I never knew that about the criticism they got over Scott (where did you see that?). I'd forgotten about Bill Bauer's death. That's a good catch! I always thought his death seemed nonsensical and sudden, just from reading about it. This helps explain why.

September 1972 Weekday TV.

showing me a collection of stills of many of the stars I not only remember, but also adored. There were marvelous photos of Carole Lombard, Katharine Hepburn and of course, Greta Garbo. On a wall, she had a framed letter from Errol Flynn and did that ever help to make the years slip backward.

I knew that Constance Ford had started her career as a Conover model but I didn't know that she was only twelve years old at the time. Born and raised in the Mosholu Parkway section of the Bronx, New York, Constance Ford had one childhood dream. She always wanted to be an actress. Her modeling days were just the start of that dream. By the time she was eighteen she realized that she couldn't continue modeling. The two careers were time consuming.

So, she made her choice and fortunately for all of us, acting won out. She won a screen test by a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talent man, who asked her to put a scene together for the audition. She was sent to Betty Cashman (coach and teacher) for that purpose and even though the screen test didn't work out, Constance went into stock work, then became an understudy, then to a role on the road and finally to Broadway in the hit play, Death of a Salesman.

Her first daytime serial was Woman With a Past, which didn't hold up too long, but then Hollywood beckoned to her and she went into films. In a span of three years, she did twelve films of which she named just a few. A Summer Place, Rome Adventure and All Fall Down are just three in that group. She said, "I'm still terribly proud of All Fall Down even though the critics didn't give it much hoopla. It was one of Warren Beatty's first and a good film."

In the beginning of her career she studied at the Actor's Studio; then with Herbert Berghof; then with Robert Lewis. Now, she has her own studio and teaches there. Then she told me she was once on Edge of Night in the role of Eve Morris and that Ed Kemmer (Somerset) was her lover on that show. Ed's wife, Fran Sharon, is on Edge now as Cookie Christopher. It's a small world.

Then we asked Constance how she liked New York.

"I love the city but I'm afraid of it in the sense that I'm afraid to walk out at night. Also, financially, things are almost out of reach and the hostility quotient is high. I wouldn't live in this apartment if it wasn't so well protected. I have a home out of the city which I rent for the summer because I love the water and I love sailing. I also love to swim and play tennis. That really keeps me in physical shape."

When we asked about the star's hobbies, she had a quick reply; "living."

Then we discussed her most recent appearance in Last of the Red Hot Lovers at the Papermill Playhouse. Constance told me, "It was really fun. I'd forgotten what it was like to work before a live audience. You know, you get so used to working before cameras. When you work on stage, you're close to the audience. They can feel that you love them and you can feel that they love you. It just makes you feel so great and it's so gratifying.

"As to my future? Well, I like to act and I act where it's at. I love doing the soap because it's like doing a long movie. I can feel the role grow and progress. But, I'd also like to do a good play and a good film."

It was at this time that Constance turned on her stereo and gave me the headphones to put on. Wow! Dionne Warwick and her latest on headphones. What a concert! It was just sensational. I even found myself doing a little dance step or two and then it really became fantastic to believe that I was dancing around in the living room of Constance Ford. But, it was true and what a morning it was. It was truly one that will go down in my memory book forever.

Priceless.

Robin must melt whenever she remembers that one of Connie's favorite pics was of holding her son.

What would she think of Dionne now?

Yesterday I was watching some of the fighting between Rachel and Mac after she drove Blaine and Jamie out of town. It was so ferocious, and while it was at times a little hammy, I was riveted to the scenes, especially when Mac said he finally knew he'd married the woman everyone had warned him about, and Rachel said Mac wanted to turn Amanda into another Iris. There's an especially good moment when he grabs her arm - electric.

It's a shame the show never really worked out a way to keep them at odds that didn't isolate the characters, as seems to have happened during the time Rachel was with Mitch and David Canary's Steve.

I also really liked seeing Richard Backus/Ted Bancroft playing verbal tennis with Iris and trying to worm his way in with Rachel. It's a shame that they gave up on the character.

The 90 minute episodes are your only chance to see Brooks and Louise discussing table arrangements in extensive detail

I wonder if Connie Ford had a partner? Wasn't there a rumor about her and Irene Dailey?

SOD covers the 1989 AW Christmas party.

Josie MOST POINTLESS CHARACTER EVER.

