Search For Tomorrow - Transition To Tape

Transition To Tape

Search aired as a fifteen-minute serial from its debut in 1951 until 1968. The show's initial sponsor was Procter & Gamble, the makers of Joy dishwashing liquid and Spic and Span household cleaner. As the show's ratings increased, other sponsors began buying commercial time. Both "Joy" and "Spic and Span" continued to be the primary products Procter & Gamble advertised on the show, well into the 1960s.

The show switched from live broadcasts to recorded telecasts in March 1967, went to color on September 11, 1967, and expanded to a half-hour on September 9, 1968 . At the time, Search and its sister show Guiding Light, which had shared the same half-hour for sixteen years, were the last two fifteen-minute soap operas airing on television. (As a result of the expansion, Search gained the entire 12:30 pm ET timeslot and an expanded Guiding Light moved to 2:30 pm.)

In 1983, both the master copy and the backup of a Search episode were lost, and on August 4, the cast was forced to do a live show for the first time since the transition sixteen years before. After the event, NBC was accused of lying about the tape being misplaced in hopes that the noise generated by the accident would create a ratings jump for the show. It was thought that this situation mirrored a similar one in the 1982 movie Tootsie.{(cn}}