I enjoyed reading everyones comments. What year of the show are the playing on soapnet? I catch it several times a week and I really enjoy it.

October of 1990.

For an entirely different slant on AW, make sure you check out AW on the P&G Classic Soaps Channel on AOLVideo (it's free for anyone). There are 9 straight episodes from 1980 post currently with the assurance that more is coming. From everything I've heard, P&G is *stunned* be the unbelievably HUGE response to the classic eps of AW and 'The Edge of Night' as well as the impressive response to 'Texas' and 'Search for Tomorrow'. I always knew there was a market for the classics. Also, if you *really* want to get into some honest to god vintage AW, check out The Another World Home Page (possibly one of the most complete sites dedicated to a single soap opera on the internet). Especially look at the "synopsis" section. Synopses for the series go all the way back to the beginning and many in the early years are DAY BY DAY. You can read *exactly* what happened on each day. There are even special notes about behind the scenes happenings (1st appearances, last appearances, actual script notes, etc.). I swear, you can get caught up in the story of gold-digging Rachel marrying Russ and lusting after Steve and the tortured romance of Bill & Missy.

Every soap deserves a fan like AW's Eddie Drueding

And this is an excellent Edge of Night site by Mark Faulkner

http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/casino/403/

I definitely agree, Toadstool. I wish every longrunning soap had sites as detailed and as involved as the AW & Edge Home Pages. I'd almost kill for sites like that devoted to 'Search for Tomorrow', 'The Guiding Light', 'As the World Turns', and 'Love of Life'.

I definitely agree, Toadstool. I wish every longrunning soap had sites as detailed and as involved as the AW & Edge Home Pages. I'd almost kill for sites like that devoted to 'Search for Tomorrow', 'The Guiding Light', 'As the World Turns', and 'Love of Life'.

Don't you wish you had the time? All I remember of Love of Live was that lovely sweet theme music.

I've enjoyed your history lessons by the way.

I swear, for a soap that I never got a chance to see (outside of a random episode here and there in my collection), I'm a total 'Love of Life' addict. I can't explain it. I don't know whether it's the black/white contrast of sisters Vanessa & Meg or the fact that, when it was cancelled, it was the 2nd longest running soap opera on television. It ran from 1951 to 1980 --- almost 29 years. That's a *long* time. If I'm not mistaken, less than 10 soap operas in history have run for that long, all except for SFT & AW are still on the air (SFT holds the record for longest running soap to ever be cancelled, btw, beating AW by just a few months). I've often thought about doing a 'Love of Life' or a 'Search for Tomorrow' homepage, but I just wouldn't know where to start to come up with some of the types of details and information that the AW and Edge sites have.

Matt, Have you seen the following page dedicated to Search For Tomorrow: http://www.angelfire.com/80s/cultsoaps/sftmain.html

It is wonderful, but the person just quit. I love reading the stuff from the 1950's. And the cast lists is very accurate too. It is one of my faves along with the Edge and AW homepages.

The same person who did that one on Search has some dedicated to other soaps too: The Secret Storm, Capitol, Loving and Santa Barbara. But I think the Search one is his/her best.

Yep, I do read that one from time to time and have long had it bookmarked. I kinda find it annoying to visit there, though, because he has the theme imbedded onto each page which slows things down just a bit.

Don't you wish you had the time? All I remember of Love of Live was that lovely sweet theme music.

I've enjoyed your history lessons by the way.

Have you visited www.wost.org? This site has a wonderful collection of opening and closing themes of all daytime dramas throughout the years.

I swear, for a soap that I never got a chance to see (outside of a random episode here and there in my collection), I'm a total 'Love of Life' addict. I can't explain it. I don't know whether it's the black/white contrast of sisters Vanessa & Meg or the fact that, when it was cancelled, it was the 2nd longest running soap opera on television. It ran from 1951 to 1980 --- almost 29 years. That's a *long* time. If I'm not mistaken, less than 10 soap operas in history have run for that long, all except for SFT & AW are still on the air (SFT holds the record for longest running soap to ever be cancelled, btw, beating AW by just a few months). I've often thought about doing a 'Love of Life' or a 'Search for Tomorrow' homepage, but I just wouldn't know where to start to come up with some of the types of details and information that the AW and Edge sites have.