Harshness. But if it's because her Matthews and Frame sides were never utilized, I completely agree with you. I would have even like her more had she just gone by Josie Matthews instead of Watts. However I did like the Gary and Josie pairing and enjoyed the '98 recasts although the triangle with Cameron was really pointless and the story ended sad with the two ending up with another dead child. Yeesh.

Oddly each Josie recast was improvement an over their predecessor.

Edited June 24, 201114 yr by soapfan770

The biggest problem with Josie is she was nothing inside. Just a generic ingenue. The actresses who played her could never do anything about that and I don't know if they had the talent (although Amy Carlson has been OK in some other roles).

Carlson was alright, I did like Stenovitch better. I do get what you're saying as I found it completely unbelievable for Josie to become a cop and I do recall she was terrible as a cop too.

I always loved how the AWHP writeup for her went on about how she got commendations every time she was terrible at her job.

At the time I found Stenovitch very cold and hard to care about, although that was down to bad writing as well. I liked her more when they brought Anna Holbrook back for a few days.

I always loved how the AWHP writeup for her went on about how she got commendations every time she was terrible at her job.

At the time I found Stenovitch very cold and hard to care about, although that was down to bad writing as well. I liked her more when they brought Anna Holbrook back for a few days.

Oh lol thanks for reminding me of that. I find it hilarious especially since Eddie usually maintains good level of objectivity in his writeup.

It was AW 1998/1999 and that point I my watching was becoming increasingly infrequent but I couldn't appreciate Jake and Vicky so I got behind Gary and Josie as my rooting couple along with Grant and Cindy.

I liked they brought back Holbrook too to bad they didn't keep her til the end but hey Goutman was EP....

Well, another June 25th has came and went Matt P. Smith took a detour on his usual write-ups for soaps and for Another World he wrote quite the extensive essay, even more so than his essay on ATWT. I love his sense of optimism at the end and it made me a little sad:

premiered

May 5, 1964

last telecast

June 25, 1999

setting

Bay City, Illinois

created by

Irna Phillips w/William J. Bell

network

NBC

production company

Procter & Gamble Productions

broadcast history

Mon-Fri

3pm - 3:00pm

(5/4/66-1/3/75)

3pm - 4pm

(1/6/75-3/2/79)

2:30pm - 4pm

(3/5/79-8/1/80)

2pm - 3pm

(8/4/80-6/25/99)

Having only changed of the serialized anthology medical series The Doctors to a full fledged soap opera just 2 months earlier, NBC hoped to finally build a soap opera line-up worthy of competing with rival CBS. However, AW could have very easily ended up on the competition.

Another World was originally created by Irna Phillips and William J. Bell (who was then Irna’s co-head writer on As the World Turns) to be a spin-off of the hugely successful ATWT. In concept, the lead family of the new series (the Matthews family) was to be close friends of the Hughes family of ATWT and the new town of Bay City was to be just a stone’s throw away from ATWT’s Oakdale. Unfortunately, CBS’s daytime line-up was unbelievably solid with strong ratings. In fact, CBS didn’t make any changes to it’s daytime line-up for a large chunk of the 1960s. Hearing that a new Irna Phillips created soap opera was on the market, NBC jumped at the chance to have their own ATWT and snatched up AW. Because the new series was now going to be on a different network, all direct connections between ATWT and AW were scrapped and only one minor character (attorney Mitchell Drew) was transferred over to the new series. Drew had earlier been transferred over to ATWT from another P&G soap The Brighter Day.

Following the two-family structure established by ATWT, AW had its focus 2 branches of the Matthews family – one distinctly middle class (AW’s answer to the Hughes family) and one quite wealthy (AW’s answer to ATWT’s Lowell family). The middle class Matthews branch was headed by Jim & Mary Matthews who had 3 children – college student Pat, and teen-agers Russ and Alice. The wealthy branch was headed by William & Liz who had 2 children, grown Susan and college student Bill. Also included in the family were Jim & William’s mother (AW’s answer to ATWT’s Pa Hughes) and Jim & William’s independent younger sister Janet (AW’s answer to ATWT’s Edith). However, instead of the slow moving character studies that were the focus of ATWT, AW was hugely plot-driven. Irna was well aware of NBC’s well-established habit of canceling new soaps quickly and wanted AW to be a hit right out of the gate. Instead of ATWT, Irna was writing her version of hugely melodramatic The Secret Storm. In fact, AW was launched with the tragic death of William Matthews that had sent the entire Matthews family into mourning just as the death of Ellen Ames on Storm had done. In quick succession, tragedy upon tragedy befell the Matthews family.

