NBC Daytime

[j swift]

Is that what happened in San Francisco?

[Chris B]

 I love the idea of GL's Peapack reboot, but they should've put an EP in place with experience with the format. The camera work and music was just dreadful. Also, there would be random scenes of people standing in the woods and on the side of the road. It was like they felt it was so special being outside but didn't understand how to make sense of it and tell a compelling story.

I also wonder why no US soap builds a standing outside set. That's why the UK soaps are able to seamlessly film outdoors because they have outdoor town square type sets they can regularly use. 

[te.]

Well, Days did have Salem Place (which was a lot smaller than it looked, but clearly effective). But realistically it's just cost I'd assume - outside take up more space that could be used for other things, plus I remember daytime soap fans bizarrely complaining that Sunset Beach didn't look enough like a soap (!). 

[Paul Raven]

me

us   vintage car ads vintage truck ads map tv ads
1955 NBC Television

[Paul Raven]

From the Jan 89 Affilliate meeting

In a meeting with representatives of affiliated stations, NBC executives pushed the network's upcoming Generations serial drama and spoke extensively about other programing in 1989. Among the announcements were that the network plans a March test of a daytime talk show starring Rona Barrett, and that it is developing, for a summer debut, a magazine show to be supervised by the news division that would probably include "dramatic re- creations." Additionally, NBC -TV Network President Pier Mapes reviewed the network's continued strong ratings performance, but he balanced his positive appraisal against inroads made by broadcast and cable competitors into the three major networks' share. Mapes also announced what he said would be a first step in improved communications between the network and its affiliates, the videocassette distribution of a speech made by NBC President Bob Wright.

Generations, the half -hour daytime drama debuting March 27, was the major subject of programing at the meeting. Mapes, who started the meeting with a warning that competitors to the three major networks "are nibbling away at us," told the affiliates: "We have to have clearances on Generations." Vice president, daytime programs, Brian Frons presented the show, which features black and white "core" families, as a way for the network to gain a bigger black audience in daytime, which he said represents a disproportionately large segment of that daypart's audience. If NBC had "parity" with the other networks in black audience, he said, NBC would win the daytime daypart. If Generations performs well, Frons said, it is possible the show will be expanded from its half -hour length (double fed at noon and 12:30 pm) to one hour. However, he said, NBC has no "foreseeable" plans to recapture the half hour in daytime that affiliates are scheduled to gain when the program premieres. To help launch the show, Frons said, NBC has budgeted $1 million for print promotion. To promote the show at NATPE, the show's creator, Sally Sussman, made an appearance, along with four of the show's stars.

Another daytime show appearing in March will be a test run of a half -hour strip featuring Rona Barrett chatting with three guests a day over a morning meal at her home. Scheduled to preempt Sale of the Century for the weeks of March 6 and March 13, the show will be brought back in the third quarter of 1989. if successful, Frons said. In another move to improve NBC's daytime performance, Frons said the company is adding $1 million to the annual casting budget of Santa Barbara.

*the show titled 'At Rona's' was a flop and never came back.

[Jdee43]

I think NBC made a big mistake getting rid of all their game shows in the early 1990s. NBC had an amazing line-up of game shows in the 1960s, and probably the best line-up of game shows in the 1980s as well. They should have tried to maintain at least one of them through the years, like CBS did with The Price Is Right. My favorite NBC game show was Concentration. It was on the network from 1958-1973, and then 1987-1991, with reruns through 1993. Maybe NBC should have tried to keep Concentration going? Or imagine if they took the time to keep Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy on their network? Maybe there would still be a NBC Daytime today!

Edited May 6, 2024 by Jdee43

[Paul Raven]

The Times Recorder Zanesville Ohio Dec 21 1975

Dynamic Lin Bolen Raises Daytime Television Ratings Bv VERNON SCOTT HOLLYWOOD (UPD -

Lin Bolen, who holds the highest position of any woman in the networks, has changed the face of daytime television almost single-handedly. Pity Lin doesn't have an even higher job than NBC vice president, daytime programs. Lin is a 34-year-old brunette native of Benton, 111., (pop. 10,000) weighs 98 well distributed pounds, chain smokes and is probably brighter than any of her superiors at the network. Since she assumed her job three years ago, NBC has surpassed ABC and CBS in daytime ratings.

Among Lin's contributions is long-form pro-gramming, lengthening daytime soap operas from the traditional 30 minutes to an hour. But Lin's most impressive innovation is the addition of new game shows and the renovation of old ones. NBC's dazzling array of daytime games has wiped out the opposition. "Part of my responsibility is to look for the economic and social trends in our society," said Lin in a well modulated voice. "Right now we're in the midst of a recession, made worse by inflation.

