watson71

23 minutes ago, beebs said:

It's slightly surprising to see GH be threatened with cancellation with such middling numbers. They were really only about a half point below OLTL and RH at this point, so it seems a bit strange that ABC had its neck on the chopping block when it wasn't honestly doing much worse than its competition, what with AW not pulling in particularly strong numbers at this point either.

At the time, CBS was counter programming AW with reruns of All in the Family (primetime’s #1 show) and Match Game, so that explains the dip in the ratings.  They should pick back up again as AW tied ATWT for the top spot in the ratings for 1977-78.

1 hour ago, Paul Raven said:

Why do I think marriage to Ada might not include conjugal rights?

I can see Charley escorting Ada home from the wedding and her gruffly informing him that she has made up the spare room. A perfunctory peck on the cheek as she stares off into the distance, is all you'd get from Ada.

You are absolutely right- on the 30th Anniversary episode @43:23 Charlie doesn’t even kiss Ada at the wedding, just a peck on the cheek

7 hours ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

It seemed clear to me at the time, Charlie was killed-off as a plot device to get Rachel out of prison, so her storyline could go forward.  If I recall correctly, Rachel was temporarily released from prison to attend Charlie's funeral (do people REALLY get released from prison to attend funerals??).  And then while she was out, something happened -- I think she ran away, or something like that.  Anyway, Charlie's death got Rachel back on the canvas so she could remain center-stage without playing all her scenes from a prison cell.  They needed a big event that would get Rachel briefly released, and Charlie was sacrificed. It was embarrassingly transparent.  That's the long and short of it, in my opinion.   

Rachel ran away from the funeral looking for Mitch who was suffering from amnesia.  Mac and Jamie went looking for Mitch as well as soon as Rachel disappeared.

1 hour ago, China Jones said:

Do you know if Haines left on his own, or was he let go for the reason I mentioned above? It seems like it was a case of bad timing. I mean, Ada starting a romance with comical undertones at the very time Mac died probably wouldn't have fit. 

I agree that it was bad timing and the character was dropped from the show.  Haines played Sidney “Sharky” Sugarman on AW from February to July 1989.  In The Valentine to Singles episodes, younger actors playing Ada and Sharky were featured in a WWII sequence.  In was mentioned in the story that Sharky had a wife named Sylvia who died, and an unseen son named Aaron.  

1 hour ago, kalbir said:

Controversial take here, but I think black viewers played a big part in NBC's primetime comeback during the second half of the 1980s and NBC was hoping for those viewers to carry over to their daytime line up.

Also, NBC and P&G tried to integrate Another World in the early 80s with black characters with no real jump in the ratings. You had Quinn, Thomasina, and Ed Harding. The Morgan family- Bob, Henrietta, RJ, and Mary Sue.  Also, Roy Bingham and Lily Mason along with other minor black characters on the show. In 1982-83, there were 9 black characters involved in storylines out of approximately 30 contract players.  If it didn’t work in 1982, I wonder how NBC thought it would work in 1989?

Had RH made it to the 2000s- how do you think the show would have incorporated the 9/11 attack into the storyline given the NYC locale of the show?

57 minutes ago, China Jones said:

Thanks, now I remember! It seems like I recall Dee and Nancy McGowan, Rachel's younger sister, interviewing with a stuffy rich lady in their quest to become debutants. Wasn't this around the time Cass had a split personality or a look-a-like?

Cass needed a letter of recommendation for Dee to become a debutant so he tricked amnesiac Rachel Cory to write a letter for Dee in the storyline as well.

7 minutes ago, China Jones said:

I'm afraid I'm having trouble remembering who Dee was or who played her.

I know it's not exactly May-December, but Jamie, who had finished medical school, was too old for Victoria who was 19 tops.

Dee was Tony the Tuna’s niece played by Katie Rich in 1985.  She was a punk rocker who Cass tried to turn into a debutante.

In 1982, Jamie Frame had a brief May December romance with Susan Matthews Shearer.

55 minutes ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

Yes, especially for such a minor offense, perjury.  And such a shame he never returned to AW.  Gerald was always after Steve Frame's money.  Can you imagine how he would have reacted if he knew Rachel had married the even wealthier MacKenzie Cory??!!