In the first few years of the show, the opening included the now famous epigraph “We do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds.” Although the epigraph would disappear from the series early on, that mantra continued to be an unspoken running theme throughout its entire run. Even as late as the 1990s, promotional merchandise for the series would include that statement.

Bill was smitten by orphaned Missy Palmer much to mother Liz’s consternation. Liz was also in conflict with daughter Susan and sister-in-law Janet. Janet was Susan’s idol, but Janet was having a tawdry affair with her married co-worker Ken Baxter. But the bulk of the early tragedy was heaped upon Pat. Pat was in love with fellow college student (and cad) Tom Baxter (who just happened to be Ken & Laura Baxter’s son). Pat allowed herself to be seduced by Tom and she ended up pregnant, but Tom didn’t want her to have the baby and forced Pat to have an illegal abortion (a first for daytime). The abortion turned out to be a back-street butcher job and Pat was left sterile. Unable to handle the trauma, Pat went temporarily insane and shot and killed Tom! The crime plunged the Matthews family into scandal and Pat went on trial for murder, defended by town newcomer John Randolph (a widower with a teen-aged daughter named Lee). John got Pat acquitted due to temporary insanity and fell in love with the much younger girl in the process. John & Pat would eventually marry. Meanwhile, Missy’s mother was discovered (played by legendary golden-age film actress Ann Sheridan) and it was learned that Missy was illegitimate (a major disaster at the time) and fled town.

Even though no longer connected to ATWT, AW still managed to slip in an ATWT reference or two (early in the series, when the Jim & Mary went on a little trip out of town, it was said that they had gone to Oakdale because “they knew some people there”) and during the show’s first week, the title of the series was worked into as many lines as possible (Janet didn’t want to be part of the world of traditional wives and mothers, she wanted to be part of another world). However, Irna was way out of her element writing such plot-driven melodrama and the ratings were abysmal. Disappointed with the show, Irna was replaced as head writer by James Lipton (now of Inside the Actor's Studio fame). Lipton was convinced that the Matthews family was the problem with AW and pushed them to the background and introduced a new core family named Gregory who took over the bulk of the action. Even so, the ratings remained dangerously low – low enough that the new series was on the verge of cancellation. And then a miracle happened….

Agnes Nixon, a former protégé of Irna Phillips who had already helped Roy Winsor create Search for Tomorrow and Irna Phillips create As the World Turns had been writing The Guiding Light successfully since the late 1950s. However, when Agnes presented a new soap opera to P&G and CBS, she was dismayed to find that there was no room on CBS’s schedule for it (just like there’d been no room for AW). Instead of shopping the new series around to another network (Agnes was convinced by the rejection that the new series wasn’t any good), she went back to TGL. P&G, however, decided that Agnes might just be what AW needed and moved her over to head write the struggling soap. Once upon a time, P&G was notorious for liberally moving writers, producers, and talent around amongst its soaps. Agnes took the job as a challenge and ended up turning AW into a certifiable hit.

Agnes’s first order of business was getting rid of Lipton’s new family and returning the Matthews family to prominence. To accomplish this, Agnes simply killed off the entire Gregory family in a plane crash. She then crafted a compelling storyline for Bill & Missy where Missy married the dastardly Denny Fargo out of convenience, was raped and impregnated by him, and then put on trial for Denny’s eventual murder, bringing Bill & Missy back together (as Liz continued to plot against the young lovers). Agnes also moved TGL characters Mike Bauer and young daughter Hope to AW and plunged Mike into a romantic triangle with rivals Pat Randolph and Lee Randolph (who’d previously been at odds over Pat’s marriage to Lee’s father) while hooking up Lenore Moore (former girlfriend of Bill’s and who’d been much more socially acceptable to Liz) with social climbing attorney Walter Curtin. In the end, Agnes’s take on the show worked! Viewers couldn’t wait to see what twists and turns would befall the residents of Bay City and the ratings began to rise. And then Agnes would introduce two new characters and a storyline that would send the ratings through the roof.