I'm probably a lot older than most of you (I'm *cough* 38) so I've probably seen bits of every single soap that aired between 1968 and now. Duelling Grandmas plus my Grandad's own "the women are better looking on this one! (Y&R)" sent me all over the dial. My own Mom and older sister and brother had their favorites too... Not that I remember much except how the individual shows made me feel.

I can see Jo and Mrs. Whiting from Search in my mind's eye and can remember that powerful harpsicord / pipe organ theme from the 70's but can't remember one single plotline except for Jo going blind.

As for Love of Life, the theme is my favourite of all time and I remember that window scene at the opening but again plots and characters mean nothing to me... but I did want to look like Christopher Reeve when I grew up. (sadly I look more like Noah Wyle *sniff*)

The Secret Storm... I can hear the theme in my head and see the waves hitting the rocks. I have a better recollection of this one because one of my Gran's & Mom's friends acted on it for a time. Her name was Madeleine Sherwood and she had also been on The Flying Nun as the Reverend Mother. She's from what was then a very small and very British suburb of Montreal called Montreal West. My Mom and her family lived on the same street. Bits and pieces of this soap rattle around in my brain. Was I about 5 or 6 then? Maybe.

Here's a link to the town/borough http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_West,_Quebec

The real household favourites were AW, OLTL and Edge of Night followed by Nana Tilly's As the World Turns and The Guiding Light.

I always thought Somerset had the coolest opening visuals of all.

Edge of Night petrified me as a kid.

I just started watching Another World and I'm starting to enjoy it. I am loving Anne Heche, she's a gem.

Although AW in the late 1990's was not as good as it was earlier in the decade, I actually thought that it was still much better than most of the other soaps back in the late-90's (including GL and ATWT). And, without question, AW back in the late-90's was better than every soap is now in 2006.

For a long time, I also thought that P&G--and not NBC--held the ultimate responsibililty for AW's cancellation. However, I no longer believe this to be true. When it comes to P&G, consider the following points:

*Everybody says (as I once believed) that P&G wants out of the soap business. However, if that was true, why did P&G choose not to cancel GL in 2005 when its ratings were even worse than AW had in 1999. (Remember, back in 2005, CBS had announced that both GL and ATWT would be renenewed for one more year after their old contract expired in 2006.)

*Although P&G was responsible for cancelling both TEON and SFT in the 1980's, both of those soaps were in much worse shape than AW was prior to its cancellation: First, unlike AW (which was still being carried on all but one or two NBC affiliates in 1999), both TEON and SFT had been dropped by large numbers of network affiliates prior to their cancellations. More importantly, both TEON and SFT were each the lowest rated soap on the air when they were cancelled; by contrast, AW had higher ratings than two other soaps (PC and SuBe) prior to its cancellation. (And, when compared to lowest-rated SuBe, AW had almost a million more viewers.) In other words, what I have said shows that P&G was forced to cancel both TEON and SFT because they were losing money for the company, whereas it is seems far less certain as to whether or not P&G was losing money from AW.

When it comes to NBC, let it first be said that there was no doubt that the network was going to cancel SuBe over AW (regardless of whether or not Passions even existed in the first place), since both SuBe's ratings and its demos were lower than AW's. And, additionally, there was never any chance that NBC was serious about keeping SuBe (or, in general, a three-soap lineup) on the air as evidenced by the fact that SuBe was cancelled a mere six months after AW was. (The reason why I mention these things is because, for NBC, it was always a matter of whether to keep AW on the air or to replace it with Passions. And, the only reasons why SuBe outlasted AW were because (1) NBC wanted Passions to have AW's post-DOOL timeslot, and felt that it would have been pointless to move AW to a new timeslot for just six months prior to cancelling AW, and (2) NBC knew that Passions' debut would have higher ratings than SuBe's (thus making the soap look better), while also damn well knowing that Passions would have lower ratings than AW.)