It does make you wonder if any of TPTB ever thought of bringing Gerald or Pammy Davis back to Bay City.  It would have been a good plot twist to have Gerald be Justine’s father and have him plotting with Justine against Rachel.  At least it would have explained the resemblance between Rachel and Justine.

4 minutes ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

Does anyone think Canary may have been referring to Doug Watson??

Any time Doug Watson is mentioned by other actors it is always with great affection and respect.  Linda Dano always speaks fondly of both Watson and Constance Ford.  

Who is the AW actor that Amy Carlson mentioned in her podcast with Linda Dano at @17:20 who didn’t like the scripts and didn’t want to play scenes a certain way in rehearsal ? Linda cuts Amy off and says do not mention the person’s name, and Dano doesn’t mention the person’s name either.

I’m guessing it was either Victoria Wyndham or Charles Keating…

5 hours ago, Khan said:

, it was clear to many that the show was atrophying under EP Stephen Schenkel and needed a proverbial shot in the arm - enter Felicia Minei Behr.

Not even sure how Schenkel got hired at AMC.  He took over AW in January 1985 and quickly dismantled all the good that Allen Potter did the previous 20 months to get AW back on track after a disastrous 1982.  The only good thing Schenkel did at AW was introduce Jake McKinnon and Victoria as Marley’s twin.  

1 hour ago, GLATWT88 said:

Isn't that a bit soon? AW was NBC's top rated soap in 1979. I don't think AW drops out of the top until mid 1980 and even then it's not like Days is pulling big numbers, at least not for a while.  

In Beverlee McKinsey’s City Lights interview in 1982, she states that AW was making NBC $40+ million in profit from advertising revenue a year.  I suspect that AW lasted as long as it did because it was still turning a profit for NBC- maybe not $40 million- but still a profit.  The minute that Edge of Night and Search for Tomorrow stopped turning a profit for P&G they were cancelled.  NBC wanted to keep SFT for another 13 week cycle, but P&G cancelled the show at the end of 1986, so they would not be in the red in 1987 losing money on the show.

4 hours ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

Yeah, DAYS has worked its way down to 5.0 & AW & SB & GEN are all under it 3.8, 3.7 & 2.3 respectively. I taped this lineup every day & to me it simply was not as bad as the numbers suggest. So I must remind myself that there's never been any proof that ratings = quality. 

AW was so good at this time with the Who Killed Jason Frame mystery, Felicia’s trial, the revelation that Iris was the chief of Bennett Publishing, the build up to the 25th Anniversary, etc.  The ratings do not reflect the quality.

3 hours ago, Xanthe said:

I was looking through the synopses to see if there was any interaction between Paulina and Felicia or Lucas early on and there was none described. The closest she came was all the time she spent with Derek. Maybe her knowing Derek was a vestigial plot from when they intended to make Paulina Felicia's daughter, or maybe it was just a way of giving her a link other than to the Corys.

Paulina's mother, Maria Hernandez DeSilva, died when Paulina was only about a year old. With no one to care for her, Paulina was taken to the United States where she was placed in various orphanages. Remember they made the connection early on that Paulina and later Hannah Moore's foster mother Marsha Cantrell got them from an orphanage on Gold Street where both Fannie Grady (Felicia) and Derek grew up.  I think initially the intention was to make her Felicia’s daughter, or they threw in a red herring to make the audience think she was Felicia’s daughter.

Definitely should add Mac Cory from Another World to this list.  AW was never quite the same after his passing. And has any soap ended with a character that was off the show for 10 years as the final scene- after Rachel and Carl shut off the lights and the screen faded to black in the last episode, the final moment was a still of Mac Cory raising his glass to the audience one last time.

2 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Damn. Not even Crystal Gayle and the new theme song helped out AW.

Don’t forget AW was in the middle of the Sin Stalker serial killer storyline, and the Sin Stalker tired to kill Crystal Gayle during this week before she sang sang the new theme song with Gary Morris on Friday’s episode.

10 hours ago, JAS0N47 said:

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 6/30/86-7/4/86 & 7/7/86-7/11/86:

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 7/14/86-7/18/86 & 7/21/86-7/25/86:

The ratings the week of July 7th will be the last time that AW scored a rating of 6.0+ until its cancellation in 1999.  This was during the Cecile kidnaps Cass and takes him to St. Thomas storyline.  After this storyline concludes, several long running AW characters will be written out of the show- Larry, Clarice, Aunt Liz, Catlin- while other popular actors playing Donna, Cass, Kathleen, Jake, and Ellen Wheeler’s Marley and Victoria will leave as well by the end of 1996.

