watson71

7 hours ago, Broderick said:

No doubt Colleen Zenk believes the "wiping" to be true, but I suspect it's a miscommunication.  That's a LOT of hassle and expense.   

Seemingly the material is worthless to P&G right now; they've made that pretty clear.   But theoretically P&G has some savvy marketing personnel who are aware of the archives and know that they could profit from hiring an intern to upload the episodes to YouTube, throw in a few commercials for Pampers, Tide, Head & Shoulders, and Swiffer, and mop up some quick cash when the time is right.     

If the P&G shows ever see the light of day again, it wouldn’t surprise me if they showed up on the CBS owned Pluto TV.  Pluto TV has a lot of classic TV content- including vintage Price is Right, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and a ton of Goodson-Todman game shows on Buzzr.  They also have a Soaps channel with Y&R and B&B episodes and a Dark Shadows channel.  If you watch any of this content, P&G buys advertising blocks on the various channels.  One day, I was watching one of the sitcom channels and every commercial in the 30 minute block was for a P&G product.

3 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

NBC will have no daytime dramas on their terrestrial network. Just wow.

This will be the first time in 73 years that NBC has no entertainment programming (soaps and game shows) between the hours of 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM.  

Given the cliffhanger ending of BS2, will the story continue on DAYS or are we getting a BS3?  

Today's episode was all over the place jumping from Hong Kong to Caracas, but it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

24 minutes ago, dragonflies said:

I can't believe they forked over money for Bope's song, wow!!!

I thought the exact same thing- and they used the original song Tonight, I Celebrate My Love by Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack.    They did a great job using the song at the DiMera party in Hong Kong, as well.  The party set is small, but at least they had a lot of extras in those scenes today.  

Today's episode was the best episode of the week.  The episode was written by Carolyn Culliton.  KA and PR definitely still have chemistry together.  The one thing that is evident is that Beyond Salem needs to be at least two weeks long.  Without spoiling anything, one episode of Beyond Salem could have been a Bo and Hope flashback episode looking at past clips of the couple.

44 minutes ago, Tonksadora said:

I saw a picture today of Rachel's half-sister, not Nancy, but Pammy & I have absolutely NO recollection of any Pammy!

Pammy Davis was a character played by Pamela Toll on the first year of Somerset (1970-71).  She was the daughter of Gerald and Marsha Davis, and she was Rachel's half sister.  I know at some point in 1987-88, there was a blurb in Soap Opera Digest that TPTB were playing with the idea of bringing Pammy back to Another World, but nothing ever came of it.  

4 hours ago, chrisml said:

I also liked Cali Timmins's Paulina and I'm the kind of soap viewers who holds grudges so I never really warmed to Judi Evans as Paulina. 

I've always believed that the character of "Paulina" should have been the return of Nancy McGowan.  This would have been a good nod to history-Nancy not liking Vicky and Nancy having a crush on Jake.  Paulina was an unnecessary character, and the storylines that did play out could have been done with the character of Nancy.

1984-85 Another World- Nancy, Perry, Ben, Marley, Jake, Vicky, Julia, Thomasina, and Carter

3 minutes ago, Spoon said:

Why didn't NBC expand The Doctors to an hour before expanding AW a second time?

I'm not sure of the exact date, but NBC bought ownership of The Doctors from Colgate.  From 1979-82, NBC placed The Doctors in 3 different timeslots.  From March 1979-August 1980 The Doctors moved from its longtime 2:30 start time to 2:00 PM.  From August 1980-March 1982, the show moved to 12:30 PM.  From March-December 1982, the show aired at 12:00 PM when Search for Tomorrow jumped networks.  By March 1982, a lot of NBC affiliates did not ever air The Doctors as part of the lineup.

56 minutes ago, Tonksadora said:

And, off to the side is the monstrous failure that was AW going to 90 minutes. After it the NBC programmers "admitted" that they tried it BECAUSE THEY COULDN'T THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE TO TRY.

opportunists with tinker toys

Fred Silverman did not have a successful run at NBC like he did at CBS and ABC.  Along with the programmers at NBC, he did three things that would cause Another World to never be a top rated soap the rest of the time it was on the air (19 years):

1. AW was already starting to lose viewers to ABC before NBC went ahead with the 90 minute expansion in 1979.

2. The 90 minute expansion would cause AW to move out of the 3:00 PM timeslot where it had aired for the first 15 years of the program's success.  Now, AW began at 2:30 PM.

