Schedules
When the show premiered in 1964, Peyton Place aired twice a week. Both installments of the show were Top 20 hits in the Nielsen ratings and this inspired ABC to air the show three times a week starting in the fall of 1965. This move caused trouble for people who followed the show religiously, and many people tuned out. The season ratings for Peyton Place never rose into the Top 30 again and the serial's production was dropped back to two episodes a week. In 1969, with the show losing viewers with each episode, Peyton Place aired in one installment a week until the final episode was shown in June.
The show was one of the first seen on US network television to talk about sex and infidelity in a frank manner. As such, ABC executives would only allow the show to be aired at 9:30 p.m. Eastern/Pacific time, a time at which many children and teenagers were expected to be in bed. With the show in a ratings slump in 1968, the show was moved to 8:30 p.m. in order to draw the viewers they once had shunned.
The series was revived as a daytime serial from April 3, 1972 to January 4, 1974 as Return to Peyton Place. Three of the actors from the primetime series reprised their roles on the daytime series – Frank Ferguson as Eli Carson, Patricia Morrow as Rita Harrington, and Evelyn Scott as Ada Jacks. However, the daytime series did not prove to be as successful as the primetime series had been.
Two television movies followed. The first; Murder in Peyton Place was broadcast on NBC in the fall of 1977. Billed as a reunion movie it focused on the mysterious deaths of Rodney Harrington and Allison MacKenzie, as well as a diabolical plot of a powerful person to ruin the community. It reunited original cast members Dorothy Malone, Ed Nelson, Tim O'Connor, Joyce Jillson, and Christopher Connelly. The second; Peyton Place: The Next Generation which aired in the spring of 1985 on NBC, was conceived as a one-shot sequel, that would hopefully revive the popular series and was therefore also promoted as a television pilot. Although a new series of the show never came to fruition; the film did reunite original cast members Dorothy Malone, Ed Nelson, Tim O'Connor, James Douglas, Christopher Connelly, Ruth Warwick and Barbara Parkins, who had declined to appear in Murder in Peyton Place.
Read more about this topic: Peyton Place (TV series)
Famous quotes containing the word schedules:
“My friend devotes himself to his life, whenever he can find the spare time. His motto is: ‘Don’t just sit there: live!’ So he’s too busy to stand, to walk, to do anything, except to live. He even refused to kiss a girl, when invited, on the grounds that it was time again to be living. Schedules are sacred to him.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. The Self-Devoted Friend, New Directions (1967)