"Viewers want fantasy oriented games. It's the same thing that happened during the depression of the 1930s. People couldn't afford to spend money on what they wanted to do. .But they could afford to go to the movies for bank night, free dishes and escapist entertainment. "Our game shows allow viewers to win money and prizes vicariously.

They can project themselves into the games by coming up with the answers at home. It's a form of fantasy participation. "We've added gambling to our shows the horse race on 'Celebrity Sweepstakes'; roulette on 'Wheel of Fortune'; a dice game on 'High Rollers'; and a pinball game on "The Magnificent Marble Machine.'" Lin Bolen, who spends half her time in Hollywood and half in New York offices, may be television's most knowledgable game show executive She said there are seven types of video game programs The hard question and answer show"' "Jeopardy." Celebrity entertainment panel, "Hollywood Squares." Word games, "Password." Audience participation, "Let's Make A Deal." Auctions, "The Price Is Right." Trivia games, "Gambit." Human interest, "Queen for a Day." "Human interest shows are too tacky for today's sophisticated viewers," she said. "They create sad situations and aren't bright and upbeat enough for people facing economic and social problems of their own. "Game shows were static when I came to the network.

Contestants sat at desks with buzzers and bells. I tried to find new faces and personalities for emcees along with good ideas and visual gimmicks. "Our game shows are popular because we've added the unique gambling element to them. And now we're increasing the stakes." It is possible for a contestant to win as much as $100,000 on "High Rollers" in the course of a week. Before Lin took over the top prizes were about $7,500, but most contestants were lucky to take away $2,000.

"By upping the stakes we've increased the fun and excitement," she explained. Lin was reminded that huge amounts of money involved on the "$64,000 Question" and a few other crooked game shows brought television to its knees back in 1958. "There isn't a chance of similar scandals happening again," she said. "We have new controls and safeguards. Individual producers no longer control the questions.

"Even the master of ceremonies doesn't know the questions or answers or the contestants until he faces them on the air. "The contestants are chosen at random by a special watchdog committee the Compliance and Practices Department which reports to the Federal Communications John Paul Jones, who almost single-handedly recruited enough men to man the few ships of the new American Navy, was not given the overall command of the fleet he desired. He left America years later and ended his days as an officer in the Russian navy. Commission." Lin continues to experiment with daytime shows. She is lengthening "Hollywood Squares" and "Wheel of Fortune to an hour after the first of the year.

"We've found some game shows build more suspense in the hour form," she explained. "Next I'd like to see a woman as a game show host. "Ninety per cent of daytime viewers are women. Research shows they are accustomed to the male voice and authority figure on the shows. They find a woman's voice irritating.

But I'm working to overcome that." Lin also is developing a daytime comedy show, a first, starring David Steinberg. Another first is her 90-minute dramatic series, "First Ladies Diaries." Confident and fully autonomous, Lin Bolen is perhaps the best thing to happen to daytime television since the tube was invented. 

[Contessa Donatella]

Thanks for that really long one! Enjoy about Lin Bolen.

[j swift]

Can you imagine a modern news profile that mentioned an executive's weight?  That really stuck out like a sore thumb.

Edited June 8, 2024 by j swift

[1974mdp]

This is interesting to read. I adored SB for much of its run, but I feel one of the things that did it in at the end was the fact that the cast was so small for an hour show. So, when popular characters left (such as Cruz & Eden) it was hard to fill that spot by pivoting to other well-established characters.

[Contessa Donatella]

IMO if NBC had really wanted to live up to their promises to the Dobsons & fully supported Santa Barbara, they would have fired Anne Howard Bailey & averted the lock-out also the two lawsuits, with New World & with NBC. 

[Jdee43]

An interesting article with the head of NBC mostly blaming the audience for the lack of quality programming. 

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/30/arts/nbc-s-head-says-tv-viewers-spurn-quality-shows.html

NBC'S HEAD SAYS TV VIEWERS SPURN QUALITY SHOWS

By Peter W. Kaplan
Sept. 30, 1984

 

Grant Tinker, the chairman of NBC, got up from his desk in his office on the sixth floor of the RCA building in Rockefeller Center. Behind him hung a huge framed blowup of the dictionary definitions of the word ''tinker.'' He sat on a couch and stretched his legs; across the room from him, three television sets were tuned to the three networks' evening-news broadcasts.

Mr. Tinker, lean, white-haired and exactly as tanned and wrinkled as a 58-year-old man would like to be, stared a little wistfully at the three screens.

''You know,'' he said, ''in the beginning, nobody had seen any of it before. Some people would watch test patterns. Ed Sullivan, 'Your Show of Shows,' 'Philco Playhouse,' 'Playhouse 90' - they were more important than what we've got. It was more of an event. Now, we are taken for granted. As we should be.''

