Another Life

[danfling]

The last soap opera that Roy Winsor had created was NOT in 1954.

He created Hotel Cosmopolitan, and it premiered in 1957.

He also created a soap opera spin-off of The Secret Storm which was to be about the Stevens family. The Expanding Circle (or something like that) was to be the title. Instead, though, CBS bought Where the Heart Is, co-created by two writers (Lou Schofield and Margaret DePriest) of The Edge of Night.

He did not create Somerset, but he was the headwriter of that show after Henry Slesar left.

I am interested in Bob Aarons. He co-created Another Life with Roy Winsor.

Does anyone have information on this writer?

[danfling]

One more serial that Roy Winsor created in between The Secret Storm and Another Life was Ben Jerrod on NBC in 1963.

[SoapDope]

I ran across this christian soap on youtube and it's really good. It looks like it could have been an ABC or NBC produced soap. When it first aired (1981-84) I missed it since I was without cable till 1985.

Phanta773 looks like they have uploaded the entire or almost entire series in excellent quality.

[DRW50]

I was watching a 1990 interview with Christopher Templeton (Carole Robbins, Y&R), and she said that Another Life had promised her a role for years, that the show was created around her and the character was written for her, but they just kept her waiting for a lot of years. She eventually just gave up and moved from Phoenix to California to start her acting career in Hollywood.

Unfortunately she started talking about something else and never finished talking about the show in detail. I wonder if they ever did anything with this character or if it never happened. Perhaps she was a casualty of the show shifting away from its original format.

Edited June 1, 2014 by DRW50

[cassadine1991]

33rd anniversary of it's first episode

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[slick jones]

Does anyone know who soap actress Deborah Hobart portrayed on this show?

[slick jones]

Don't know if anyone else knows this, but MANY episodes of the series Another Life can be found on Dailymotion

www.dailymotion.com/video/x26r2b3_another-life-ep-563-august-1983_shortfilms is the address, but just google dailymotion Another Life and it will get you there. There are at least 10 pages of videos[that's as far as I looked so far.

[SoapDope]

I never watched this show when it was originally on, but it's pretty good and has decent acting and production values.

[DRW50]

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[Soaplovers]

Been watching the early episodes (when Roy Winsor was still story consultant)..and I like that its a traditional soap...with some christian overtures...which I hear became more then overtures as the show continued.

 

Whats interesting is an article from 1984 announcing the show being cancelled..with the reason being low ratings and a lack of advertising revenue.  Also, the reason for this was due to a huge drop in stations carrying the show...hence the drop in ratings and revenue.  Guess even cable soaps/shows had affialiate issues as well.  It also shows that the 80s killed more soaps not due to people being disinterested...but cause of a lack of access to the shows.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/23/arts/christian-broadcast-network-cancels-its-cable-soap-opera.html

[amybrickwallace]

Here is an article from August 2015 about Michele Seidman (Jill Hanson), who posted on this board a few times:

 

http://www.starnewsonline.com/news/20150829/swimming-helped-woman-cope-now-shes-giving-back

[DRW50]

Thanks. I remember she tried to get another person to post here (an actor) but I don't know if they were able to get approved. Sadly she only posted a few times as there wasn't much interest.

[GSGfan2017]

No offense, but was Another Life a nonunion production?

[SoapDope]

Here is a 1984 episode of Family Feud featuring male and female models. Jerry Timm who played Gil Prescott on Another Life is on along with J. Eddie Peck pre Y&R. Lacy Pemberton is also featured before she became a model/dealer on Card Sharks.

 

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[Paul Raven]

CAN A RELIGIOUS SOAP OPERA FIND AN AUDIENCE?

By KENNETH A. BRIGGS

Published: May 31, 1981

 

Beginning tomorrow, ''Another Life'' a 30-minute, five-day-a-week soap opera will make its debut on 63 stations around the country, including WPIX/Channel 11 in New York, where it will be shown at 12:30 P.M., According to its producers, the difference between ''Another Life'' and major network soap operas is that the new serial will have an underlying religious theme and present positive answers to moral perplexities. Otherwise, viewers can look forward to the usual array of human foibles and miseries.

The program appears to be an example of the fact that religious broadcasters, long mainly confined to Sunday mornings, have been branching out in recent years. Acquiring funds and resources, they have purchased more time in weekday slots and launched several ventures in nontraditional religious programming.

''Another Life'' revolves around the Davidson family of Richmond, Va. Scott Davidson, the husband and father, is a television newscaster, and his wife, Terry, is a practical nurse and housewife. The couple's two children are Lori, a college student in love with the school's football hero, Russ Weaver, and Peter, the precocious high-school student son.

