Good & Bad Soap Timeslots

[SFK]

Definitely Guiding Light at I haven't had my coffee yet o'clock.  I was in kindergarten when EON was cancelled, but I would have loved to watch a soap at 4:00 in my teens. But a soap would not have stood a chance against Queen Oprah in that timeslot for many years to come.

The cartoon offerings were too good for me to commit to Tribes, and Swan's Crossing bounced around, eventually airing early in the mornings at some time that was lost on me.

 

I'm a night owl and I really enjoyed watching The Doctors late at night on Retro and always got a kick out of the soaps being preempted in the day and airing at night. I would have loved late night viewing of Rituals and the proposed 13 Bourbon Street.

[BetterForgotten]

It's also weird when you consider there's no standard timeslots across the country. Like how Y&R can air as early as 11am in some markets and as late as 4pm in others.

 

[soapfan770]

It seems to me that either lunchtime-ish (11:00-2:00) soaps and/or the 3PM soaps were the best time slots overall. Soaps like Days, SFT, AMC, LOL and Ryan’s Hope thrived in those slots for years. No doubt Y&R and B&B got the best slot I am surprised ABC try the same with AMC and Loving. 
 

I think soaps could have succeeded better in the later spots ie 330 to 5 but individual affiliates got more bang for their buck on children’s programming and syndicated fare in those later afternoon time slots. 
 

The 2PM ET hour always felt the weakest with ATWT becoming a middle of the pack soap by the mid 90’s while OLTL and AW sunk to the lower half. 

I complied a list of TV stations wayyyy back in 2006 airing soaps at odd times(some of them very odd) and also all the CBS soaps airing GL in the morning, here ya go:

 

[beebs]

Moving LOL to 4:00 EST in 1979 felt really goofy to me, considering they could have easily moved LOL to 3:30 after GL and kept a lot of that audience after a highly successful show, and potentially ward off GH's increasing ratings at the time (and take advantage of AW's drop). One Day At A Time reruns felt like a bizarre thing to put in that slot instead, but I also suspect the move was more a design by CBS to force LOL into cancellation, and to try to force Bell's hand to expand Y&R to an hour while they were at it.

[Khan]

It's the same here in OKC.  First Y&R, at 11 am; followed by our local news; then B&B, at 12:30.

When I was a youngster, here's how (I recall) the soap skeds worked:

The earliest was LOVING, at 10:30 am.

Then, it was a choice between AMC and Y&R at 11.

All three affiliates went to news at noon.

Then, at 12:30, it was either RH, on ABC; or CAPITOL, on CBS.

At 1, it was AW, ATWT and OLTL.

At 2, it was GH, GL and SANTA BARBARA.

At 3, it was DAYS.

Edited February 9, 2022 by Khan

[Paul Raven]

Yes the LOL move seemed a deliberate move to hasten it's demise.

This is a show that played at midday/11.30 for its entire run.To expect viewers to follow it to 4pm was a big ask. Also a lot of stations didn't take the 4pm feed so there was even less chance of ratings growth.

Edge of Night suffered from a timeslot change in 1972.

Since it's debut it ran at 4.30 and then 3.30 which suited the format-many men and students watched and the show was Top 5. Then P&G pressured CBS to move it to play with ATWT and GL and the ratings immediately dropped and never recovered. By the time ABC moved it to 4pm the damage was done.

[Soaplovers]

What caused LOL to decline was CBS moving it from its 11 AM centeal time slot to 10:30 AM slot..because CBS premiered Where the heart is in that slot (in house production) in 1969.

LOL went from strong ratings to lower ratings because of that.  Only thing that kept it going was the Labine and Depriest regimes..and other CBS shows declining.

The move to 3 PM in 1979 was the final nail in the coffin that had been built slowly since 1969.

[kalbir]

We talk about time slot hits in primetime, but are there any time slot hits in daytime? One could say that Y&R is a time slot hit as it immediately follows The Price is Right in the Central/Mountain/Pacific time zones, and B&B is a time slot hit as it immediately follows Y&R in the Eastern time zone.

[j swift]

In Los Angeles everything in daytime is an hour earlier.  So historically the ABC line-up was Ryan's Hope at 11:30, AMC at noon, OLTL at 1, GH at 2, and Edge of Night at 3.  In fact, growing up I always remembered the order because One Life was on at 1:00. 

The 2pm NBC soap was always in the "deathslot" becuase it was pitted against GH and GL,  which was why SB, and those that inherited that slot always failed.

However, over a decade ago Y&R switched from its 11am timeslot due to the expansion of local news.  I always think of the Daytime Confidential podcast discussion about how when a habit of watching a soap at certain time is interrupted, it is difficult to keep watching.  That was the pattern for me.  I think Y&R may have returned to 11, and with modern DVRs the time doesn't matter because they record by title, but I stopped watching when the time period became unpredictable. 

[Franko]

I'd say OLTL was. In its early years, it ran after GH (and in its very early years, sandwiched between GH and Dark Shadows). Then for the rest of its network run, it was sandwiched between AMC and GH. If AMC was in any decline, it likely wouldn't have helped OLTL.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Franko

[Khan]

But, there was at least one time during the mid- or late-'80's when OLTL was actually ranking higher in the ratings than AMC.  In fact, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't there a period during the Rauch era when the show was as high as #2 (after either GH or Y&R)?

[Franko]

Yup, that's true. And also, the gap between GH and OLTL's ratings was fairly wide for much of the latter show's early years.

[Marco Dane]

12:30 PC

1PM AMC

2PM OLTL

3PM GH

4PM OPRAH

 

The best timeslot before Frons fucked it up...

[MichaelGL]

Ah yes, the good ole days! 

[j swift]

I recall when we were following the old soap archives posted by @will81 there was a story that Y&R's rise to number one coincided not with any particular story, but the expansion of Price is Right to an hour, and the Olympics which interrupted the ABC schedule.  It is interesting that every minor rise and fall in the ratings is often attributed to the plot of the moment, but in a prior generation, when people were less apt to change the channel, the lead-in of game shows or talk shows really mattered.

Edited February 13, 2022 by j swift