THE LAST "DAYS" OF OUR DAYTIME LIVES?

[Russell W.]

I've read about the housecleaning that Lin Bolen did to NBC before. Could this also be a factor in NBC stations that carried little or none of NBC's morning lineup from the late 70's on? I know that this is about the same that WMC 5 in Memphis began dropping most of NBC's game shows and replaced them with syndicated talk shows. This went on well into the 90's until NBC went to talk shows in the mornings and eventually gave the rest of daytime other than 2 hours of soaps back to local stations.

I suppose it had some effect, however not nearly as much as NBC canceling three games to make way for David Letterman's morning show in 1980.  The rise of Donahue and other syndie talk shows in the late '70s also played a role ... especially in the Central time zone, where there was no local gap between Today and the daytime block.  Some stations (WAPI-13/Birmingham and WSFA-12/Montgomery) pushed Today back an hour - in effect, taking the EST feed - and scheduled Phil at 8:00.  Most, however, preempted the 9:00 hour outright (which 13 would eventually do in the wake of Letterman). 

Some, such as WPSD-6/Paducah, Ky., put Donahue at 9:00, followed by Romper Room at 10, blacking out 90 minutes of the schedule ... in 1978, no less!   When I left Tupelo, Miss. in 1978 ... WMC-5/Memphis, which until recently, cleared the entire daytime, picked up Donahue at 9:00, but was otherwise faithful (5's nuking of NBC daytime was still a few years off).  Local NBC WTWV-9 (later WTVA) would soon preempt 9:00, as well.

And the level of celebrity conversational imagination displayed on Jay Leno's guest seat wouldn't have been considered up to snuff for a 1974 week of "Celebrity Sweepstakes," the game that had Carol Wayne as a frequent panelist, let alone a game that requires imagination and wit like "Password" or "Match Game"...

I'm afraid you've hit the nail on the head.  Look at the fiasco To Tell the Truth became -- it didn't become a classic by one panelist dominating and trying to one-up others.  And Password?  Too slow for Gen-X/Y/Z/AA/BB....  Match Game?  Yeah, "lightning in a bottle" as imhomerjay said.  Gene Rayburn was the key ingredient on MG, too; his ego managed to keep six other egos in check .... all while the celebs' BAC inched upward as the week's taping progressed. 

I'd love for NBC to perform a shock-and-awe by scheduling an hour of game show(s) at 11:00, to start the day after Barker's last aired ep.  One more time, with feeling: Super Concentration  Big jackpots, lots of prizes behind the squares (read: plenty of plug opportunities).  Young-ish host. 

Sadly, though, I'm afraid the perfect Betty White-like "game show celebrity" has gone the way of the 8-track.

--Russell

[imhomerjay]

Super Concentration—now that I would like!  Especially since our then-NBC affiliate refused to air Classic Concentration until near the end of its rerun phase.  (My family would vacation each year in the Pocono mountains, which I think I loved as much for the fact that the local NBC affiliate cleared Concentration as for swimming in the lake; alas, we always vacationed around July 4th, which meant several days were pre-empted by [bleeping] tennis…but the few times I could see Concentration were priceless to a game show geek like me.)

In a new incarnation, the prize plug opportunities would be valuable.  The pace can be quick enough with good editing to keep it moving, and you don’t have to rely on pseudo-celebrities. 

Though it’s not network-wide, since many NBC O&Os will have Let’s Play Crosswords this fall, it will be interesting to see if the prevailing wisdom is to run it against the newly hosted Price is Right or not. 

If CBS were to eventually ditch Price, I wonder if maybe there’d be a market in syndication where smaller ratings could be acceptable.  With clever cross-promotional opportunities with all of those prize plugs, they might be able to make it financially viable.

Personally, I’m bummed the revival of The Joker’s Wild isn’t coming out.  While I shuddered at the thought of how it might be re-made, there are some shows where I’d rather have any version with a resemblance to the original around than none….but for perspective, I’m someone who taped Match Game ’98 at 3 in the morning, so you know I’m a little off balance.  (I also taped Joker’s Wild ’90 in the middle of the night…at college…but I drew the line at Tic tTc Dough ’90.  Three episodes of that and I was done.)

