Flashback: The World Has Turned More than 3,200 Times (1968)

Part 1 of a wonderful article in the New York Times in 1968. I'll post more as the week continues and ONE LIFE TO LIVE celebrates their 40th anniversary. The World Has Turned More than 3,200 Times... ... and 8 million people keep watching by Joan Barthel, New York Times September 8, 1968 THE STORY THUS FAR... Young Dr. Bob, who was blinded by flying glass in a lab explosion, faces eye surgery. The accident happened on the day his wife, Sandy, ran away from home. San ran away because she upset at having lost custody of her son Jimmy, who was born in prison while she was doing a stretch for having helped her ex-husband Roy rob a store. Sandy's flight was unnecessary, however, because Roy had decided to return Jimmy to her. This so upset Penny, Dr. Bob's sister, who had married Roy specifically to make a home for Jimmy, that she has gone off to New York. Dr. Bob's ex-wife Lisa has just had a child, Chuckie, out of wedlock. Chuckie's father is Dr. Michael, who was married to Claire, the alcoholic mother of Ellen, who has problems of her own. Ellen once had a child out of wedlock, who was adopted by Dr. David. When Dr. David's wife died, he and Ellen got married, but the child, Dr. Dan, has not been told that Ellen is his real mother. When Dr. David's housekeeper threatened to spill the beans, Ellen hit her with a statue. The housekeeper died, and Ellen went to jail for a while, where she met Sandy. Roy blames himself. "A soap opera is a kind of sandwich," James Thurber wrote 20 years ago in a memorable series of New Yorker articles. "...Between thick slices of advertising spread 12 minutes of dialogue, add predicament, villainy and female suffering in equal measure, throw in a dash of nobility, sprinkle with tears, season with organ music, cover with a rich announcer sauce, and serve five times a week." He was writing about radio soaps, but obviously, judging from the above synopsis of the recent beleagured status of just some of the folks on television's top-rated daytime program, "As The World Turns," the ingredients have remained the same. Only the size of the daily serving has increased. When soaps sloshed over from radio to TV, 15 minutes was deemed the audience's attention span (or threshold of pain). Then on April 2, 1956, "As The World Turns" became the first TV serial to run for 30 minutes (the race was close: the half-hour "Edge of Night" bowed on the same day, but in a later time slot). Since then, cued by its smashing success, all the new entries in TV's serial sweeps have come in at 30. On Sept. 9, the last two 15-minute holdouts, "Search for Tomorrow" and "The Guiding Light," will go half-hour. And not only that. "On that day, for the first time in the history of television, there will be three serials at 3 o'clock," says Fred Silverman, CBS vice president for daytime programs. He says it in an appropriately awed, what-hate-God-wrought tone, for the cynic may see the 3 o'clock stack-up only as an enormously sadistic Hobson's choice, to the networks it is vitally important in the continuing domination of the daytime. Once upon a time, CBS had the war won, partyly because of its cannily tailored-for-TV dramas like "As The World Turns," which has yet to be toppled from first place in the ratings, and partly because of audience loyalty it had built up in radio soaps. (As late as 1960, the network still carried seven radio serials, including the venerable "Ma Perkins." All seven were terminated in the momentous week of Nov. 23, 1960, when after years of unrelieved travail and consistent heartache, everything suddenly came up roses for everybody as storylines took a wildly benign, if somewhat vague, turn: "Ma...sees happiness ahead...") But NBC plotted and waited. The three TV serials it eventually brought forth - "The Doctors," "Another World," and "Days of Our Lives" - are the next-highest-rated serials in the latest list of the top 10 daytime shows, topping all sex of CBS's other soaps. ABC, accustomed but not resigned to trailing in the numbers race, has gamely come up with a brand-new entry, "One Life to Live," in the latest round of jousting for the jackpot. (And the daytime pot is brimming: in the first half of this year, the networks earned a total of $131,000,000 for the 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. period. The loot depends on the ratings; a one-minute commercial on "As The World Turns" costs about $16,000; on a low-rated show, only about half that.) That new show, "One Life to Live," is the brainchild of Philadelphia Main Line house-wife-writer, Agnes Nixon, who gets in a few licks of her own: "The newer, younger, more vital shows are coming along. I write a very young show, thought not hippie. CBS has just kind of coasted along. Their audience has been getting older; they were not reaching the people who buy Oreo cookies, peanut butter, Crisco, soap flakes, Band-Aids and baby powder. They have been getting the Geritol crowd." A pause. "'Edge of Night' demographics are very old," she adds cheerfully. So there she is, Mrs. America, sitting "target for the package goods," and numbers say she is mostly watching "As The World Turns." The program attracts eight million viewers a day which is about 50 per cent of the available audience, which is phenomenal. "We have that way-ahead feeling," Lyle Hill, the producer of the show, says happily. He is less happy, however about the idea of a magazine piece about his show, because Procter & Gamble has been offended in the past by snotty stories about soap opera, and Procter & Gabmle is his boss. Lyle Hill works for Young & Rubicam, the advertising agency that produces "As The World Turns" for P&G, which owns it. "Serials were created to accommodate advertising needs, so most of them are owned by the clients," says Roy Winsor, independent television producer whose two shows, "Love of Life" and "The Secret Storm," are owned by American Home Products. Of the 13 network serials currently televised, only five are not owned by sponsors. The arrangement is neat and extremely effective.

