Obviously, this didn't go ahead. Common sense would tell you it was too risky and not cost effective.
THE JOURNAL-NEWS, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1973
NEW YORK (API - At last count, 15 soap operas and 16 game shows were on the three TV networks on weekdays. But the familiar soap-and-games pattern could markedly change next season at CBSTV. Three half-hour daytime shows possibly may be replaced with a daily 90-minute effort bearing the all-purpose title of “CBS Daytime 90,’r according to B. Donald Grant, a top CBS executive. But Grant, CBS’ vice president for daytime program, emphasizes that such a move is by no means definite. He says it depends on how the network’s current daytime shows hold up in the ratings this season.
However, he says his network probably will know by the end of November whether “CBS Daytime 90“ will be ordered up as daily fare — or only once a month — for viewers during the 1974-75 season. CBS’ new daytime concept gets sort of a trial run this Thursday, when the network pre-empts “The Price is Right,” “The Match Game” and “Secret Storm’’ for “Tiger on a Chain,” a romantic melodrama about the homecoming of an Air Force pilot from a North Vietnamese prison camp. It’s the first of eight 90-minute daytime melodramas now planned. Grant says the seven others aren’t scheduled yet. but CBS may show three more this season and the rest in summer and next fall.
If CBS goes the daily 90-minute route, he says, it probably would run similar melodramas in on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays. Unlike soap operas none of the shows will have continuing characters or stories. Tuesdays and Thursdays probably would feature 90-minute series, just like those on evening TV, each with a regular cast, he said.
Grant said the project would work out to 130 first-run programs over a 26-week period with 16 weeks of repeats; CBS probably would produce 70 of the shows itself and tape them in New York He said the Tuesday and Thursday series might be done by outside production companies but this isn’t definite yet.
Whatever happens, the 90 minute daytime concept won't be just an eight-shot deal for CBS-,Come next season, Grant said, “if nothing else, we will have a Daytime 90 once a month.
By
Paul Raven ·
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