[anotherguy]

I suppose it had some effect, however not nearly as much as NBC canceling three games to make way for David Letterman's morning show in 1980.  The rise of Donahue and other syndie talk shows in the late '70s also played a role ... especially in the Central time zone, where there was no local gap between Today and the daytime block.  Some stations (WAPI-13/Birmingham and WSFA-12/Montgomery) pushed Today back an hour - in effect, taking the EST feed - and scheduled Phil at 8:00.  Most, however, preempted the 9:00 hour outright (which 13 would eventually do in the wake of Letterman). 

Some, such as WPSD-6/Paducah, Ky., put Donahue at 9:00, followed by Romper Room at 10, blacking out 90 minutes of the schedule ... in 1978, no less!   When I left Tupelo, Miss. in 1978 ... WMC-5/Memphis, which until recently, cleared the entire daytime, picked up Donahue at 9:00, but was otherwise faithful (5's nuking of NBC daytime was still a few years off).  Local NBC WTWV-9 (later WTVA) would soon preempt 9:00, as well.

I know that WMC's dropping of NBC's morning lineup started as a gradual thing, first with Dinah Shore's syndicated show and then Donahue. But apparently as they saw they could get away with it they kept pushing it further until there were no NBC game shows in their lineup in the 80's except for possibly Wheel of Fortune and sometimes one other show that might fill out the hour. Actually WMC was bad about dropping or delaying other parts of NBC's lineup as well during that time, which I've gone into on other threads. It was during the time that they were owned by Scripps Howard, which I've read was bad about that at other stations as well. When they were sold to what would eventually become Raycom in the early 90's a lot of that stopped. But by that time NBC had caved in to the local stations and given most of the morning time back to them. I've said before that NBC should have put more pressure on stations like WMC to carry more of their lineup or face penalties, even up to the point of losing their affiliation, instead of caving in and letting them drop as much programming as they did.

I lived in the Dyersburg area where I could also get WPSD when I had my antenna turned that way. (No cable where I lived.) There may have been a time where both Donahue and Romper Room pre-empted the 9-10:30 AM block, but once Romper Room ended (not sure exactly when) Donahue was about the only place where they didn't carry NBC's daytime lineup, and can usually remember being able to see most of the game shows I wanted to see that WMC didn't carry there. Of course by that time I had a regular job and the only time I was watching any daytime TV was on days I was off or sick or during my lunch time, so I don't remember it all clearly. But WPSD was definitely better than WMC in carrying NBC's game shows.

As for the idea of bring back game shows, something to consider is that Match Game and Password were also Goodson-Todman (Now  Fremantle) shows, who owns TPIR as well, and G-T produced Classic Concentration, although NBC actually owns it. I don't know if Fremantle would agree to any new shows they would have control over running against TPIR. Something else to consider is since NBC gave so much time back to local stations, a lot of them probably won't be willing to go back to carrying NBC shows during those times, especially stations that already had a reputation for dropping a lot of NBC's daytime lineup.

[genius]

...well, I doubt that Betty White is in good enough health to handle doing a minimum of five half-hours of TV in front of an audience every week for at least thirteen weeks. The woman *is* 85 years old. And the level of celebrity conversational imagination displayed on Jay Leno's guest seat wouldn't have been considered up to snuff for a 1974 week of "Celebrity Sweepstakes," the game that had Carol Wayne as a frequent panelist, let alone a game that requires imagination and wit like "Password" or "Match Game"...

Actually Betty White has made a number of appearances on the Bold and the Beautiful in the past few months now...

[bpatrick]

I've read about the housecleaning that Lin Bolen did to NBC before. Could this also be a factor in NBC stations that carried little or none of NBC's morning lineup from the late 70's on? I know that this is about the same that WMC 5 in Memphis began dropping most of NBC's game shows and replaced them with syndicated talk shows. This went on well into the 90's until NBC went to talk shows in the mornings and eventually gave the rest of daytime other than 2 hours of soaps back to local stations.