The Davidsons represent a religious outlook summed up in the premise of the serial that ''faith in God can overcome the trials of life.'' According to the program's producers, the Davidsons teach by example rather than sermon. Though the family goes to church, it is to no church in particular and, from advance descriptions, their theology seems closer to Universalism than to that of Southern Baptists. The idea is to inject subtle spiritual messages. No clergymen appear in the show.

The rest of the cast of characters will bring a range of challenges to test the Davidsons' faith. There include the Cummingses, Jeff and Liz, with their marital tensions and alcoholism; Paul and Miriam Mason, he a brooding college teacher and she, according to promotional material, a ''scheming wench''; Miriam's wealthy parents, Charles and Helen Carpenter, who live on Chicago's ''Gold Coast,'' and Gene Redlon, a black colleague of Scott Davidson, who is divorced and lives with his son and mother.

Producing the serial is the Continental Broadcasting Network, a wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the Christian Broadcasting Network of Virginia Beach. At the head of the parent body is its founder, the Rev. Pat Robertson, who is among the most successful of the new wave of television evangelists.

Mr. Robertson is perhaps known best as the host of ''The 700 Club,'' a 90-minute Christian talk show that is shown weekdays on hundreds of stations across the country, including WPIX. As his financial resources have grown, mostly through viewer contributions, Mr. Robertson has broadened his vision. Among the main elements in his new goals have been the completion of a modern 160,000 squarefoot television complex in Virginia Beach, the purchase of satellite time on the RCA Satcom I and the formation of the Continental subsidiary to develop commercial programming.

The facilities at the Virginia Beach headquarters, where ''Another Life'' originates, have a total of 30,000 square feet of studio space, including two 11,000 square-foot studios and two 3,500 squarefoot studios. It is among the most automated systems in the nation.

During its first year, the total production costs of ''Another Life'' are expected to run around $5 million. Largely because of Continental's labor-saving advanced technology and a non-union staff (including all the actors), production costs for individual episodes will be kept well below the $200,000 minimum that the major networks ordinarily spend for a similar half-hour segment (costs can run as high as $500,000 per episode).

Under a ''soap-for-barter'' arrangement, each client station will give over to Continental four of the six commercial minutes in each half-hour telecast. The usual agreement is a 50-50 division. But even with a formula comparatively unfavorable to stations, Continental officials claim that the serial has been enthusiastically received.

Money for developing the series has been supplied by the Christian Broadcasting Network. Since filming began early this past March, more than 40 episodes have been taped in the studios and on locations in Richmond, as well as along the Chesapeake Bay shoreline and at Colonial Williamsberg.

On its own, the Continental Network has moved ahead at an accelerated pace since Robert F. Aaron took over as head of the operation nearly a year ago. Mr. Aaron is hopeful that ''Another Life'' will appeal to the large numbers of college students who regularly watch soap operas; housewives, of course, are another target audience. Mr. Aaron and his colleagues believe their serial can provide a much needed moral alternative to other soap operas. In response to the ''mindless prurience'' found in much daytime television, he says, ''we feel a need for quality, wholesome programming.''

Before joining Continental as executive producer, Mr. Aaron directed his own production and consulting firm and, in that capacity, had worked with the Christian Broadcasting Network. When Mr. Robertson decided it was time to move ahead with Continental's new programming agenda, he turned to Mr. Aaron, who had an extensive professional background in both soap operas and other forms of daily television, including 17 1/2 years with the National Broadcasting Company. For six years, he had been the network's national director of daytime programming. He helped develop three of NBC's long-running soap operas: ''Days of Our Lives,'' ''The Doctors'' and ''Another World.''

When Mr. Aaron took command as head of Continental, he began reviewing progress on an idea for a daytime ''Christian serial'' that Mr. Robertson had conceived a year-and-a-half earlier. Two writers had been working on scripts for the project, and Mr. Aaron's mandate was to make the series, tentatively named ''The Light Inside,'' compete successfully in the daytime commercial market.

Mr. Aaron was not pleased with what he saw in those preliminary scripts. ''They were essentially written from a totally Biblicalparable point of view,'' he explained recently. ''The Bible was quoted up front.'' In short, he said, they were ''heavily didactic and a little smug.'' The problem, as he saw it, was that a direct religious approach could alienate viewers.

