Search For Tomorrow - Ratings History

Ratings History

Search for Tomorrow was among the highest-rated soaps of the 1950s and 1960s, but by the early 1970s it had slipped to the middle of the pack. However, it would gain renewed popularity during that decade and peak at 4th in the ratings, a spot it last reached in 1976. Starting then, the show's popularity began to slide, but the show was still a solid top-ten soap.

In 1981, CBS wanted its newer serial, The Young and the Restless, to lead off the afternoon soap lineup. That move caused a shift in much of CBS's daytime schedule. Y&R itself had previously been broadcast in the 1:00 pm ET time slot, but was now moved back to its previous Noon ET/11AM CT slot. However, a second feed was added to allow stations in the Eastern time zone to air local news at Noon and Y&R at 12:30pm ET. Search was moved to 2:30 ET, which necessitated a move of As the World Turns back to its previous 1:30 ET time slot. Despite having a different timeslot, Search still got decent ratings; in fact, at the time it was canceled, Search's ratings were half a point higher than the end of the previous television season (6.8 vs. 6.3). However, P&G wanted the show back at 12:30 pm. In March 1982, P&G moved the show to NBC at 12:30 (bumping the network's low-rated soap The Doctors to Noon). Search left CBS with a 6.8 rating, ranking eighth in the daytime ratings. However, by the end of the year, Search ranked 14th in the ratings, just .1 ahead of where The Doctors would finish the year. In fact, the ratings of the show had dropped by half in its first nine months on NBC, falling from the 6.8 rating it achieved in its last year on CBS to a 3.4 by the end of the year.

Part of the reason for the slip was that many NBC affiliates already preempted The Doctors, which previously aired at 12:30, and continued to do so when Search moved into the slot – which meant that, in some instances, Search would disappear altogether from some markets when it left CBS for NBC. As a result of the network and time slot switches, Search would now go up against Y&R instead of being its lead-in program in markets that did air the show.

To complicate matters further, even in markets where NBC affiliates didn't air newscasts in the 12:00 time slot, Search didn't have a strong lead-in like As the World Turns in its final months on CBS. Instead, NBC placed Search in an hour with sitcom reruns and low-rated game shows such as Go, The New Battlestars, Just Men!, and Hot Potato between March 29, 1982 and September 24, 1984. The only show to share the hour with Search that was at least a steady hit was Super Password. (As part of Search's move to NBC, the network cancelled Super Password's predecessor, Password Plus, so The Doctors could move to its noon slot.)

Search's ratings continued to drop as the show went on. The following season, the show finished with a 2.7 rating, tied with outgoing NBC soap Texas for twelfth in the ratings. In three out of its remaining four seasons, the show finished dead last in the daytime ratings, but it finished second to last in the 1984–1985 television season. The equally ratings-challenged veteran The Edge of Night finished behind it during that season, which would turn out to be its final year on ABC.

Finally, Search was canceled in 1986, and finished with a 2.5 rating. Its last episode aired on December 26, 1986, putting an end to its then-record 35-year run on television. NBC would not give the 12:30 slot, or the 12:00 hour for that matter, back to the local affiliates until 1991, and would also take back the hour for five months in 1993.

Search was immediately succeeded by the Tom Kennedy-hosted game show Wordplay in the 12:30 pm timeslot, but that series only ran for nine months. In September 1987, upon the cancellation of Wordplay, the hit game show Scrabble, which had been airing at 11:30 am since its 1984 premiere, moved into the slot and remained there until March 24, 1989. On that date, it was replaced by a new soap opera, Generations. The most recent NBC network program to have aired in Search's timeslot to date was Scattergories, a Dick Clark-hosted game show that premiered as part of NBC's takeover of the noon hour in 1993. Of the four shows that followed Search in its 12:30 time slot, Scrabble was the only one that wasn't removed due to ratings trouble, as it moved back to the mornings following the debut of Generations.

Besides Scrabble, the soap opera Generations was the only series to last longer than a year at 12:30, ultimately ending its run in January 1991 – two months shy of its second anniversary.

Capitol, CBS's replacement for Search, ended its run nearly three months after Search came to an end; its finale aired on March 20, 1987, nine days away from its fifth anniversary, and it was replaced the following Monday by The Bold and the Beautiful. Larry Hagman play on Search for Tommorow in 1951 unknown episode.