CBS owned daytime throughout the 50s and especially the 60's where the mix of reruns in the morning, soaps/game shows/variety in the afternoon dominated every timeslot.

Meanwhile ABC and NBC were constantly juggling their lineups trying to break through.

Finally in the late 60's NBC made headway as Days/Doctors and AW began winning their timeslots forcing CBS to make changes. Then GH asserted itself and the 70's saw all 3 networks battling for domination.

CBS made a lot of changes in the 70's. Introducing Y&R was no doubt their best move.

Let's discuss CBS Daytime over the years.

Edited August 6, 20232 yr by Paul Raven

50 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

@Errol I'm not saying this anywhere but here. There is a rumor that Disney has bought B&B. All of it. Current & vintage. Sounds crazy. Leave it with you. It was said at the Y&R Fan Weekend. 

Wow, that's pretty amazing. I wish they had a streaming platform for soaps. Not sure why some of these companies are so protective of this old content, removing it from YT or pulling it down from other sources. Let's be honest, old soap episodes are not lucrative. It would be great if there was even a network like Retro, MeTV, Buzzr (old game shows) that would just air old soap opera episodes. 

1 hour ago, GLATWT88 said:

Let's be honest, old soap episodes are not lucrative. It would be great if there was even a network like Retro, MeTV, Buzzr (old game shows) that would just air old soap opera episodes. 

I guess I think they could be lucrative being streamed. I think there's an audience. 

Supposedly Pluto would like to be streaming Classic Soaps. 

There's no understanding why P&G doesn't sell or lease tapes from 1979 onward for NY soapdom! 3 weeks ago Stephen King was asking how he could watch EDGE OF NIGHT. 

Just a thought. Disney owns Santa Barbara, second only to B&B in international success. 

Edited August 7, 20232 yr by Donna L. Bridges

On 8/6/2023 at 2:12 AM, Donna L. Bridges said:

I believe it was in a 1996 LA Time article where it was revealed that CBS had asked Bill Bell to create a new soap for them, the year before in 1995. Bill Bell wanted nothing to do with this & wanted to be left completely out of it. Their plan was to replace the P&G soaps. They were so brazen doing this in the open & P&G threw whatever is a business "fit" & there was a battle of words between CBS and P&G. P&G won, sorta. CBS agreed to abandon the idea of new soaps and to retain ATWT & GL but they had conditions. 

For ATWT it was a different way of telling stories, different narrative style. Lynn Liccardo calls it pod story-telling. Where the traditional style could be said to be weaving a tapestry where different strands from different stories were connected in pod story-telling people & their stories would be isolated, standalone. 

For GL it was a new production model, drastically different. 

I believe both these changes contributed to the demise of the shows. 

 

Piggybacking off of this... this was in SOD around April 1996, if I remember correctly. I scanned it some time back: 

Edited August 7, 20232 yr by Gray Bunny

2 hours ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

@Errol I'm not saying this anywhere but here. There is a rumor that Disney has bought B&B. All of it. Current & vintage. Sounds crazy. Leave it with you. It was said at the Y&R Fan Weekend. 

If this is true, Disney would have to buy the 100% of the Bell Serial Company that owns B&B and a share of the Y&R.

I see nothing in the press about this. Disney would own B&B outright and a share of Restless as well.

Would be interesting if true. I do not see Disney's Bob Iger doing this but who knows,

If March 1997 saw one hour B&B and a new 30 minute Bell show, how would the schedule have been arranged? Remember 1997 was the height of Reilly's Days so CBS would not want the new Bell show head-to-head w/ Reilly's Days.

I'm thinking for Eastern time

11 am The Price is Right

Noon Local programming

12:30 pm Y&R

1:30 pm B&B

2:30 pm new Bell show

3 pm As the World Turns

Then for Central, Mountain, and Pacific time

10 am The Price is Right

11 am Y&R

Noon Local programming

12:30 pm B&B

1:30 pm new Bell show

2 pm As the World Turns

6 hours ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

This is the earliest I've seen anyone put GL into that zone. I mean that was even before AW was canceled. Just remarking, is all. And, 1995 was the year that P&G pulled their Executive Shuffle where they took those 3 NY soaps & moved the EPs around except that, oddly, Laurie Caso got left out in the cold. 

It was a hot topic in the soap media at the time, the show was rumored to be soon cancelled several times. To make room for B&B going to an hour, a new Bell soap, or both at the same time. The soap press was especially brutal about this and the quality of the show during the period before Rauch arrived.

CBS lost some of that soap dominance because Irna and her heirs/partners started working on projects that took off on those competing networks.  Agnes first on Another World, then her ABC shows, Bill on DAYS. Ted Corday at DAYS as well. As controlling as Irna was, she did allow those people to flourish.

With the Doctors and General Hospital we saw shows that were already more modern because they focused of working men and women more than traditional family structure (although Edge was already in that lane too before them).

Lots of talent took what they learned on CBS daytime shows and made it work even better at times on other networks. Monty was at Secret Storm for along time before it was cancelled.  The other networks scooped up the right people to counter the CBS dominance.

1 hour ago, titan1978 said:

Monty was at Secret Storm for along time before it was cancelled.

15 years! Long time! Then she was well rewarded. I was thinking about SOAPDISH & TOOTSIE. Monty is the producer & the show that had to do a live episode because the tape was ruined (and so was the back-up tape) was SFT. Was there anything else that was from truth? 

