Home
DFS
SB
OD
SDN
DFSM
THP
$5
NBC once had a powerful daytime lineup bolstered by game shows in the morning and a mixture of games and soaps in the afternoons. After slumping when CBS and ABC improved their daytime lineups, it appearred that NBC was getting back into the race in 1987-88 when it had three hours of game shows and three hours of soap operas. In 1989, NBC began to slowly fall apart when it began canceling five out of six game shows within a year, giving up time slots to affiliates, going from six to five and a half to four and a half to four hours from 1989 to 1993, then got out of the game show business with a mixture of talk and soaps. In 1999, NBC gave up one hour to the third hour of Today and another hour to local affiliates by the start of 2000. In 2007, one more hour of soaps went to the fourth hour of Today, and in 2022, it's sole non-news daytime show, "Days of Our Lives", moved to its Peacock website, leaving NBC Daytime with nothing but five hours of network news programming. What a sad decline of a once mighty television programming empire as programming mistakes in my humble opinion, squandering away one of their signature soaps "The Doctors" for expanding "Another World" to 90 minutes and spinning off an hour-long soap "Texas" that lasted just over two years, ending the same day as "The Doctors" did, not giving affilliates a half hour time slot for local news, not giving affiliates alternate feeds of daytime shows so they can air them in any time slot that works, losing their longtime recognizable game show brands, and otherwise just plain giving up on the daytime programming block altogether. CBS knew what affiliates wanted and gave them what NBC didn't give them, and that is why despite CBS Daytime being four and a half hours long, it still exists as of 2025. What was once a mighty babysitter to elementary school kids on vacation or too sick to go to school with game shows for four and a half hours to entertain and teach them is gone probably forever.
Also of note, none of the soap operas NBC debuted as 60 minute shows (as opposed to 15 or 30 minutes) lasted ten years or more. The longest to run (NBC, then DirecTV), "Passions", where the show lasted from July 5, 1999 to August 7, 2008, making the soap last nine years, one month and two days, lasting the longest total length of time among the four hour long soaps. "Passions" lasted on NBC until September 7, 2007, making the show clock on NBC at eight years, two months and two days. "Santa Barbara" lasted from July 30, 1984 to January 15, 1993, clocking in at eight years, five months and 17 days, beating the run of "Passions" on NBC. "Texas" ran from August 4, 1980 to December 31, 1982, and "Sunset Beach" ran from January 6, 1997 to December 31, 1999, not even making the three year mark!
In the first half of the year 2024, CBS announced a new daytime soap opera with the title "Beyond The Gates," which means one of their shows has to go, and it's "The Talk" that will be ending on December 20, 2024. "Gates" will take over the "Talk" slot on February 24, 2025.
© 1995-2025. davesfunstuff.com. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this website without expressed written consent is prohibited.