1 hour ago, AbcNbc247 said:

The ratings for AW are actually better than I thought they’d be lol 

AW will see a bump in the ratings in February for Felicia and Zane’s wedding that was attended by Liberace.  It scored a 6.0 the week of the wedding.

2 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

I wonder how AW fared during the Arizona adventure and the poison dust stuff 

This is getting ready to air in November and December. Originally AW was to film scenes in Egypt and had to transfer to Arizona quickly after the the Achille Lauro ocean liner hijacking took place in early October when the ship was hijacked off the coast of Egypt by four men from the Palestine Liberation Front.   It was in the news at the time that the safety of the cast and crew did not warrant the trip to Egypt.  It was jarring onscreen that Carl Hutchins buried an Egyptian treasure in the Arizona desert.

6 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

And you are right: Agnes Nixon did not make sweeping or damaging changes when she took over AW. She simply corrected the ship's course by writing out a few of James Lipton's tepid characters and introducing some inspired new ones of her own and attaching them to the show's core Matthews family. She got back to basics, rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Think how many Emmys AW would have won had the Daytime Emmys existed during Agnes Nixon’s time as headwriter…

Jacqueline Courtney’s yearlong return to AW ran from May 4, 1984 to April 15, 1985.  Her return had little movement of the ratings with AW occasionally beating Capitol, but the show never moved from 8th or 9th place in the ratings.

It will be curious to see how AW does in the summer and fall- the bright spot is that the character of Victoria will appear, but there are many bad choices made by TPTB- Perry is killed by falling on a pitchfork, Mary Page Keller’s Sally is recast with Taylor Miller, Larry gets involved in a “Miami Vice” plot about selling Ecstasy at a nightclub, Brittany continues to flounder going from a death mute to a scheming gold digger in a matter of weeks, and what I consider one of AW’s worst storylines ever- Carl Hutchins will fill an Egyptian urn with poisonous dust that will kill Grant Todd and put both Mac and Rachel near death in the hospital.  The switch in EP from Allen Potter to Stephen Schenkel will result in a bunch of bad storyline decisions and useless characters.

Part of the problem with Michael Malone was that he was working with Charlotte Savitz as EP.  She did so much damage to the show probably under the direction of NBC.  The whole Vicky/Bobby Reno- Shane Roberts story was a convoluted mess.  Even brining back John Aprea as a new character didn’t even work.  They made Alexander so sinister, his relationship with Felicia didn’t even work.  The only thing Malone did right was Victoria Wyndham’s 25th anniversary episode.

5 hours ago, DRW50 said:

They were getting rid of most of the people who had been there for years, likely for budget and to chase youth. She was another casualty. I guess she died because they didn't consider her important enough to leave alive.

The biggest blunder AW ever committed was in Spring 1986 when someone approved that the character of Sally Frame should die.  Granted Taylor Miller was not the best  Sally, TPTB could have had Sally leave town for awhile and then come back as a recast.  The “popular” Sally Mary Page Keller had some success in Hollywood in the late 80s, but AW probably could have coaxed her back to the show in the 90s.  A lot of the stories given to the character of Vicky that dominated the show in the 90s could have been given to the character of Sally.  Also, killing Sally guaranteed that her mother, Alice, was not needed on the show- eliminating the important Matthews/Frame connection.

2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Good spot @Xanthe 

I know many can't play videos on Archive, but fortunately Eddie Drueding has uploaded the episode to Youtube. 

The standout material is Zack's speech about Quinn and the murders (I wonder if we even see her funeral oncamera - I don't know if the 8th is around). I was glad to see Thomasina at least got a few words in her final episode. The decision to kill off Quinn will always feel like a stupid mistake to me - she would have fit right into the show all the way to the end. 

I agree that AW should have kept Quinn around.  Thomasina, Carter, and Grant Jr could have returned to the show at some point.  Also, a Quinn/Marshall Kramer/Felicia triangle would have been more interesting than the Felicia/John/Sharlene triangle we saw.  There was plenty to do with the character of Quinn, the show just chose not to do it.