3.  Once, NBC and P&G saw that the 90 minutes AW was not working, they considered the antebellum concept called Reunion.  This morphed into the Dallas "clone" Texas, moving Berverlee McKinsey's Iris from Another World to Texas.  They essentially removed one of AW's biggest stars from the show.  NBC also moved AW to the 2:00 PM timeslot, giving Texas the 3:00 timeslot against General Hospital and Guiding Light.  Texas should have been given the 2:00 timeslot between Days and AW when it made its debut and AW returned to the 3:00 PM timeslot. 

These moves would cause a general collapse of NBC daytime that would result in the cancellation of both The Doctors and the short lived Texas.  Days and AW would start to show signs of getting it together in 1983- with Days faring better than AW.

2 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

I guess Larry Haines was recurring or dropped at the end of a 13 week contract cycle.

Did he and Constance Ford have any chemistry?

5 hours ago, danfling said:

So, Mr. Haines was discharged from the show?

His character just stopped appearing on the show.   There was no real explanation of what happened to his character.

36 minutes ago, danfling said:

When Another World hired Larry Haines after the cancellation of Search for Tomorrow, why did it not work out?   I am not sure how many episodes his character was on, but it was probably under five.?

 

Larry Haines played Sidney "Sharky" Sugarman from February to July 1989.  He dated Ada during World War II and in 1989.  Ada and Sidney's WWII backstory was explained in the 1989 Valentines to Singles episodes.  The character was dropped shortly after the death of Mac Cory.   The show used Ada to support Rachel after Mac's passing, and they probably chose to use Ada with this storyline rather than featuring her dating Sidney.

AW- 1966-67  once Rachel and Ada arrive in Bay City- and Agnes Nixon begins the Rachel/Steve/Alice triangle.

7 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

AW was starting to get back on its feet around that time though, after seemingly hitting bottom around the summer of 82. Corinne Jacker was finally axed and Paul Rauch was also on his way out. I still wonder if Rauch left on his own or if he was fired too. 

1982-83 was another of those infamous P&G producer swaps:

Mary Ellis Bunim and Fred Bartholemew switched EP positions at Seach for Tomorrow and As the World Turns in late 1981.  Bartholemew was EP in March 1982 when Search switched from CBS to NBC.

Early in 1983, Gail Kobe, the EP of cancelled Texas, becomes EP of Guiding Light.  Allen Potter, then Guiding Light's EP and AW's first EP, returns to AW when Paul Rauch left and/or was fired from Another World.

None of the P&G soaps had a good year in 1982.  Creatively, they were all over the place in terms of quality and writing.  This was also around the time that the P&G Executive in Charge of Production would switch from Robert Short to Ed Trach.  It makes you wonder why they swapped EPs the way they did in 1982-83, and they would do the same thing again in 1995 with the same results. 

Has this so-called "twist" aired yet, because nothing on the show is original or "twist" worthy right now.  How many times have we seen an amnesia story that will last a few months, then the character is cured?

The writers would have been better off making Steffy blind by saying she bumped her head when she was shot.  Sheila could have been trying to sneak into Steffy's hospital room multiple times trying to kill her before she identifies Sheila as the shooter.  At least that would have been a little more suspenseful.

24 minutes ago, Khan said:

IDK why, but the description or synopsis of that storyline has me laughing SO hard, lol.

These 1982 storylines were all over the place and made little sense. I'd like to know whose idea was to sideline Douglass Watson in 1982 after he won back to back Emmys in 1980 and 1981.  Shouldn't Mac been the one in the helicopter chasing Rachel and Tom in San Diego?  Especially given Mac's history with Mitch.  Someone behind the scenes was trying real hard to get the audience to like Steve Frame, lol.

1 hour ago, Khan said:

I'll bet Jacker saw herself as a "legitimate" playwright who was "slumming it" on a daytime soap opera and having to be subjected to NBC, P&G and even her own producer tear apart her work.

