With BTG hitting that milestone soon, I thought it might be interesting to look back at BTG's first year and other soaps past and present to discuss what changes on and offscreen occurred before the first anniversary.

BTG had one recast with the role of Ted and it's still not clear why that happened. And Bob Guza departed as co headwriter, but that seemed to be the plan from the start. As far as story is concerned it seems that Shanice taking a more major role was probably not in the cards at the outset and Derek and Ashley being de-emphasized seems to have come into play. Andre and Dani marrying??

Looking into the past a lot of soaps didn't even make it to Year One.- The Best of everything, Hidden Faces etc

The most recent example being Lovers and Friends. Rather than revamp on air it was taken off after 4 months and returned 6 months later with a new title For Richer, For Poorer, some cast changes and new stories but it was cancelled after 10 months.

Santa Barbara had recasts and revamps almost from the beginning .

What do you recall of those first 12 months of various soaps?

All I'll speak to here is BTG. Given the very circumspect way MVJ has talked about the recast and talked about the necessity of making a change followed by Maurice Johnson's less than politically correct comments re: LGBT issues in a later interview, I think it was a personality conflict BTS.

As for Guza and Ron Carlivati, IIRC MVJ has said they came in as a favor to her for the first year/early months to help get it off the ground (Guza as co-HW and RC I think on breakdowns) and were always set to leave. And yes, Andre and Dani marrying and becoming a serious relationship was also a change of plans per Karla Mosley's interviews. They appear to have blessedly abandoned their planned Andre/Ashley endgame in its entirety.

Edited 9 minutes ago9 min by Vee