June 1 1977 - Patriot
Soap Opera Report By Bruce Joffe and Vickie Murphy
By moving All My Children to an hour, the ABC programmers obviously hope to lure some of the loyal CBS viewers away from As the World Turns. It's likely that we will be seeing some pretty heavy action when AMC breaks for a commercial message at 1:30, just when ATWT comes on. Whether or not the strategy works remains to be seen. If we were the ABC programmers (are you listening Fred Silverman?) we would have scheduled AMC at 3pm instead. One Life to Live may not be an able enough rival for NBC's Another World but All My Children certainly is. Especially now.
A brief digression-Another World has long been one of our favorite shows. But we wonder how long even faithful fans can live with Bay City's population explosion and its merry go round cast? Changing faces and terminal characters are not really in keeping with the soap operas basic premise of growth in character development. Another World'. characters and storylines grow boring and repetitious. Worse, our intelligence is insulted as we wonder just how stupid some people can be.
We'd like to believe that seemingly intelligent men like Mac Cory and Brian Bancroft (they are supposed to be rich and successful) would be wise by now to Iris' schemes.
If we were handicapping the ABC shows, we'd pick All My Children over Another World. We'd schedule the 45-minute One Life to Live from 1:00-1:45. and follow it by 45-minutes of General Hospital. New, earlier timeslots might prove just the shot-in-the-arm these shows need to pick op their ratings And, we suspect, lunchtime AMC fans would accept One Life to Live in its place - after all, they're both Agnes Nixon creations.
By moving Ryan's Hope from 12:30 to 2:30, ABC could ensure a solid block of support for all its shows hooking viewers into a 3 - 4:00 time slot for All My Children - which would be followed by Edge of Night at 4. Opposite The Doctors (NBC) and Guiding Light (CBS), Ryan's Hope's ratings should be even more impressive than they are. The show faces stiff competition at 12.30 from Search far Tomorrow (not to mention (Lovers and Friends). But, at 2:30, the competition favors Ryan's Hope.
Within a short white — a very short while — we predict that CBS will take positive steps to counter the challenge the threat All My Children poses to As the World Turns. Watch for CBS to expand The Young and the Restless to an hour If they're smart, they'll shift Search far Tomorrow to 12:00 from 12:30, and run YAR from 12 30 to 1 30 This will land beautifully into As the World Turns, which, we suspect will emerge from this ratings war with better ratings than ever.
In any case, we viewers will soon be faced with more dialling decisions of our own.
*Suggesting that ABC move all it's shows??? Madness. Not going to happen. Daytime viewing was always habit based. Hence why networks preferred to revamp shows with new writers/producers etc rather than starting from scratch.
I can hardly think of a show that moved timeslots and prospered. Edge of Night to 2.30-flop. AW to 2.30 flop. Y&R to 1pm-the ratings dropped and so on. LOL to 4pm -cancelled.
They were right however, about AW. The constant character changes were a killer, yet no one called a halt to it.
Missed the boat about predicting ATWT would triumph-the next year it fell from #1 for the first time in 20 years.
By
Paul Raven ·
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