Days of Our Lives - Executive Producing and Head Writing Team

Executive Producing and Head Writing Team

The co-creator and original executive producer, Ted Corday, was only at the helm for eight months before dying of cancer in 1966. His widow, Betty, was named executive producer upon his death. She continued in that role, with the help of H. Wesley Kenney and Al Rabin as supervising producers, before she semi-retired in 1985. When Mrs. Corday semi-retired in 1985, and later died in 1987, her son, Ken, became executive producer and took over the full-time, day-to-day running of the show, a title he still holds today. The series' current co-executive producers are Greg Meng and Lisa de Cazotte.

The first long-term head writer, William J. Bell, started writing for Days of our Lives in 1966 and continued until 1975, a few years after he had created his own successful soap, The Young and the Restless. He stayed with the show as a storyline consultant until 1978. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, many writing changes occurred. In the early 1980s, Margaret DePriest helped stabilize the show with her serial killer storyline. Later head writers, such as Sheri Anderson, Thom Racina, and Leah Laiman, built on that stability and crafted storylines of their own, temporarily bringing up ratings. Many writing changes occurred after Laiman left the series in 1989 and would not become stable again until James E. Reilly started with the show in 1993. His tenure, which lasted for four-and-a-half years, was credited with bringing ratings up to the second place spot in the Nielsens. Other writers who succeeded him, such as Sally Sussman Morina and Tom Langan, failed to keep the ratings success, and another writer turnover continued until Reilly returned to the series in 2003.

Five-time Daytime Emmy winner Hogan Sheffer was named head writer with great fanfare in October 2006, but lasted less than 16 months with the show, with his last episode airing in January 2008. Current head writer Dena Higley's first episode aired on April 23, 2008. Her co-head writer was Christopher Whitesell until Feb 2011. His replacement has yet to be named. On May 18, 2011 Dena Higley was fired. The new head writers are Marlene McPherson and Darrell Ray Thomas Jr.

In April 2012 it was confirmed that McPherson and Thomas Jr. were fired from their positions as co-head writers. They are due to be replaced by Gary Tomlin and Christopher Whitesell. It was later confirmed that former All My Children headwriter Lorraine Broderick would join Tomlin and Whitesell as a breakdown writer on the series.

Days of our Lives won the Daytime Emmy Award in June 2012 for Outstanding Drama Writing Team.