering everything in the way in the time slot, but by the late 80s/early 90s it was odd that they didn't even seem to consider moving it until Passions came along.

Eh, I found North Shore rather dire, especially as it was meant to be the Melrose Place to The OC's 90210. Even Shannen coming on couldn't save it. Weirdly enough, Fox opted not to air the 21st episode which had a major cliffhanger (or maybe that was the reason).

Definitively. I do think loss of the Scrabble lead-in and Y&R probably did affect DAYS in the sense viewers just changed their habits rather quickly. Scrabble is a typical "leave it on the telly show" whose audience is largely casual (hence why the viewers didn't transfer into the morning slot), but probably made a lot of people keep on the telly when DAYS came on. I'm guessing those viewers just didn't bother even switching on to NBC after Scrabble moved.

I think it just shows that Scrabble at least must've provided DAYS with some casual audience overlap, because I don't see any other reason why it suddenly would've crashed like that in four or so weeks. The whole NBC line-up seems to be suffering - no wonder they got rid off Generations early.

Generations just plummeted into the low 2s fast despite having excellent coverage. And yikes, DAYS just crashed with it - I know a lot of people have said the show was messy at this point but I think the previous Scrabble lead in must've helped.

Scrabble really didn't do too badly in the time slot. If Generations had been able to keep those figures we'd probably at least had it for a few more years, but it wasn't meant to be.

I don't know why they insisted that Peter Reckell should have an Irish accent. It's Amy Locane's-Southern-Accent bad.