Agnes was intensely invested in a conniving character in her rejected soap opera named Erica Kane and wanted, if nothing else, for that character to see realization on screen. To this end, she created the character of Rachel Davis along with her long-suffering mother Ada. Rachel & Ada had been abandoned years earlier by Ada’s husband and Rachel’s father Gerald and Ada, determined to make up for the abandonment, indulged Rachel’s every whim, leaving the poor young girl immensely spoiled. A conniver and social climber of the highest order, when she fell ill during a modeling job, Rachel set her sights on her doctor – intern Russ Matthews – and married him in secret. Shortly thereafter, Agnes introduced the wealthy and rakish Steve Frame who was taken with Russ’s sister Alice. As Steve & Alice fell in love, Rachel grew dismayed with the life of a doctor’s wife and took a liking to Steve. Before long, Steve had slept with Rachel (who was still married to Russ) and gotten her pregnant, but Rachel attempted to pass the baby off as Russ’s. The Russ/Rachel/Steve/Alice quadrangle was a smash! Viewers swooned to Steve & Alice, sympathized with Russ, and loved to hate Rachel. It all culminated with one dazzling scene (now legendary) during the party that celebrated Steve & Alice’s engagement where Rachel calmly and pointedly informed Alice that the baby she was carrying wasn’t Russ’s, but was Steve’s. Alice’s response, as any true heroine, was to calmly leave the party, Steve, and Bay City, ending the engagement.

Ratings skyrocketed. AW, once in danger of cancellation, was the first soap opera to break through CBS’s ratings dominance. For the 1966-1967 TV season, AW ranked 7th behind all of CBS’s soaps. For the 1967-1968 season, AW had shot up to 2nd, right behind ATWT. Agnes’s success didn’t go unnoticed. ABC, seeing the magic she’d worked, lured her away to create a hit soap for their own struggling line-up and Agnes jumped at the chance, leaving P&G for good. Although her ratings after her replacement slipped a bit, they continued to remain strong and NBC & P&G saw an opportunity to increase their forward momentum by creating a spin-off.

In 1970, AW’s title was changed to Another World - Bay City to coincide with the premiere of new soap and spin-off Another World - Somerset. Ironically, AW (which had originally been intended to be the first daytime soap spin-off ever) begat the real first daytime spin-off. The names were established to connect the two series (essentially making up the 1st hour-long daytime soap opera even though it would be another 5 years before the two series would air back-to-back). Regular AW characters Missy Palmer Matthews (now widowed from Bill), her son Ricky Matthews (the biological child of the late Denny Fargo), and newly-weds Sam Lucas (Ada’s brother) and Lahoma Vane Lucas (former best-friend of both Rachel and Lee) moved to Somerset which was located 50 miles away from Bay City. Early in the show’s run, there was much crossing over between the two series. However, ratings for the new series were low and the ratings for the parent series were beginning to drop drastically. In an attempt to fix what was broken, Robert Cenedella (who was head writing both series at the time and who had created Somerset) was removed from AW so that he could focus all of his attention on the new series. The parent name of the parent series was changed back to Another World and the name of the spin-off was shortened to simply Somerset.

In an unusual twist, the normally cautious P&G hired a new head writer for AW with no previous soap head writing experience (although he had earlier written a few episodes for the unsuccessful syndicated supernatural soap Strange Paradise), noted play-write Harding Lemay. Lemay was soon joined by new executive producer (and former P&G exec.) Paul Rauch. Because of Lemay’s inexperience with being a soap opera head writer, he was first paired with show creator Irna Phillips, acting as a consultant. However, Lemay and Phillips’s ideas on soap opera and the direction for the show clashed drastically. The partnership lasted only a matter of months before Lemay was off and running on his own.

Lemay turned AW into one of the most popular and critically regarded soaps of its day. He imbued characters with more depth than before, explored more motivations, and actively avoided traditional soap opera plot devices. While the Matthews family continued to a central focus, Lemay also fleshed out the Frame family (basing them on his own large family) and introduced the Cory family. Lemay/Rauch brought AW more ratings successes than the show had ever before experienced. For much of the 1970s, AW consistently landed at #2 in the ratings, even making it up to #1 in a 3-way tie with As the World Turns and Days of our Lives for the 1973/1974 season and a tie for #1 with ATWT for the 1976/1966 season. Lemay was awarded with a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in 1975 (with another nomination in 1977) and the show won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 1976 (with other nominations in 1974 & 1977).

During this time period, AW strove to higher only the best talent in front of the camera and a long string of highly talented theater actors appeared on the show for a few years at a time. AW also helped launch (along with the rising popularity of fan magazines devoted to soap operas) the era of the soap opera actor as superstar. The names of the actors portraying the roles became just as well known as the characters they played. AW also helped usher in the era of behind-the-scenes news when Lemay/Rauch very publicly dismissed Jacqueline Courtney (Alice Matthews Frame), George Reinholt (Steve Frame), and Virginia Dwyer (Mary Matthews). The behind the scenes battles between Courtney/Reinhold and Rauch/Lemay were so public that both sides were quoted in magazine articles and Courtney/Reinhold even appeared in televised interviews about the firings (most notably on The Mike Douglas Show, a daytime talk-show).