Grant Tinker, the man who helped revitalize the situation comedy with ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show,'' who put ''Lou Grant'' and ''Rhoda'' into production and who founded the company that now produces ''Cheers,'' ''St. Elsewhere'' and ''Hill Street Blues,'' has been the chief operating officer of NBC for three years. When he took on the position, after NBC's now-semi-legendary disastrous slump under the leadership of Fred Silverman, it seemed like the right appointment at the right time. And in many ways, for the network, it has been: morale is better, management changes have been put into effect, the profits of the company are up dramatically and, apparently, rising.

It may have been the right appointment at the right time for NBC, but whether or not it was the right appointment for Grant Tinker - or at least the man who has committed his career to getting good television programming on the air - is another thing altogether.

Speaking on the eve of a new television season, Grant Tinker, the chairman of NBC, has a bleak view of the state of network television and of what viewers are willing to put up with.

It is fair to say that he feels constricted by the boundaries of his business and is even critical of some of the programming his own network has chosen to start the new season with. The blame, he said in a recent interview, has to be shared by the three networks, which as businesses look to profits above all else; by overused, worn-out suppliers of shows whose creative inspiration ceased to contribute to the industry, by his account, a long time ago; and, perhaps most of all, by the audience, which swallows much of the worst programming that is fed to it.

''We're all doing the same shows,'' Mr. Tinker said of the three networks. ''I think it is criminal of people to stare at television so uncritically.''

Mr. Tinker, a former producer who says he has lost none of his enthusiasm for television but is perplexed, not to say frustrated, by its limitations, ascribed the dearth of good programming to what he called a depressing and unwitting partnership between producers and audience. Not only is there a lack of ''creative people to bring you something better,'' he said, but bad programming is accepted by all too many television viewers, of whom he said, ''They're such a disappointment.''

Mr. Tinker, who produced a number of highly praised television series, took control of a network in disarray in July 1981. NBC has continued to rank third in the network ratings during his tenure, and its programming, while having its peaks and winning more Emmy Awards than the other two networks - it picked up 11 awards this week, to CBS's 10 and ABC's 5 - has only sporadically gained viewer loyalty.

The new crop of NBC programs for the 1984 fall season have, in their initial broadcasts, garnered some excellent ratings. ''The Cosby Show,'' a situation comedy with Bill Cosby as a New York obstetrician and father of four, finished first in the Nielsen ratings last week, with extraordinarily high viewership in large cities, and received very good reviews.

But a number of the other new NBC programs are not the kind of entertainment that Mr. Tinker has been associated with in the past and are not the kind about which he seems to feel particularly proud. They are, he says, the product of business decisions that he calls necessary for his company, but not necessarily a good-conscience gift to the viewing audience.

One of those programs, ''Hunter,'' has already been the subject of some controversy. Scheduled against the champion of Nielsen ratings, CBS's ''Dallas,'' a program that has a very high viewership among females, ''Hunter'' is a program tailored to appeal to young male viewers in the style of what television believes young male viewers respond to: car chases and shootings. ''Hunter'' had high ratings in its two-hour premiere last week, out of its time slot, but the series is not the kind of programming Mr. Tinker created when he was selling to the networks rather than overseeing one.

''I think if you put 'Lou Grant' somewhere in the schedule now,'' Mr. Tinker said, ''it wouldn't work. The audience has changed some - and not for the better. I don't know why. It has something to do with the maturing of the medium. A very big part of the audience has never been without television. They settle for it, and take it for granted.

''The audience,'' he continued, ''won't make the effort to follow a 'Lou Grant' or to laugh at a literate comedy. And the kind of programs the three networks put on certainly doesn't help them.''

During Mr. Tinker's regime at NBC, the network has been singularly supportive of slow-building hits, such as ''Cheers,'' ''Remington Steele,'' ''Family Ties,'' as well as ''Hill Street Blues'' and ''St. Elsewhere,'' both award-winning MTM-produced programs.

Surveying the new NBC schedule, which includes ''Hunter'' and another show with a high violence quotient, ''Miami Vice,'' as well as the return of ''TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes,'' Mr. Tinker rationalized his approval of them. ''As an executive, if I'm going to be attentive to the shareholder interest, I have to put on shows that work,'' he said. ''Shows that we just think are good won't perform.''

He went through his lineup, describing some of the new programs and generally making favorable comments about their ''execution'' rather than their content. ''There are a lot of question marks in there,'' he said, expressing frustration at what his programmers were able to put on the air. The only new program he praised for its quality was ''The Cosby Show.'' Beyond that, he said, he could ''not see anything that wauld qualify in that area.

''The truth is,'' he added, ''it's not against the law if we do not in a given year develop superior programming.''

NBC has made a strong recovery from its low point in 1981, when, under Mr. Tinker's predecessor, Fred Silverman, the network made $48.1 million in profits while ABC and CBS each made more than $300 million. Last year, NBC made $156.2 million.