In addition to Bible quotes and ''sermonettes,'' the original scripts had characters giving accounts of their spiritual experiences. Scott and Terry Davidson, for example, clearly identified themselves as born-again Christians, each citing the time that personal conversion had taken place.

Any debate concerning the Christian content of the new serial might seem ironic in light of Mr. Robertson's reputation for speaking the Gospel message directly and uncompromisingly. Further, he belongs to a wider community of evangelicals who believe that the road to salvation is narrow and cannot be circumvented. But about a year or so ago, in an attempt to gain a hearing among those who might not be reached by a preaching or talk-show format, Mr. Robertson had embarked on a new television strategy. Indeed, in this effort to expand his audience, he has somewhat softened his own approach on ''The 700 Club.'' The assumption behind this strategy is that viewers who begin by watching low-key religious programming may eventually be more receptive to programs with a stronger religious content.

After convincing Mr. Robertson that ''The Light Inside'' needed to be toned down if the serial was to stand a chance of reaching the wider audience Mr. Robertson sought, Mr. Aaron hired Roy Winsor, a 20-year veteran of network television who once produced ''Have Gun, Will Travel,'' as script supervisor. A thorough revision of the scripts got underway. One of the origianl writers was retained, the other went to work for the parent organization and additional writers were hired.

Under the new concept, religion was to be brought into the scripts only where it might seem logical or natural for the characters to introduce a spiritual or moral note. The accounts of the Davidsons' conversion were stricken in favor of a low-key approach in which the couple becomes more a symbol of religion in general than of religion in a concrete denominational form.

What the producers hope to achieve are opportunities to deliver discreet object lessons and gentle persuasion in the midst of the sort of tribulation that has become the hallmark of the soap opera. ''Another Life,'' states the promotional material, ''will not avoid dealing with the provocative subject matter of promiscuity, adultery, child abuse, aberrations of personality, jealousy, pride, fierce ambition and lust -all of which lure over 100 million people every week to view some form of soap opera.''

''The dfference between our serial and others,'' it continues, ''is that Scott and Terry Davidson will demonstrate that they have the courage and inner strength to handle whatever life visits on them. The source of their strength is God.''

One example Mr. Aaron cites proudly to show how the serial applies its own moral message is a scene that raises the issue of pre-marital sex. In the setting, a picnic, Russ Weaver makes repeated advances to Lori Davidson; in a demonstration of her strong faith, she finally succeeds in fending him off by giving him a sandwich. ''Oh, great,'' Russ says good-naturedly, ''we've made it to premarital lunching.''

An opportunity for a more explicit religious theme takes place in another scene where Liz Cummings, whose travail includes a failing marriage and an alcoholic husband, asks Terry Davidson where she finds the strength to face her own problems. The answer is, of course, spiritual.

Mr. Aaron and his associates are convinced that Americans are wallowing in enough moral turmoil to provide plenty of customers for a show that promises at least some answers. Yet, for financial and promotional reasons, they are also skittish about linking the serial too closely to a Christian identity. Viewers, station managers and advertisers could all be chased away by such a label, the Continental officials believe; thus, efforts have been made to keep Continental at arms length from the activities of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

''A lot of stations are watching us to see how we do it,'' Mr. Aaron said. ''The more religious slant we have, the less advertisers might appreciate the line of demarcation that we have tried to put forth.'' He recalled one potential sponsor who asked, ''How far are you planning to go with the God bit?'' and wanted assurances that the serial would not be ''Lamp Unto My Feet'' (a former CBS Sundaymorning religious program) in commercial form.

The delicate process of negotiating these and other issues with independent stations and advertisers has been handled by a team of seasoned professionals hired by the network. Lloyd Watson, the director of programming for Continental, came from an executive position at 20th-Century Fox. Peter Andrews, the associate producer, produced ''The Guiding Light'' for eight years at CBS. Richard McHugh, chief consultant for network sales, once supervised budgets for all of NBC's divisions and later joined Needham, Harper and Steers as senior vice president for programming and network relations.

Perhaps the key decision reached by the Continental staff was to steer clear of direct competition with other soap operas. Many stations that plan to show the new serial also carry ''The 700 Club,'' and Continental officials hope to forge a chain of attractive offerings on the success of ''Another Life.''

Already on the drawing boards are plans for game shows, a sports series and a 6 A.M. wake-up rival to the networks' morning-news programs. Will ''Another Life'' make these goals possible? Mr. Aaron exudes unshakable confidence. ''I am not the kind of guy plagued by doubts,'' he says. ''I am stepping forward in faith.''

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Edited November 5, 2017 by Paul Raven