Same.  It seems like NBCD was thinking outside the box in hiring those ladies in order to salvage their lineup.

Someone somewhere was definitely interfering with the writing based on how they wrote the character of Rachel.  From March to July, Rachel had Matthew kidnapped by The Male Panthers, a father's rights group that Mitch was involved with to take Matthew to Mexico on a boat.  Rachel gets Matthew back, then Tom, one of The Male Panthers leads Rachel through a car chase in San Diego, while Steve Frame chases them in a helicopter.   Mitch goes to jail, and Rachel becomes involved with a Russian artist, Nikolai Pierenko. Nikolai's wife, Belia, is played by Elizabeth Franz, who would later show up in the summer playing another character, Alma Rudder. This lasts about a month, then Rachel again declares her love for Steve Frame as the show tried to replicate the Alice/Steve/Rachel triangle with a different Alice and Steve.  Then, Rachel and Steve find themselves in danger when the become trapped in the BelAire Towers when the skyscraper collapses.  All of this happened to Rachel in four months, and Mac is like a supporting character in her storyline.  This continues for much of 1982, Mac even gives his Christmas toast that year in Liz Matthews living room without Rachel, Ada, Amanda, and Matthew who celebrate Christmas at the Cory mansion with Steve Frame.

Two new AW episodes on YouTube April 15 and 16, 1982

Could it possibly be that Finn being shot by Sheila is an April Fools?  Is the twist that they pulled an April Fools on the viewers?  Has any other soap done an April Fools joke on the audience before?

23 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Thanks. I know you always keep an eye out for things too. There are so many reuploads sometimes I doubt what is or is not new...

Jamie's mention in an early clip of two bodies being in the plane would mean that part is sometime in the week of February 6th. Stacey left on the  8th. The end credits mention a TV movie that aired on February 13th (in the US, anyway). So I assume it is all from that point. 

These clips with Mac showing up alive would be from the week of February 13, 1984.  Mac was presumed dead in the plane crash and turned up alive in the Friday cliffhanger on February 10th.  The February 10th episode is on YouTube.

12 hours ago, Melroser said:

By the time JG left, I was tired of the Lisa/Jamie/Vicky triangle. Was never a fan of Lisa. Her premonitions bugged me and then seemed to stop. Could she not see Vicky coming? 

Lisa's premonitions seemed to disappear.  The day she left Bay City was the same day that her aunt, Felicia Gallant, celebrated her birthday.  Lisa had no premonition that Felicia was in danger being stalked by the strongman in the hall of mirrors, or that the situation would result in the murder of Jason Frame.

The Sin Stalker mystery on AW had some terrifying moments- Dr. Glaser trying to kill Crystal Gayle while she singing at Tops.  It was an ingenious way to write her into the storyline when she appeared on the show to sing AW's new theme song.  Then, the Sin Stalker broke into the Cory mansion during a thunderstorm with no electricity on Mac's birthday and tried to kill Nancy.  Ada even got in on the action racing to save Nancy when she heard her screams.  And when the Sin Stalker was finally revealed, he lured Donna to a lighthouse and was followed by John Hudson.  Dr. Glaser tried to kill John by throwing him off the top of the lighthouse which resulted in John being blinded from hitting his head in the fall.

26 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Anne Heche also improved tremendously as Vicky and Marley Hudson  - just astonishing work. 

When she first appeared on AW in the summer of 1987, It took Anne Heche about six months to go amateurish to outstanding.  She greatly improved in 1988 once Tom Eplin's Jake returned and she was playing both Vicky and Marley regularly.

On paper, I'm sure the Justine storyline on Another World sounded much better than what played out on screen.  The change in writers and producers didn't help the storyline.  Justine could have filled the Iris role in Bay City as someone who was looking to stir up trouble for Rachel and Carl, much like Alexis did to Blake and Krystal on Dynasty.  Rather, JFP and the writers turned her into an over the top villain who was deformed when she fell from a train trestle.  Then even gave her a hook for a hand like Captain Hook.  At this point, not even a talented actress like Victoria Wyndham could save this storyline; but, I do think that if they had turned Justine into an Alexis/Iris type character who was there to stir up trouble that it would have worked and Wyndham could have carried it off.