TV Guide: Soap's Sexiest Women

TV Guide Network debuted a new special, SOAP'S SEXIEST WOMEN, tonight. Kristoff St. John from Y&R hosted as they counted down the Top 25 sexiest women in soaps. SOAP'S SEXIEST MEN will air next Sunday night. Here's their list: #25 Rebecca Herbst (Liz, GH) #24 Maura West (Carly, ATWT) #23 Ashley Jones (Bridget, B&B) #22 Michelle Ray Smith (Ava, GL) #21 Shelley Hennig (Stephanie, DAYS) #20 Marnie Schulenburg (Alison, ATWT) #19 Eva Marcille (Tyra, Y&R) #18 Marie Wilson (Meg, ATWT) #17 Lesli Kay (Felicia, B&B) #16 Kirsten Storms (Maxie, GH) #15 Chrystal Khalil (Lily, Y&R) #14 Alicia Minshew (Kendall, AMC) #13 Bree Williamson (Jessica, OLTL) #12 Julie Pinson (Janet, ATWT) #11 Kristian Alfonso (Hope, DAYS) #10 Terri Colombino (Katie, ATWT) #9 Sharon Case (Sharon, Y&R) #8 Arianne Zuker (Nicole, DAYS) #7 Sarah Brown (Claudia, GH) #6 Gina Tognoni (Dinah, GL) #5 Rebecca Budig (Greenlee, AMC) #4 Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke, B&B) #3 Nadia Bjorlin (Chloe, DAYS) #2 Michelle Stafford (Phyllis, Y&R) #1 Kelly Monaco (Sam, GH)

Lisa Rinna on ACCESS HOLLYWOOD

Carly caught in tough spot on GENERAL HOSPITAL Jax walks into a conversation between Sonny and Carly today on GENERAL HOSPITAL, which leads to an ultimatum for his bride. "If she tells one more lie," warns Laura Wright (Carly), "he's done." And Carly has told a boatload of them. "Sonny forces Carly to admit that she's the one who leaked the rumor," says Wright, referring to the compromising tabloid photo of Jax with Sonny's fiancée, Kate. Carly realizes, "Wow, I'm going to lose this guy," continues Wright. "So she vows, 'I'm not going to do anything wrong.'" GH: Medicalizing Spinelli "For a twenty-something, Spinelli is socially delayed, sexually naive, speaks of himself in the third person, uses formal pedantic language, and refers to other people by descriptive, perceptive monikers he supplies. He is also a good-natured, computer genius and a loyal, caring friend who can be honest to a fault. Even by soap standards, Spinelli is a little 'off the beaten path,' but should Spinelli’s quirks and eccentricities be diagnosed or turned into medical fodder? Can’t someone just be different or unique? So what if Spinelli processes information or expresses himself differently than the other citizens of Port Charles." A looking at "breaking news" interruptions Sometimes, "breaking news never quite breaks. That was the case Wednesday when local TV stations in Milwaukee interrupted regular programming for coverage of a missing plane that was never actually missing. That, of course, led to the usual round of calls and e-mails from disgruntled viewers. One of those disgruntled viewers called to complain Wednesday that GENERAL HOSPITAL was disrupted by Channel 12’s coverage. As a regular soap viewer, she admits she’ll keep on watching GH despite the interruption. See. That’s where they got you. Andrea Evans on THE VIEW today Andrea Evants, who plays ONE LIFE TO LIVE's recently returned vixen Tina, will be a guest on today's episode of THE VIEW on ABC. Fringe Festival play with a Y&R twist The annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which begins on Aug. 3 in Scotland, will include a wide assortment of productions, more than 2,000, some of which may eventually find their way to New York. Among the offerings is "7 Sins," written and performed by James Judd. The show is a comical look at his own life, one that seems reasonable enough in some aspects (he went to law school and practiced as a criminal defense attorney) and completely mad in others (his mother paid him to skip school, watch THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS and later act it out for her). Next SAG-AMPTP Deadline Is July 24th! SAG Presented Counter-Proposal Today; Will AMPTP Negotiate Or Just Walk Away? Nikki Finke updates the latest on the SAG/AFTRA saga in her Deadline Hollywood blog. Oz soap opera NEIGHBOURS to be aired on social networking site Australia’’s popular soap NEIGHBOURS will soon be posted on a social networking site. The producers of the series made the decision because a large number of unauthorized broadcasts are already occurring on the Internet. Ben Liebmann, production company FremantleMedias vice president of licensing, says that they want to utilize multiple platforms for its programs. He, however, did not divulge the name of the website on which the programme would be posted. The cross-over list MarkH provides a detailed list of all the daytime soap crossovers in history. The Drama's Always On The Unemployed Soap Opera Viewer (who is now employed) blogs: "While I was watching GL, The Unemployed Boyfriend wandered by and asked why I wasn't looking at Spinelli. Ah, that is because when I turned on GENERAL HOSPITAL, all I saw were the Zaccharahs zaccharahing at each other. By 'zaccharahing' I refer to any scene where Trevor, Claudia and Anthony are all present, snarling and threatening meaninglessly. It's enough to send anyone to Peapack for the hour!"

IMAGINARY BITCHES: Episode #8 Sexy Secret Santa

Catherine and Heather indulge their holiday fantasies, but Eden's real friends aren't part of their plans.