As The World Turns - Broadcast History

Broadcast History

As The World Turns enjoyed a virtually uninterrupted reign as the highest-rated soap from 1958 to 1978, tying for first place with NBC Daytime's Another World (1973–1974, 1977–1978) and Days of our Lives (1973–1974). By the mid-1960s, it was so firmly entrenched that its strongest competition, Let's Make a Deal, despite developing a devoted fan base in its own right and becoming one of daytime's most popular game shows, could not come close to matching it in the Nielsens.

Its strength was such that ABC ran hour-long drama reruns in the 1–2 p.m. (noon-1 Central) slot in the mid-1960s and NBC, after losing Deal to ABC in 1968, ran a total of eight shows, all short-lived (with the exception of Three on a Match, which lasted three years), against As The World Turns and Let's Make a Deal from that point until 1975.

As that year began Another World was expanded to sixty minutes, with their first hour long episode airing on January 6, 1975. Although this did not directly affect As The World Turns, as the two shows were not in competition for anything other than the overall ratings win, CBS' afternoon lineup suffered some ratings damage as the popular soap put a dent in the ratings of both of CBS' popular afternoon game shows, The Price Is Right and Match Game. NBC, pleased by the success that the expansion of Another World has brought to the network, elected to do the same thing with Days of Our Lives beginning on April 21, 1975; this put Days of Our Lives and As The World Turns in direct competition for ratings. Incidentally, the expansions were occurring seven years after the last two fifteen minute serials, Search for Tomorrow and Guiding Light, expanded to thirty minutes.

CBS decided that they too needed to expand at least one of their daytime series. Since As The World Turns was still the front-runner in the ratings battle, it was chosen as one of the series; the other was The Price Is Right, which at the time was part of CBS' afternoon schedule. As The World Turns and The Price Is Right were due to expand in September 1975, and the latter was moved back to the morning in order to facilitate that. While The Price is Right's expansion was initially only intended to be an experiment, As the World Turns was to be permanent and required the cancellation of one of CBS' half-hour serials in order for that to happen. CBS found that series in The Edge of Night, which at the time was the network's lowest rated program; although it was once a solid performer in the ratings, The Edge of Night had been moved at Procter & Gamble's insistence from its 3:30 p.m. timeslot to the 2:30 p.m. slot following Guiding Light in 1972 and as a result lost a large portion of its audience which was composed largely of teenagers, men, and young adults. In order for the expansion to take place, The Edge of Night would have to be canceled- the rest of CBS' soap opera lineup was performing well in the ratings and the network did not have a spare timeslot to put it in that would not risk preemption. CBS announced that it would not renew The Edge of Night when its contract was up, but the serial was saved when ABC offered to take it.

However, a problem arose that would have caused a major issue had CBS elected to go ahead with a September expansion of As The World Turns. The network had a contract with Procter&Gamble to air The Edge of Night until December 1975 and the expansion would have resulted in an immediate cancellation. This meant that no new episodes of The Edge of Night would air for three months, and ABC was not interested in taking on the serial if that was to be the case. This required an arrangement to be made between the networks and production company- As The World Turns would delay its expansion while The Edge of Night would continue to air on CBS, and the series would move to ABC once the network was able to free a timeslot for it. In November 1975, ABC announced the cancellation of the game show You Don't Say!, which had been airing in the network's 4 p.m. timeslot. The final episode was scheduled to air on November 28, 1975, after which The Edge of Night would be free to leave CBS and As The World Turns would be free to expand to sixty minutes.

The first hour-long episode of As The World Turns aired on December 1, 1975 (the same day that The Price Is Right marked its permanent expansion to an hour). With the expansion the serial was not only up against Let's Make a Deal, which by this point in time had been struggling in the ratings for some time, but also against The $10,000 Pyramid, which at the time was the third-highest rated game show in daytime. In the first half hour, As The World Turns performed well enough against the fading Deal that it moved to Noon within four weeks and also beat its replacement, Rhyme and Reason. The second half hour, however, saw As The World Turns not perform as well when taking on The $10,000 Pyramid, which had also performed well against Guiding Light in the 2 p.m. slot. Although the expansion was not a complete success, at the end of the season the serial was again at the top of the daytime Nielsens despite a 1.4 point drop from the year before.

Although the eventual hit game Family Feud ran against As The World Turns from July 12, 1976 until April 22, 1977, it did not become a hit for ABC until its move to the mornings. It was only when ABC made its first move to a one-hour soap with All My Children that trouble really began for As The World Turns (and also Days of Our Lives), since ABC kept that serial's starting time at 1/noon, meaning that fans of that serial who tuned to NBC or CBS would miss the last half of that day's storyline (or, contrariwise, would not, if they watched until the mid-program commercial break and then changed channels, pick up the As The World Turns or Days of Our Lives activities from the episode's beginning, since ABC strategically placed its break several minutes after the bottom of the hour). Further, All My Children's emphasis on youth-oriented, sexier story lines provided a sharp contrast to the domestic, almost quaint tone of As The World Turns (and, to a lesser degree, the melodramatic, somewhat topical Days). On January 16, 1978, ABC ballooned its decade-old One Life to Live to the 2/1 starting time, compounding the other networks' headaches. These factors helped contribute to the fall of As The World Turns from the top spot in the ratings at the end of the 1978-79 season. After finishing the previous season tied with Another World for #1 in the Nielsens, As The World Turns fell to fourth behind All My Children, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless.

On February 4, 1980, CBS moved and expanded The Young and the Restless to a full hour after the cancellation of soap Love of Life. Y&R moved from Noon/11am to 1pm/Noon (the former affiliate break timeslot) and As the World Turns was bumped up to 2pm/1pm and Guiding Light to 3pm/2pm. CBS was not satisfied with this schedule against ABC and NBC and it lasted just a little over a year. On June 8, 1981, As the World Turns returned to its longtime 1:30/12:30pm start time with Search for Tomorrow following at 2:30/1:30pm and The Young and the Restless leading off the soap lineup at either Noon/11am or 12:30/11:30am (depending on affiliate preference).

As the World Turns remained at 1:30/12:30pm until March 20, 1987, when CBS canceled the five-year-old Capitol in favor of The Bold and the Beautiful. Believing that B&B would do better running in tandem with Y&R (especially on Eastern Time Zone affiliates), CBS scheduled it at 1:30/12:30, and finally settled As the World Turns at 2/1, where it remained until its final episode in September 2010. Although facing the full length of Another and One Life to Live once again, the Douglas Marland era of 1985 to 1993 saw a resurgence in ratings, and by 1991 it was back in its once habitual top-four placing. As the World Turns would survive NBC's cancellation of its sister Another World in 1999 in favor of Passions.