I suppose it had some effect, however not nearly as much as NBC canceling three games to make way for David Letterman's morning show in 1980.  The rise of Donahue and other syndie talk shows in the late '70s also played a role ... especially in the Central time zone, where there was no local gap between Today and the daytime block.  Some stations (WAPI-13/Birmingham and WSFA-12/Montgomery) pushed Today back an hour - in effect, taking the EST feed - and scheduled Phil at 8:00.  Most, however, preempted the 9:00 hour outright (which 13 would eventually do in the wake of Letterman). 

Some, such as WPSD-6/Paducah, Ky., put Donahue at 9:00, followed by Romper Room at 10, blacking out 90 minutes of the schedule ... in 1978, no less!   When I left Tupelo, Miss. in 1978 ... WMC-5/Memphis, which until recently, cleared the entire daytime, picked up Donahue at 9:00, but was otherwise faithful (5's nuking of NBC daytime was still a few years off).  Local NBC WTWV-9 (later WTVA) would soon preempt 9:00, as well.

And the level of celebrity conversational imagination displayed on Jay Leno's guest seat wouldn't have been considered up to snuff for a 1974 week of "Celebrity Sweepstakes," the game that had Carol Wayne as a frequent panelist, let alone a game that requires imagination and wit like "Password" or "Match Game"...

I'm afraid you've hit the nail on the head.  Look at the fiasco To Tell the Truth became -- it didn't become a classic by one panelist dominating and trying to one-up others.  And Password?  Too slow for Gen-X/Y/Z/AA/BB....  Match Game?  Yeah, "lightning in a bottle" as imhomerjay said.  Gene Rayburn was the key ingredient on MG, too; his ego managed to keep six other egos in check .... all while the celebs' BAC inched upward as the week's taping progressed. 

I'd love for NBC to perform a shock-and-awe by scheduling an hour of game show(s) at 11:00, to start the day after Barker's last aired ep.  One more time, with feeling: Super Concentration  Big jackpots, lots of prizes behind the squares (read: plenty of plug opportunities).  Young-ish host. 

Sadly, though, I'm afraid the perfect Betty White-like "game show celebrity" has gone the way of the 8-track.

--Russell

Ancil Payne, president of King Broadcasting in the '70s and '80s, was
interviewed for a book about NBC, "The Sweeps," and he called Bolen
"the big screwup" for her radical churning of the NBC daytime schedule.
But he also thought the scheduling of Letterman at 9 AM (Pacific) was
absurd; "people want the excitement of games" at that time, he said
(this was in 1983).  And, face it, Letterman is someone you have to
sit down and watch.  Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, and
Ernie Kovacs all found this out in the '50s; except for Carson, none of
them did well in daytime.

I remember when Letterman's morning show debuted, Fred Silverman
was quoted as saying that he saw Letterman as an '80s Arthur Godfrey.
Shows you that Silverman was losing his touch.  Godfrey's show was
a radio show with a camera on it (it was simulcast); Letterman's was
a television show (still is), pure and simple.

BTW, at the time of Payne's interview, King owned KING/5 Seattle,
KGW/8 Portland, OR, and (I think) KTVB/7 Boise (also CBS affiliate
KREM/2 Spokane, but we won't concern ourselves with that one).
All are now owned by Belo.

[Pat Cook]

Hi everyone:

NBC is actually way ahead of the times. Just as scripted programming costs more to make than reality shows, this will be the first death knell of the soap opera. CBS and ABC will eventually follow suit... Not now, but soon... It's a changing TV landscape, and many staples are long gone - this will be no exception, wait and see.

Contrary to popular belief around here, soaps aren't really dying.  They're just moving to different mediums such as THE INTERNET

Want examples?  Check out this website, this website & this webring.  Plus there's the rec.arts.tv.soaps.* hierarchy of newsgroups on USENET, these Yahoo! Groups and these Google Groups.

