Best Daytime Soap of the 1970's?

[ghfan89]

Message too short.

[DRW50]

Thanks for doing this, I look forward to the responses. It's too bad 70s stuff is mostly unavailable.

[Bright Eyes]

I voted for One Life to Live and The Edge of Night.

[Max]

I can't believe that AW has so few votes so far, when it was pretty much considered the gold standard of soaps for the entire decade.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Max

[Max]

Forgive me for my rudeness, and with all due respect to the creator of this poll, I believe that this poll is a flawed one: by separating out the current and cancelled soaps (and forcing us to choose one from each category), it makes it impossible for us to choose and measure which soap was truly the best of the 1970's.

While some others might disagree, I believe that the general concensus is that the now-cancelled soaps were better (on the whole) in the 70's than the soaps that are still around. Like I mentioned previously, AW was the gold standard of the decade. (In fact, many consider Harding Lemay's AW to be the best soap of any decade.) Furthermore, ATWT (which was the most popular soap of the decade) and EON (which featured the brilliant writing of Henry Slesar) were among the decade's best as well.

Of the soaps remaining on the air, only AMC had a consistently good decade. While Y&R made a big splash when it debuted, it really did not hit its stride until the early-80's. DOOL was experiencing its golden age in the first half of the 70's, but faltered in the second half of the decade. Even though OLTL was of good quality, it ratings were below average, and it could hardly have been rated as the decade's best. Finally, GH had a disastrous decade, except during the 1970-71 season (when it featured a hot story that made it #2 in the ratings) and again at the very end of the decade when Gloria Monty took over.

Edited January 13, 2011 by Max

[DRW50]

I love all of your analysis. But look on the bright side - at least those shows got more votes than poor SFT, which was in a pretty good place for a lot of the 70s and didn't get a vote.

[edgeofnight]

I was at the Paley Center last year when they inteviewed Ted Danson, and, believe it or not, they showed a clip from his time on 'Somerset.'

[DRW50]

What was the clip?

[Mr. Vixen]

I voted for GH. Only because it was the decade that brought on characters like Bobbie, Lesley, Laura, Rick, Monica, Jefff, etc.

[Soapsuds]

The best soap in the 70s had to be The Guiding Light.