All My Children Tribute Thread

[Jonathan]

 

OMG.  At that time, the word "bitch" was slowly becoming more integrated into the dialogue of many TV shows.  This was the first time All My Children had scripted the word into the show.

[All My Shadows]

REALLY? I always assumed that Dynasty had opened the floodgates for all soaps, daytime and primetime, in the early 80s.

[cassadine1991]

Kathryn Merteuil was such a great role

[Pine Charles]

Actually, I remember seeing an earlier clip, I believe from 1989, with Natalie calling the character of Marissa (Rampal) a “bitch” to her face.

[SFK]

I was in an arts magnet program in high school and one of our freshman year projects was to create our own sitcom or soap opera. Our teacher taught us that one of the tenets of soap opera was that the word bitch was never used. This was 1994, and I was the soap "expert" in class like, "No! Where have you been!? I have certainly heard bitch on multiple occasions!" Meanwhile, I was miffed that she showed Seinfeld instead of Martin and Y&R instead of AMC when we watched examples in class. The saving grace was that it was a Jill-heavy episode.

But yeah, she fought me and insisted that bitch was never uttered.

[All My Shadows]

I hate it when TV people think they know soaps when they clearly have not spent enough time watching them to truly know.

 

It reminds me of when we learned about radio soaps in my high school history class and my teacher, whom I love and was a big inspiration, claimed that ATWT was the very first soap and had been on radio, along with GL and Y&R. I, of course, objected to this in the most dramatic way, and everyone laughed, so I piped down. My teacher smugly said that he knew what he was talking about because he was older than me and VERY snidely asked if I’d ever heard of The Edge of Night, assuming I hadn’t. I was literally already spending half of my life on this very message board, bruh, back tf off!

[danfling]

I remember as a fourteen-year-old that a lady who was visiting in my house argued that she had listed to Dark Shadows ON THE RADIO as a youngster!

[dragonflies]

 

[allmc2008]

 

God, I can relate. My biggest -peave is when atwt is mentioned as the 'first' and being on radio. 

 

Ive been writing a book on soaps for 10 years, I'm now 26, I can even safely say that the term was coined bc they were used to sell GENERAL products but the serials were of HIGH QULITY.  Chit, ealy sponsors only interfered when the quality was bad bc they didnt want to be associated with low-quility writing.  So, when I was in history and radio soaps were mentioned I was being told what you were told and I remember acting in a similar fashion.

 

Ot, but was your school participating in the 'history alive' program? 

 

 

I hate it when you find all these tv encyclopedia books which have few, if any, soap references.  Of course, until the late 90s, it seems as if soaps were on there own island apart from the rest of tv.  Like, tv was the only device which could show them so they had to be on tv.

 

 

 

[SFK]

 

Wow, I never knew such a lineup existed. It is kuh-razy.

 

EXACTLY. G-d forbid someone younger should know more about a particular subject.

[Franko]

Five newcomers (well, sorta) in two weeks is pretty astonishing. The Brady reruns returned 6/30, same day as Showoffs premiered. Ryan's, Rhyme and You Don't all debuted on 7/7. By 1976, Showoffs would be gone, Let's Make a Deal would be in the noon slot and Edge would be in the 4 p.m. slot.

[~bl~]

I've watched or rather listened to television soaps on the radio. There used to be receivers with a television band. The radio had three bands, AM, FM, and television, and if you were in an area where you could get over the air reception, you could listen to regular tv. Once the HD conversion happened, this was no longer an option, as these machines no longer got signals as they were airing the analog broadcasts. The last time I used a machine like this was in the 90s, but honestly if someone didn't realize that it was a tv band and thought it was the only way a soap aired they didn't understand the technology (now out-of-date and obsolete) they were using.  

 

Edited July 8, 2018 by ~bl~
additional info

[cassadine1991]

I wonder what character Martha Byrne would've played had she joined AMC after leaving ATWT the first time.

[Khan]

Was Martha Byrne supposed to have joined AMC?  I had no idea.

[DRW50]

A brief piece on soaps about 10 minutes in. Features brief comments from Susan Lucci and Jean le Clerc (with an awful haircut), as well as a bit of James Kiberd and Susan Keith.

 

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Edited July 9, 2018 by DRW50