Another World also ushered in the era of the hour-long soap opera. While AW and spin-off Somerset could be considered, by some, as the first experiment with the 60-minute format, it was AW that made the first move to an hour in early 1975. In May 1974, AW had aired a special 60-minute episode to mark the show’s 10th anniversary that focused on the remarriage of Steve Frame & Alice Matthews. The show received huge ratings for the hour and Rauch/Lemay began to push P&G and NBC to let them expand permanently to an hour. P&G & NBC eventually agreed and, on January 6, 1975, AW aired its first regular 60-minute episode (with the announcer making that point to viewers with the words “And now, for the next 60 minutes…”, which would air as part of the opening until 1979) with another wedding – that of popular characters Lenore Curtin & Robert Delaney. The focus of the series also began to shift (ever so gradually) from the Matthews family onto the Cory family. Former villainess Rachel married Mac Cory and began to turn into a troubled heroine (coinciding with the new actress in the role Victoria Wyndham, a personal favorite of Lemay) as well as Mac & Rachel’s battles with Mac’s grown daughter Iris (played by Beverlee McKinsey, Iris would become the most popular villainess in AW history).

Despite continued critical success and fan devotion, Lemay started to resort to the same classic soap opera plot-devices (amnesia, uncertain baby parentage, murder trials) that he’d long worked to avoid. Also, AW’s trademark of talented theater performers began to work against it as new characters came and left the canvas after on a few years on-screen. By the time the late 1970s rolled around, AW was starting to lose viewers to time-slot competitor General Hospital, which was beginning to experience a ratings resurgence (during the 1977/1978 season, GH jumped from #8 to #2 while AW fell from #1 to #8). Even so, Lemay/Rauch pushed to expand AW further. Despite its falling ratings, AW was still the highest rated soap opera on NBC and in March 1979, the series expanded to 90-minutes, making AW the first and only soap opera to ever regular air for 90-minutes. The first 90-minute episode featured the death of long-running character (at 15 years) John Randolph in a fire. Unfortunately, 90-minutes didn’t do AW any favors. Lemay, an accomplished playwright, enjoyed the length (which each episode being the equivalent of one stage play) and wrote nearly every script for the 90-minute AW himself (in addition to his head writing duties). However, the workload for the actors was enormous with hugely popular actors only being able to appear in 2-3 shows a week, with storylines sometimes not even over-lapping. Also, Lemay began to be criticized for stretching out scenes for much longer than they should have been with the bulk of each 90-minute episode being regarded as little more than filler. Before long, Lemay was burned out and left the series.

Lemay was replaced by a succession of head writers who tried to steer the series back on track. In 1980, AW was finally cut back to 60 minutes to make room for a new spin-off titled Texas, which would focus on the immensely popular character of Iris Bancroft. Unfortunately, the loss of Iris (and portrayer Beverlee McKinsey) cut sharply into AW’s ratings and it fell from its throne as NBC’s highest rated soap opera (a position it would never regain). In the end, McKinsey left Texas after a year and that show was cancelled in 1982.

Throughout much of the 1980s, AW experienced a dizzying turnover in head writers (Rauch, himself, who at 12 years was the longest running executive producer in AW history, was replaced as EP in 1983). Each head writing team seemed to try to refocus the series on new characters and families who came and went with each change in writers. Meanwhile, long-time popular characters (and actors) like Pat Randolph (Beverly Penberthy) Russ Matthews (David Bailey) and Alice Matthews Frame (who was played by a succession of actresses after Courtney’s departure) signaled the end of the Matthews family as the show’s focus. Even the once-popular Cory family fell onto the backburner by the mid-1980s. Despite some bright spots (including the introductions of future long-running characters Cass Winthrop and Felicia Gallant as well as the Love & McKinnon families), nothing seemed to work and, while many fans remained devoted and ratings remained, for the most part stable, the show couldn’t seem to climb out of its ratings doldrums. By the time head writer Donna Swajeski took over in 1988, AW was in what one magazine once dubbed “the longest state of transition in soap history”. Swajeski (combined with new executive producer Michael Laibson who also took over in 1988) successfully refocused the series on the Cory, Frame, and Love/McKinnon families and brought the show renewed critical and fan success. Unfortunately, that success didn’t translate into a significant rise in ratings. Throughout the late 1980s/early 1990s, AW became somewhat of a “sleeper hit”. It received intense fan devotion combined with several Emmy nods and awards (including a nomination for Outstanding Writing in 1989) and the low-simmering popularity of the show continued for a few years past the departures of Swajeski in 1992 and Laibson in 1993. In fact, Swajeski was one of the few head writers to ever leave the series of her own accord. Swajeski’s tenure as head writer (4 years) is 2nd in length only to that of Harding Lemay. Laibson’s tenure as Executive Producer (5 years) is 2nd in length only to that of Paul Rauch.