''I would consider parity with the others - to be equal in profits - a success,'' said Mr. Tinker. ''A dollar measurement as opposed to a Nielsen measurement would be a success for us.''

[Jdee43]

I haven't watched NBC Daytime since DAYS was taken off the air. Checking in on the schedule for my local NBC station, WNBC in NY, it almost seems like a simulcast of MSNBC. Literally,  it's just wall to wall news shows, with one syndicated talk show to break up the monotony. Really sad considering what a strong daytime lineup, with a variety of shows, NBC had from the 1950s into the early 1990s. They've really given up. It's embarrassing.

 

NBC DAYTIME, WNBC NY, in NOVEMBER 1985
6:00 Today in New York
6:30 NBC News at Sunrise
7:00 Today
9:00 Donahue 
10:00 Your Number's Up 
10:30 Sale of the Century
11:00 Wheel of Fortune
11:30 Scrabble
NOON Super Password
12:30 Search for Tomorrow
1:00 Days of Our Lives
2:00 Another World
3:00 Santa Barbara
4:00 Love Connection
4:30 People's Court
 

 

NBC DAYTIME, WNBC in NYC, SEPTEMBER 2024

5:00 AM Today in New York
7:00 AM Today
9:00 AM Today 3rd Hour
10:00 AM Today with Hoda & Jenna
11:00 AM News 4 NY at 11AM
11:30 AM New York Live 
12:00 PM NBC News Daily
1:00 PM Dateline
2:00 PM Access Daily With Mario & Kit
3:00 PM The Kelly Clarkson Show
4:00 PM News 4 NY at 4 
4:30 PM News 4 NY at 4:30 
 

[dc11786]

I've been doing a little research into 1954-1955 soaps. I knew that shows had premiered on NBC in a block on July 5, 1954, but I hadn't realized how significant the revamp of the NBC lineup was on April 1, 1955. Not only did "Golden Windows" and "One Man's Family" air their last episodes necesistating the movement of "The Greatest Gift," but there were major casting changes on the other shows.

On "Concerning Miss Marlowe," Louise Albritton and Chris White last appeared on the series. it looks like both Maggie Marlowe and her newly discovered daughter Kit Christy depart for Florida. Maggie returns later the next week in the form of Helen Shields. White's departure is particularly shocking because the revelation that Kit is Maggie's long lost daughter reaches its climaxing late March, 1955. There is no time for the revelation to have any impact. I wonder if this was done to reset Kit with a recast down the line?  Or if John Pickard and Frank Provo were being petty at being forced to drop the character? It would appear a few weeks later, Sarah Burton's Barbara Gavin so even the murder mystery wouldn't have played long. 

On "First Love," Val Dufour  was dropped as of the April 1, 1955, episode. Dufour had been playing Zach James, the test pilot romantic lead on the series set in the Washington, D.C. area. At the time of Dufour's departure, Zach was under investigation for the murder of Petey, a woman who people had suspected he was carrying on an affair with behind his wife Laurie's back. Tod Andrews was appearing in the role by mid-April at the latest. 

Also, both "Golden Windows" and "One Man's Family" appear to end on happier notes. On "One Man's Family," the Barbour clan gathered for Mother Fanny Barbour's birthday, while on "Golden Windows," heroine Juliet Goodwin confronted Carl Grant (Joe De Santis) in jail. I believe Carl was Juliet's biological father that she had never met. Carl was also involved in some shady business and was in jail for either that or for kidnapping Juliet. "Golden Windows" had just recently written out Juliet's original love interest Tom Anderson in early February, 1955, which now I suspect might have been an attempt to save the series. 

[Paul Raven]

Regarding Somerset, I really wonder how that show came to be.

AW was doing well and surely the focus should have been on keeping that show in top shape, rather than potentially weakening it by moving actors/personnel to a new show.

There had never been a soap spin off before, so that was arisk and not directly following the original show on the schedule seemed unwise.

NBC was already running 4 soaps and in the previous year dropped Hidden Faces, which had been disaster and introduced Bright Promise which was struggling. Having Somerset follow anew low rated soap seemed foolhardy.

A new gameshow @4 might have been a better move. It would have been an alternative to a sitcom rerun (Gomer Pyle) and Dark Shadows.

Had Somerset been introduced in 69 following AW, instead of Bright Promise, it might have done better. P&G's insistence that none of it's shows compete limited it's chances. They eventually had to drop that policy.

Hidden Faces was another example of NBC's shortsightedness.

Placing it at 1.30 up against ATWT was suicidal. They should have placed it at 4pm  .Like EON, it suited a late afternoon timeslot, where the format could attract men and students.

Put a game show up against ATWT. 

Unlike ABC or CBS, NBC never ran sitcom reruns in daytime, because they never had successful sitcoms.

Jeannie and Julia were exceptions. They could have worked at 4pm.