Edited August 7, 20232 yr by Donna L. Bridges
more

Ms. Monty had left The Secret Storm and had worked on Bright Promise a number of years before The Secret Storm left the air.

53 minutes ago, kalbir said:

If March 1997 saw one hour B&B and a new 30 minute Bell show, how would the schedule have been arranged? Remember 1997 was the height of Reilly's Days so CBS would not want the new Bell show head-to-head w/ Reilly's Days.

I'm thinking for Eastern time

11 am The Price is Right

Noon Local programming

12:30 pm Y&R

1:30 pm B&B

2:30 pm new Bell show

3 pm As the World Turns

Then for Central, Mountain, and Pacific time

10 am The Price is Right

11 am Y&R

Noon Local programming

12:30 pm B&B

1:30 pm new Bell show

2 pm As the World Turns

That seems about right. I would assume that ATWT would be moved to the 10am slot in some markets like NYC, as GL had already moved from its 3pm slot. 

I would be very curious to see how BB would have performed at 1 hour runtime. While, household numbers were strong in 97, BB's demos were mediocre. It consistently underperformed the ABC soaps, YR, and Days which was dominated the 18-49 demo that year. There were several weeks where GL outperformed BB in the demo in 97 and other weeks they were pretty much on par. Aside from stronger viewership, I'm not sure why they would want to expand BB at the time. Although, BB may have been doing better in 95 and 96, which I would have to check.

Nonetheless, the issue with the CBS soaps at the time was that they skewed older. ATWT, GL, and BB were usually at the bottom half of the demo rankings.  I am curious how a full hour of BB would fair against DAYS. I think a younger, fresher soap would have been in the works. I don't know what that would look like in 1997 - we got Port Charles and Sunset Beach which were supposed to be the answer to that. Maybe SuBe's numbers made CBS hesitant. 

It seems like Love of Life is like the middle child.  You don’t hear much about it when thinking about CBS.  It looks like it consistently was in the middle of the ratings

It was moved to an obscure morning slot. It’s almost like the network forgot it was there during the 70s cancellations.  I know that’s not true.  There was a resurgence with the return Meg and Ben.

Search for Tomorrow also seems forgotten despite a 30 year run on CBS.

42 minutes ago, TVFAN1144 said:

It seems like Love of Life is like the middle child.  You don’t hear much about it when thinking about CBS.  It looks like it consistently was in the middle of the ratings

It was moved to an obscure morning slot. It’s almost like the network forgot it was there during the 70s cancellations.  I know that’s not true.  There was a resurgence with the return Meg and Ben.

¨Love of Life¨ was just consistently reinventing itself even in the 1950s which is probably why the audience was willing to play along. The initial crime element involving two sisters seemed successful for a couple years before they shifted and had Vanessa working in the TV industry in New York. Then, they had her marry Bruce and move back to the suburbs and go back to more domestic drama. At some point in the 1950s, Winsor wanted to embrace the community feel and expanded the story outside the realm of the Sterling clan and added more stories about their neighbors and the boys who attended the private academy that employed Bruce. Then, the show had a strong youthful love story with Tess and Bill, before having that brief period of static before Labine and Mayer came in and reintroduced Meg´s branch of the family. i think ¨Love of Life¨ could have continued to evolve if the audience had been there. 

5 hours ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

15 years! Long time! Then she was well rewarded. I was thinking about SOAPDISH & TOOTSIE. Monty is the producer & the show that had to do a live episode because the tape was ruined (and so was the back-up tape) was SFT. Was there anything else that was from truth? 

Monty was never on SFT and the lost tape was after Tootsie. This seemed more like a publicity ratings grabbing stunt

 

1 hour ago, TVFAN1144 said:

6 hours ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

15 years! Long time! Then she was well rewarded. I was thinking about SOAPDISH & TOOTSIE. Monty is the producer & the show that had to do a live episode because the tape was ruined (and so was the back-up tape) was SFT. Was there anything else that was from truth? 

Monty was never on SFT and the lost tape was after Tootsie. This seemed more like a publicity ratings grabbing stunt

Wow. Okay, not the scene from TOOTSIE. Seems perfect but too bad. 

No, of course Monty wasn't at SFT. No one said she was. The producer in TOOTSIE is widely believed to  be based  on Gloria Monty,  

5 hours ago, TVFAN1144 said:

It seems like Love of Life is like the middle child.  You don’t hear much about it when thinking about CBS.  It looks like it consistently was in the middle of the ratings

It was moved to an obscure morning slot. It’s almost like the network forgot it was there during the 70s cancellations.  I know that’s not true.  There was a resurgence with the return Meg and Ben.

Love of Life got a raw deal being shunted to 11.30 to make way for Where The Heart Is.

Soaps had never worked before noon. NBC had tried a few years before with Paradise Bay/Morningstar and CBS with Brighter Day/Clear Horizon. Maybe CBS thought a familiar, stronger show would make a difference.

A few years earlier when CBS showed an interest in All My Children, American Home Products, owner of LOL  were not pleased that CBS wanted the noon slot for AMC and kicked up a fuss. Things must have changed a few years later.

 With a full schedule I wonder why CBS were so enthused about Where The Heart Is. I guess they realized their established soaps were growing older in audience appeal and hoped new soaps would get younger viewers.