So given all this, how is it that soap operas are dying?  Would someone who thinks they are care to answer this question?  I say this 'cause I'm at a loss. *baffled look*

Cheers

[kenhawk1160]

You are jumping to conclusions waaaay too early. Days of Our lives is one of the longest running soaps, and if it still is the highest rated soap, why pull it? Chances are they won't find anything better. Not saying they will keep it either, but lets wait until 2009 before we start eulogizing a TV show.

People were also saying those same words about "Search for Tomorrow" before the plug was finally pulled in the mid-80's. 

[only1moore]

I've read about the housecleaning that Lin Bolen did to NBC before. Could this also be a factor in NBC stations that carried little or none of NBC's morning lineup from the late 70's on? I know that this is about the same that WMC 5 in Memphis began dropping most of NBC's game shows and replaced them with syndicated talk shows. This went on well into the 90's until NBC went to talk shows in the mornings and eventually gave the rest of daytime other than 2 hours of soaps back to local stations.

Memphis wasn't the only place that passed on NBC's daytime gameshow lineup. WTMJ-4/Milwaukee also did the same thing back in the '70s , '80s and '90s.

[Pat Cook]

Hi everyone:

I often wonder if most of the daytime soaps currently on the air will go to
cable at some point, especially since there is a channel devoted to soaps
24 hours a day called "SoapNet"

And how long before SoapNet follows "GSN" and begins airing reality shows and other @#$% totally unrelated to the original mission?

Ahh, but Russell I disagree with you.  Because SoapNet produces very little original content related to its original mission (Which I suppose is a good thing), they'll only use "Reality" TV shows to fill in the rest of the schedule (Like during the day when the networks are running the current episodes of the shows SN airs at night).

Speaking of which, I wonder why it is that SoapNet simply doesn't drop its West Coast feed when the networks start running the current episodes.  I mean, it looks a little funny to see DAYS from the day before listed on SN @ 11:00 AM mountain when in fact NBC is airing the current episode to those in the East & Central time zones.  Personally, I think SoapNet should either drop its West Coast feed altogether or at least run in simulcast with its East Coast feed.

Not trying to hijack the thread here, but anyhow....Thoughts?

The new ATWT opening looks like an imitation of one of those telenovela opens on Univision.  The music even sounds Latin.  I say, bring back the globe spinning in space!

And while you're at it, how about pulling Dan McCullough (if he's still alive!) out of mothballs.  The voices of both he and Bill Wolff (announcer for Another World), were full of such elegance.

I doubt Dan McCullough is still alive, but I'd be willing to bet his successor Dan Region still is.  He's another one who knew how to announce a soap.

As I mentioned earlier, I was never that much into soaps (to me they took up valuable timeslots better used for game shows ), but I mourn the loss of an institution.  It seems with these outlandish storylines -- don't even get my wife started on what's happened lately on Days -- the writers are deliberately trying to kill the genre.

That's because they either don't know how to write or are being paid by the networks (In this case NBC) to utterly trash the show.

What I remember most were the open/close sequences (the classic ATWT globe with the original theme music - I'm just old enough to recall the live organ version - and the mid-late '70s Guiding Light "Ritournelle" theme - beautiful!) .... I'd hear them as background noise as my mother was watching them.  Looking back, they all conveyed class.

You can still find them as well as original episodes on this website.  You have to become a member with them (This is to offset the costs of maintaining the site), but considering what you get in return, it's worth it.

But "elegance" and "class" don't pay the bills anymore.   

Not on today's network TV, no.

Just my honest opinion...

Cheers

[Pat Cook]

Hi everyone:

I'd settle for bringing back Dan Region as "ATWT"'s
announcer if Dan McCullough has passed on.

But eliminate the globe??  Heresy!  What's next:
"Days" eliminates the hourglass?

Or Y&R eliminates its lipstick signature and trademark theme which its had ever since it first debuted? :rolleyes:

Cheers