My grandmother watched all the CBS soaps, so when I spent ~3-4 days a week with her in the summers (while my folks were both at work), they were all certainly on while I was around. I was born in 1969, so this would have been all through the mid-to-late 70's and early 80's. Young and the Restless and Guiding Light, for sure. Had to look it up, but As The World Turns definitely too. And probably Search for Tomorrow too, but I'm only vaguely remembering that one. I'm sure I saw about 60% of whatever was broadcast on CBS during the summers of roughly 1975-1982 -- by my wild guess. I stayed with my other grandmother 1-2 days a week those same summers, and she never watched any of the soaps, and I don't think she ever did, far as I'm remembering. She wasn't anti-TV or anything (despite having been born in 1897) -- and she regularly watched Saturday Night Live(!) well into her mid-to-late 90's.
I used to watch that too - remember wanting to be inside with them Married with Children Out of this World
Other series I watched included The OC, Gossip Girl, Dawson's Creek and 90210. About 80% of the time I loved 90210, but 20% of the time I found it annoyingly preachy, especially the parents. Degrassi was also quite preachy. I guess teen series have to promote certain values otherwise they get complaints from parents and special interest groups.
"The Y&R is a mess My favorite character, Neil Winters is dead because Kristoff St. John is dead. They didn't do him any favors in the past few years, no romance, not much of anything. Since you watched so much, I'm sure you remember the revolving "Billy's" and "Adam's." They've got another Adam and he's really, really young. Might be time for this show to end. I watched Santa Barbara too, Robin Wright was gorgeous, so was Marcy Walker (Eden.) They both were striking in a way you don't quite see these days.
The OC never got all that preachy despite being mainly aimed at a teenage audience. Maybe it did and I just don't remember it being preachy.
Marcy Walker will always be Liza Colby to me. Particularly the Greg & Jenny years with a side order of Tad Martin.
I couldn't stomach the idea of daytime soaps, having grown up in that life of housewives becoming devoted to substandard storytelling, cheap production values and soap commercials. Obviously Dark Shadows had different fish to fry, but in the same kitchen. I did however, jump onto the "prime-time family drama" bandwagon with thirtysomething, then Relativity, My So-Called Life, Once and Again, and probably everything Herskovich and/or Zwick have been involved with, and still with both This Is Us and A Million Little Things. It would appear the network television viewership will only bear to support two of these sort of projects at any given time on broadcast television, and you don't see the basic cable netlets attempting to delve into these generic, universal plots and themes, for fear it would not stand out for them as the "unconventional programming" projects they seem to want to benchmark themselves for. In this world at least, it appears you cannot expect viewers to come to these without a good supply of hankies (thus doing a little business for Kimberly-Clark).
As I stated earlier, I was exposed to lots of the early 60s soaps while my grandma babysat us and still remember the dread this opening instilled in me between those ominous piano chords and the announcers' gangster movie voice. The soaps were just so damned dreary with everyone seeming to be utterly miserable.
Yeah, I’ve come to feel the same way. With all the great content available, I’m still amazed people spend time watching these shows. Every time I spend a few minutes watching the remaining ones, I cringe. They’re sort of embarrassing.
I'm curious about what is the current disposition of all the videotapes from these soap operas? They must take up a huge amount of storage space and there seems to be little interest in accessing them for some kind of reissue project (dvd or streaming). I assume the networks are paying for the storage of these tapes - could there be a time when they decide to dispose of them?
If it's tape, depending on the quality, eventually it will have shed so much as to be unplayable. TV is an ephemeral medium... so was radio. Probably some old radio programs transcribed to disc will outlive a lot of TV on video tape. As there is a game show channel (or two) airing vintage game shows, there should be a soap channel airing various old soaps, compared to a lot of the modern 'reality' junk scheduled it would at least stand out as different. I'd get a kick out of being able to watch the Edge Of Night for awhile that my Mom used to follow when I was little. I was amazed how much of British soap Coronation Street was around considering how much '60s TV was wiped in England. It started in late 1960 and I've seen the first week of shows and loads of others. All of the NY produced Dark Shadows shows from the first episode in the mid-'60s to the early '70s still exists, though sometimes a color episode is only still existing in b&w.
I was watching the 90 minute episode of The Doctors where Althea went thought surgery, and it's so dull- Nothing more boring than watching a group of men standing around an operating table for more than 10 minutes of screen time just looking down at the patient and occasionally getting their foreheads wiped by a nurse. Meanwhile, Penny(Julia Duffy) is really sad because her mom is hurt.
I used to follow All My Children (from the "Cliff & Nina Story Arc" to the "Natalie & Janet Story Arc"). I also watched the first few months of The Bold & The Beautiful and Sunset Beach.
another vote for Dark Shadows - now the whole thing is on Amazon prime for free, so, we've been watching a few here and there.
Neighbours and Twin Peaks. Maybe a bit of Dallas and shut your cake'ole the odd episode of Eastenders.
General Hospital c. '90s: One of soap's IT couples: Stefan Cassadine & Katherine Bell on G.H. (& I know they played a couple of another soaper, which I didn't watch.) Love-triangle: Brenda, Sonny, Jax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PQ146Je_c4 - Katherine falls @ Bacchanalia Ball
LOL. They were Steve Johnson and Kayla Brady on DOOL. More recently "Jax" was Thorne Forrester on B&B. I love soaps!
