Nov 89 Another step toward the demise of NBC daytime

[Paul Raven]

In Nov 89, NBC made the unprecented move of allowing its New York flagship station to reshuffle the daytime lineup.

Until then the network owned and operated stations usually stuck to the prescribed schedule.

Beginning Jan 22 1990, the line up was as follows

9.00 Golden Girls

9.30 227

These two sitcoms moved from the network time of 11.00 - noon

10.00 - 11.00 House Party (new syndicated show)

11.00 - 12.00 Santa Barbara (moved from 3, where lead out Donahue had been tripling its ratings)

12.00 - 12.30 Generations

12.30 - 1.30 Days

1.30 - 2.30 Another World

2.30 - 3.00 Third Degree (syndicated game show)

3.00 - 3.30 Scrabble

3.30 - 4.00 Concentration

I wonder how it worked and what further changes were made.Does anyone know? House Party was not a success and I can't imagine that Concentration produced great numbers to strengthen Donahue.

This seemed to be the beginning of NBC allowing affiliates to play fast and loose with timeslots, thus weakening an already weak daytime lineup.

[SoapDope]

I think NBC made a mistake in cancelling Sale Of The Century in 89. That is one of my favorite game shows of all time.

[robbwolff]

Are you sure about this? I lived in Central Jersey at that time and truly don't recall NBC shifting its lineup like this.

[~bl~]

Days and AW stayed at 1 & 2 pm respectively. You swapped Generations and Santa Barbara as Generations was on at 11:30 am, and Santa Barbara at noon against the local news on WCBS and then the first half of Y&R. The game show block was from 3 to 4 only...and one of the other game shows aired in the morning at 11 am..(I think Scrabble was in the morning at 11 am, but I'm not 100% on this...it could have been 3rd Degree in the morning...I just recall Classic Concentration being on in the afternoon once I got home from school.)

[soapsnstuds]

This was also around the time Santa Barbara began it's quality decline.

I still miss that show like no other.

[amybrickwallace]

When SB was on, it was ON. In late 1989, it was hitting its peak. After 1990 or so is when the wheels started to come off.

[Paul Raven]

Hey Robb - I just went on what was announced in the article from Nov 89. Obviously,there was a rethink about making too many drastic changes and the schedule that bl posted was the one that made it to air.

At that time Donahue was under attack from Oprah at 4.00pm

[amybrickwallace]

In the Cleveland market, Classic Concentration was on in the morning, sometime between 10 AM and the local news at noon. We were allowed to watch the game shows as kids when school was out for summer, Christmas, etc. - but my sister and I weren't allowed to watch soaps until we were in our teens.