Agreed, they should bring some young Newmans and Abbotts, but I would also bring in new characters and families.
And yes, they should just merge Newman and Abbott and just have one company, forget Chancellor and all the other conglomerates that these characters operate from Genoa City :P
Oh most definitely, soaps used to have small budgets and they made it work better than they do today. My guess is that in the past, a bigger percentage of the budget went into actual production, while I think today a lot of is spent for salaries and rent and different licences. Which is why I think Y&R is suffering, having so many veteran actors still on the forefront.
Out of curiosity, I went to calculate average character duration for all the 4 long-running soaps today. I took into consideration the year of character debut (for characters born on screen, I took a year when they were SORASed into teens). Some of them might have gone away and come back, so maybe the character wasnt on screen all those years, but I didn't go into that much detail.
So... Y&R has by far the cast of characters who are there for the longest time. Their average for the entire cast in 2026 (Jan-May) is 25 years. And if you just look at top 10 characters based on appearances, it is even worse: 31 years!
SHOW
Average
Top 10 Average
Y&R
25 years
31 years
B&B
18 years
18 years
DAYS
19 years
19 years
GH
17 years
21 years
By
Manny ·
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