The Doctors (1963 TV Series) - Broadcast History

Broadcast History

The popularity of The Doctors began flourishing in the late 1960s, when it was featured in advertisements for NBC's 90-minute serial block. NBC aired the show in the timeslot of 2:30 p.m. Eastern/1:30 Central, in between Days of our Lives and Another World, two highly rated shows. The premiere of The Doctors succeeded entertainment mogul Merv Griffin's first daytime talk show, and the serial didn't leave its timeslot for nearly sixteen years. This is an extraordinary feat for daytime shows of its day, especially since some of its victims in the ratings were long-running favorites such as CBS' House Party with Art Linkletter and ABC's Dating Game. The longest-running soap opera in television history, CBS Daytime's The Guiding Light, also competed against The Doctors on several occasions.

From the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, The Doctors was among the higher-rated soap operas of its time. In the 1973–1974 television season, the show peaked at fourth place, behind CBS' As the World Turns and fellow NBC serials Days of our Lives and Another World. However, within a period of three years, The Doctors plummeted from fourth to eleventh in the ratings. The decline in ratings was partly attributed to two soaps with which The Doctors shared its timeslot: One Life to Live and Guiding Light, which expanded to an hour in consecutive years. ABC increased the running time of One Life to Live from 45 minutes to an hour in 1978; CBS expanded Guiding Light to an hour in length in 1977. In 1979, the ratings for The Doctors took another hit after NBC decided to extend the length of its own soap opera, Another World, to 90 minutes from 60. This necessitated an earlier start time for Another World, which aired at 3:00 pm at the time, and a move of The Doctors to 2:00 pm, which alienated many of the series' longtime followers. However, the ratings drop for The Doctors was not as severe, as it finished the season just two-tenths of a point lower in the Nielsen ratings. Still, the move after nearly sixteen years did cause some damage to the show's ratings, and the worst was yet to come.

In August 1980, NBC moved The Doctors to a timeslot that caused a much larger ratings decline. On August 4, 1980, The Doctors moved from 2:00 pm EST to 12:30 pm EST to make room for Texas, a spinoff of Another World. The youth-oriented Ryan's Hope on ABC and the long-running Search for Tomorrow on CBS were already being telecast in that timeslot, and several NBC affiliates preempted the entire 12:00 pm hour to air local newscasts and various other syndicated programming. As a result of the loss of affiliates and the solid performance of the other two soaps in the timeslot, The Doctors went from a 6.1 rating at the end of the 1980 season to last place, with a 3.8 rating, in 1981. Then, The Doctors finished in last place again the following year, this time with a 3.3 rating at the end of the 1981–1982 television season.

On March 29, 1982, NBC Daytime moved The Doctors for a third time in as many years. This time, the move was made to accommodate the serial's former ratings rival, Search for Tomorrow, on its schedule. Search, which previously aired in the 12:30 pm timeslot, had been moved from the timeslot in 1981 to accommodate an earlier starting time for The Young and the Restless and moved to 2:30 pm. Series producer Procter & Gamble, dissatisfied with the ratings drop, insisted on getting the show's old timeslot back, but CBS elected not to renew Search when its contract came up in early 1982. NBC was willing to give the (at the time) longest-running television soap opera the slot. In a complicated switch, Search took over for Password Plus on NBC's daytime schedule.

The Doctors was moved into the 12:00 noon slot, which Password Plus had given up once it was cancelled. Consequently, The Doctors was hit with an even greater rash of pre-emptions after relocating to the 12:00 slot than it ever did when it moved into the 12:30 slot; many more markets preempted the first half of the hour for local newscasts than they had the second half, let alone the whole hour. In markets that did air The Doctors, the ratings were further eroded by the hit game show Family Feud on ABC and the first half of The Young and The Restless, which had already become a major phenomenon in its own right, in certain time zones on CBS. Thus, the already-falling ratings for The Doctors plummeted to previously unheard of levels. NBC itself didn't help the situation; on April 26, 1982, the network moved the dying Texas, which had never done well in the ratings, to 11:00 am to serve as the lead-in for The Doctors. By the time NBC canceled the long running serial in 1982, it had reached a 1.6 in the Nielsens; this was the lowest level any soap opera had reached in the history of the rating system, breaking the record that ABC's short-lived 1970 soap, The Best of Everything, had set with a 1.8. Guiding Light would also finish its final season with a 1.6 rating in September 2009, sharing the mark with The Doctors for the lowest-rated soap in its final season.

The Doctors aired its final episode on December 31, 1982, some three months before it would have celebrated its 20th anniversary on NBC.