Now that I have established why SuBe was certain to be cancelled and also why NBC wanted just a two-soap lineup, let me tell you why Passions was the reason for AW's cancellation: quite simply, the network was so greatful to JERk for what he did for DOOL that they wanted him to create another soap for NBC, in hopes that this new soap would have the same level of success. And, the network was so certain that this new soap was going to be a huge success that they were willing to cancel its (then) longest running soap to make room for Passions. If Passions had never come into existence, AW would still be on the air today (regardless of how bad its ratings got), because (1) NBC--for whatever reason--still wants to have two soaps (and not just one) and (2) the network would have not chosen to find a replacement for AW (because it was such a long-running soap) had any other writer--aside from JERk, who was responsible for greatly increasing NBC daytime's ratings in the 1990's--proposed a new soap.

P.S. Before anyone brings up how I hate Passions because it was AW's replacement, let me say that Passions' shitty actors, dialogue, and storylines are the reason why I hate Passions.

What I've watched of Another World reruns on SoapNet, from July 1987 to now October 1990, the show is great. A million times better than all the soaps on the air now, minus maybe Days and Y&R.

It was such a mistake for NBC to cancel AW. The could of had a 3 soap lineup. That Susan Lee does come across as a real bitch. What a tool.

Greetings, new to this board though I've been reading for a long time

As someone who grew up watching soaps for quite some time (mainly Y&R, B&B and Days), I'm not the only one who's grown concerned about the state of the genre generally, but I'll save that for another topic.

Personally, I think the way NBC treated both Another World and Sunset Beach was disgusting and extremely shoddy, to say the least. There was no way either soap deserved the fate they got. But somehow I'm not surprised, as anyone who knows soap history will know well their track record with soaps hasn't exactly been stellar bar the 1970s "Golden Age". That when they had the block of Days Of Our Lives, The Doctors and Another World, all of which got great ratings and critical acclaim (and though numbers were declining as the decadde ended, they weren't uncompetitive).

It was really around 1980 or so that the entire NBC soap lineup experienced a catastrophic ratings collapse, and Texas lasted little more than two years and The Doctors would be gone at the same time. NBC picked up Search for Tomorrow from CBS, but the change of network effectively killed the show- it was still getting decent ratings even as CBS' lowest-rating soap, far better than anything on NBC at the time (1980-82). The switch caused SFT's ratings to be cut in half.

Of course, things would get better for NBC's Daytime lineup and you might call this the "Silver Age". Although not getting near the numbers of the 1970s, both Days and AW did make a recovery in the ratings by 1984. Worth noting too that AW held down a steady 9th place for most of its last 16 years. Santa Barbara started slowly, but its numbers would also rise slowly. By 1987 (after which SFT had been cancelled), NBC was left with the three-hour soap block of Days, AW and SB- and it looked like they would finally get it right and have a competitive Daytime lineup again. For a time they did, but ratings would be in retreat by 1990.

For me it seems that NBC's critical failure has been not properly supporting most of the soaps it's had, and I've felt for a long time that NBC (along with P&G and quite possibly ABC if you look at the state of their soaps right now) has wanted out of the soap business. The cancellations of both Another World and Sunset Beach were handled extremely poorly, and in very bad taste too. Something which has done much damage to NBC's credibility, IMHO. (Apart from the Law & Order franchise and a few others which still deliver, of course)

Believe it or not, I think that Susan Lee gets a little too much blame when it comes to how NBC cancelled both AW and SuBe. I actually believe that these decisions (as well as the disgraceful way NBC handled them) came from her higher-ups at NBC.