The Doctors Discussion Thread

[Paul Raven]

P&G was The Catlins. Rituals was Telepictures at the time.

Forgot about Santa Barbara- certainly long running and well remembered.

 

[te.]

Santa Barbara was Dobson Productions / New World Television. It was last aired in a few places in Europe in the mid-00s, so I don't think it's impossible to license, but RetroTV might only want half hour shows?

[DRW50]

 

Thanks. 

 

It's all just ridiculous. Why they don't want to at least try to get some money out of these properties makes no sense to me. 

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

Its possible the small networks (like RetroTV) are able to pay so little for programming that it would not be worth the effort and expense involved for the production companies to syndicate the old soaps.   Contracts (depending on the age of the episodes) might require residual payments to actors, directors, writers, set designers, etc.  Plus there are the expenses connected with preparing the old episodes for broadcast on today's technology.  I know many of these sub-networks (like RetroTV) pay very little for their programming.  That's one of the reason Retro airs so much material that is in the public domain.   If the production companies cannot make a substantial profit, they likely are not going to invest in syndicating their old soaps.   

[Chris 2]

Sony is notoriously bad in terms of leveraging the old Columbia/Screen Gems assets (“Days of Our Lives” was originally from Screen Gems) because they don’t want to pay for new prints. There are a couple of seasons of “The Donna Reed Show,” which have never been syndicated or released on DVD because Sony doesn’t want to be bothered with transferring the old elements. Same thing with “The Farmer’s Daughter”, a sitcom from the 60s that Antenna TV licensed a few years ago. But when they found that the syndication prints from the 80s weren’t usable, they weren’t willing to pay to strike new prints.

 

That doesn’t speak well for Sony ever doing anything with the old DOOL or Y&R episodes, other than an occasional one-off special.

[Soaplovers]

Maybe retro can try to get Capital or even Loving?  Unless the music and actor fees for airing reruns make that impossible?

[amybrickwallace]

 

They air two episodes of TD a day in an hour block, so showing one SB a day wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. Of course, they would have to deal with the music issue - SB played a lot of the then-current hits.

[Soaplovers]

Also, actors weren't paid for reruns aired before a certain time either.  Just think of all the music and actor residuals.  I think the Doctors ended before that.

[jam6242]

Retro has been digitizing the episodes for The Doctors themselves so that shouldn't be an issue.  The actors from The Doctors are not getting residuals.  Don't know whether shows airing past the 80s would have a different arrangement though.  Also, music from the original artists has played in the 60s and 70s episodes, e.g., Simon & Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix, Nilsson, etc.  Even Melba Moore performing "live" on the show wasn't cut.

[amybrickwallace]

Yes...and songs by the likes of The Carpenters, The Eagles and Earth, Wind & Fire have been heard in some of the episodes. I wonder how Retro TV got away with that.

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[OzFrog]

 

Still a spinout for me seeing Alec Baldwin and Kim Zimmer together in a daytime soap storyline!

 

 

 

I’m obviously relatively new to the Doctors because this is the first time I’ve ever seen Kathleen Turner in action as Nola. In the short scenes she had in that episode, I can tell she had the same energy about her as Kim Zimmer did when she took over the role, which I imagine would have made the transition appear rather seamless (but any long time viewers are more than happy to correct me on that).

[victoria foxton]

Original recipe Nola was totally different. The first Nola was a tough scrappy street wise survivor . Nola was the second oldest of a large and poor Irish Catholic family. Once KT took over. The writers changed Nola's personality. Nola became arrogant, materialistic and devious. KT did her best with a lot of subpar material. KZ merged the two previous versions. While adding her own spin to the character.  

  

Edited December 25, 2020 by victoria foxton

[amybrickwallace]

I totally bought Kathryn Harrold's Nola with Glenn Corbett's Jason. The chemistry didn't seem to be there with GC and Kathleen Turner. Oddly enough, I think there was a lot of chemistry between KT and Philip English as Colin.

 

 

[jam6242]

I agree about KT and PE.  I don't know why the writers didn't pursue that relationship instead of sticking Colin with the mousy version of MJ. 

[amybrickwallace]

 

Yes! I think Lauren White's MJ would have worked well with Colin. The story was already moving in the direction of pairing the two characters off, but LW left the show just before it happened. LW brought both a warmth and strength to the character that just wasn't there with the recasts. Carla Dragoni and Kathy Glass tried, but they just weren't MJ. Then again, LW is that rare breed of soap actress who had chemistry with practically everyone she worked with on TD - friends, family, love interests, hospital colleagues. 

 

To continue with this analogy, KG had chemistry with two Mikes - John Shearin and James Storm - but not much with PE. It just goes to show that one never knows about actors and chemistry.