Doesn't B&B have way to many contract players for a 30 minute soap anyway??

You can watch that soap for two weeks straight and not see more than 5 of the people that are in the opening.

As Juniorz1 indicated, it began with AW. For their tenth anniversary in 1974, they were given a trial 60 minute episode, which was a huge ratings success. So, in January 1975, it was permanently expanded to one hour, and that too was a big success. A couple of months later, DOOL successfully expanded to 60 minutes (following a trial episode for that length). This in turn created a domino effect where the most successful soaps of the day were expanded to one hour. Perhaps this domino effect may not have been so pronounced had so many 1970s soaps failed, but with only AMC, Y&R, and (to a much lesser extent) RH succeeding, it made business sense to cancel the failed soaps and replace them with expanded versions of the hit soaps.

More mysterious to me is why networks were so reluctant to contract the soaps once their ratings started to decline. Aside from AW being contracted from 90 minutes back to 60, all other soaps were stuck at their maximum lengths until their cancellations. I know that people correctly point out that--on a per-minute basis--a half-hour soap is more expensive than an hour soap is. Even so, it still costs more total money to do a 60 minute soap, and the "all-or-nothing" attitude wasn't helpful (when one considers that shortening the soaps may have trimmed the unnecessary fat). If the networks were terrified of having to give time back to affiliates, they could have prevented that from happening (while still trimming the length of the soaps) by creating low cost game and talk shows.

Are there any AW 90 minute episodes on YT??

Never mind. I just founded one!!

Edited October 1, 201213 yr by allmc2008

Another thing is that they actually wrote dialog, real dialog, back then. Heck... I watched an ATWT from the '50s on YouTube, when it was just 15 minutes, and there were only TWO scenes. Two long scenes. Maybe 3, tops, but one was so short as to not matter, IIRC.

Didn't AW have incredibly long scenes when it was 90 minutes?

All soaps should've cut back to 30 minutes when the MTV Edit took over. Days has been the worst offender over the years, IMO. Repeated conversations for a month, flashbacks all the time... anything to fill up space. Anything besides, you know, dialog.

I just found some and the scenes are like 10 minutes long!!

If you compare the running time of a one hour show from the 70's (roughly 46min) to one from today (roughly 37min) then we aren't really watching a one hour show anymore anyway. More like 45min. I am sure in time we will be watching a 30min soap with 30min of commercials.

I've seen a couple of 90 min. episodes and the scenes tend to start with lengthy sequences of stage business, like Louise walking back and forth in the living room arranging things before the doorbell FINALLY rings.

This page has articles about the "Days of Our Lives" transition from 30 to 60 minutes:

http://www.jason47.com/days/halfhourtohour.html

The simple answer is money. When the soaps expanded, they were cash cows for the networks.