Amy Ames - Broadcast History

Broadcast History

CBS first placed The Secret Storm at 4:15 PM (3:15 Central) as a 15-minute program, sandwiched between The Brighter Day and On Your Account (later The Edge of Night). Beginning in 1957, it would compete against ABC's American Bandstand, then a five-day-a-week show (it was reduced to Saturdays-only in 1963).

On June 18, 1962 CBS expanded Storm to 30 minutes. The Brighter Day was moved to an early-morning time slot. Storm took over the 4:00 PM timeslot, where it ran for six years, mainly competing against NBC's The Match Game. However, 1966 witnessed the premiere of the soap Dark Shadows on ABC, and that (later the Dating Game) prompted CBS to move Storm ahead an hour to 3:00 PM (2:00 Central) on September 9, 1968. There, it faced NBC's fast-rising Another World.

Storm was the last daytime soap opera (and consequently the last television show) on the three major TV networks to convert to color. It did so on March 11, 1968.

After four years of mediocre success, CBS next tried it a half-hour later beginning on September 4, 1972 as part of a major overhaul of the network's daytime lineup. It managed to run about even with ABC's One Life to Live and, deciding to put in stronger competition at the 3:30 PM (2:30 Central) slot, CBS returned Storm to its mid-1960s 4:00 PM slot on March 26. There, it faced reruns on ABC and the television show Somerset on NBC - but its audience share and ratings would not be enough to save it from cancellation in an increasingly cost-competitive network daytime scene.

In November, with affiliate pre-emptions mounting from key affiliates such as KPIX, and an economic recession causing a decline in ad revenues, CBS made the decision to cancel the serial in favor of a less-expensive game show, Tattletales. This had also been the reason for the cancellations of Where the Heart Is and Love is a Many Splendored Thing the previous year.

In all the turmoil of its later years, the main reason for the show's demise was likely CBS' choice to buy the show from the original sponsor/packager, American Home Products, in 1969. One effect of the purchase was that the show suffered from numerous changes in head writers and producers. Upon CBS' cancellation, AHP reacquired the rights to Storm in an attempt to move the show to another network. After NBC executive Lin Bolen rejected the show in favor of a project of hers, How to Survive a Marriage, and ABC chose to use its daytime budget to buy out Agnes Nixon's soaps, an effort to syndicate the show failed because AHP could not obtain enough clearances among affiliates in the largest markets to justify continued production.

That failure occurred largely because of scheduling complications local stations would have faced. Storm would likely have aired on ABC affiliates between 10:00 and 11:30 AM (when the network feed began for the day) or on CBS or NBC stations during their respective networks' half-hour breaks at 1:00 PM (Noon Central). This would have meant that the soap would have faced in either case considerably stronger network programming (game shows in the first case, ABC's All My Children in the second). Stations could have preempted their network feeds to run the syndicated version, but would probably have not done so because the program's relatively high production expenses (compared to situation comedy reruns or talk shows) would have been passed down to the local station's purchase price. That in turn would have reduced potential profits from local advertising, likely to the point of amounting to less than the network's payment for a half hour of station airtime.

The 5,195th and final Secret Storm episode aired one week after the show's 20th anniversary.