By the early 1990s, the series (in ratings trouble since the late 1970s) was the recipient of numerous rumors of cancellation. Several times over the next decade, the cancellation of the series was all but a reality, but NBC would pull back at the last minute and reaffirm their dedication to the series. Unfortunately, after the departures of Swajeski & Laibson, AW was put back on the EP/HW merry-go-round and ratings began to slip further and further, never able to pull itself out of 9th place. Meanwhile, NBC began to push AW to be more like Days of our Lives (which aired immediately before AW), which had revitalized itself into somewhat of a far-fetched and far-out supernatural sci-fi soap opera. AW attempts to delve into this area proved hugely unsuccessful with viewers, culminating with a rather widely criticized storyline involving a centuries-year-old man named Jordan Stark, his manipulations of the residents of Bay City, and his pursuit of his true-love Amelie who was believed to have been reincarnated as Amanda Cory.

Although AW began to put itself back on track after the arrival of new EP Christopher Goutman in 1998 with quite a bit of increased buzz about the series (and ratings seemed to be inching back upward), NBC finally decided to pull the plug after what seemed like a cancellation competition between AW and the lower-rated Sunset Beach (with both series ending up to be losers by the end of 1999) in favor of a new soap opera created by former Days head writer James E. Reilly (the man responsible for those far-fetched and far-out storylines NBC wanted AW to emulate). When news of the cancellation broke, the networks and soap mags were deluged with mail in support of the show that blew everyone out of the water. It was the largest outcry over a soap opera cancellation in the history of the genre and fans across the country mounted campaigns to “save our show.” It was all to no avail.

AW ended on June 25, 1999, less than 2 months after the show’s 35th anniversary (making it the 2nd longest running soap opera to ever be cancelled – Search for Tomorrow beats it by several weeks) with an episode focused on the wedding of Cass Winthrop to popular schemer Lila Roberts. However, the continuing story of Another World would not end there.

Despite the cancellation, there was some talk of the series switching networks like The Edge of Night and Search for Tomorrow had done. In fact, there was strong indication for a time that ABC would pick up AW in some modified form. Unfortunately, plans fell through and the switch never happened. However, AW did continue in some ways. Immediately after AW’s end, popular AW characters Jake McKinnon & Vicky Hudson McKinnon (played by Tom Eplin and Jensen Buchanan) were transferred over to ATWT and various AW characters like Cass Winthrop (who also popped up on fellow P&G soap The Guiding Light), Lila Roberts Winthrop, Donna Love, Marley Love, and Cindy Harrison would make scattered guest appearances on ATWT. Vicky was eventually killed off (Jensen Buchanan opted not to continue in the role, but would return for several ghostly appearances). Meanwhile, AW was kept alive in the pages of Soap Opera Digest as that magazine began to “re-run” classic storyline synopses of the show.

Jake McKinnon was eventually killed off ATWT in 2002, seemingly marking a final end of the series. However, surprisingly, the show continues to live on! Recently the cable soap network SoapNet began airing re-runs of AW, picking up with episodes from 1987 and introducing an entire new generation of viewers to the series. Also, both ATWT and GL continue to mention Bay City (the locale of AW) from time to time as well as crossovers giving many fans the hope and belief that, while no longer on the air, the continuing story might actually be continuing somewhere out there off-screen. Now off the air for five years, AW still maintains a hearty and loyal following of devoted fans that still mourn their favorite series. Meanwhile, new viewers are picking up the habit every day via re-runs on SoapNet. If you think about it, it’s all rather surreal. AW could very well be more popular in death than it was in its later life. Clearly, we do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds.

And the continuing story of Another World continues…

Edited June 27, 201114 yr by soapfan770

And now all those mentions are gone

I guess the different version of AW that ABC wanted may have just meant Felicia?

This is very well-written. I'm glad to know more about Mike Bauer's stories.

I think JFP's tenure did bring in a ratings increase for a while but not enough, and probably not worth the financial cost.