ABC Daytime 50th Anniversary

The network had to make this move because of the huge profits CBS and NBC were making in mornings and afternoons from advertisers, as well as the need to give another incentive for local stations to join ABC. To encourage skeptical advertisers, most of whom already declined to sponsor the network’s nighttime shows due to low ratings, ABC told them to run their commercials would rotate throughout ABC’s daytime lineup in a month and thus receive exposure on each show at least one time in that period. That sort of exposure was novel and attracted big advertisers such as Proctor and Gamble. By the time “Operation Daybreak” launched, ABC had almost $50 million in advertising dollars to support its schedule.

“Operation Daybreak” offered the same amount of programming hours that NBC provided to its stations - six - and just a half hour or so less than CBS. (CBS ran from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. with 1:05-1:30 p.m. reserved for its affiliates to do news or whatever programming after the network’s national headlines update; NBC also ran from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. but took off the 1-2 p.m. hour. ABC left open the 1:30-2 p.m. and 2:30-3 p.m. slots.)

The new shows involved a lot of old faces and/or premises. They were:

• 1) Day in Court, a knockoff of CBS’s daytime hit The Verdict is Yours, where actors portrayed virtually everyone involved in a trial, from 11-11:30 a.m.;
• 2) The Peter Lind Hayes Show, starring a comedian/actor who had substituted often for Arthur Godfrey’s CBS 11-11:30 a.m. show, from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.;
• 3) Mother’s Day, an audience participation show hosted by Dick Van Dyke, just seen a few years earlier hosting The Morning Show on CBS, from 12:30-1 p.m.;
• 4) The Liberace Show, starring the pianist whose syndicated nighttime series from 1953-55 now aired in daytime reruns on several stations, from 1-1:30 p.m.; and
• 5) Chance for Romance, a odd matchmaker series involving psychologists hosted by John Cameron Swayze, NBC’s news anchor from 1948-56 followed by serving as commercial pitchman for Timex watches, from 2-2:30 p.m.

In addition, ABC brought over Beat the Clock from CBS daytime to run from 3-3:30 p.m. to rectify an odd setups - it had been running American Bandstand in that period, then went to Who Do You Trust? with Johnny Carson from 3:30-4 p.m. before returning to American Bandstand from 4-5 p.m. Now American Bandstand would run just from 4-5 p.m. The other adjustment was to install reruns of Tales of the Texas Rangers from 5-5:30 p.m. before The Mickey Mouse Club.

The confidence brimming about the launch of “Operation Daybreak” came crashing down to reality when ratings revealed all the newcomers were bombs. Chance for Romance was the first to be cancelled on Dec. 5, 1958 (after just eight weeks, making it the shortest-lived daily show ever to air on ABC before 5 p.m.). Its replacement was a relocated Day in Court. Then on Jan. 2, 1959, the curtain fell for Mother’s Day (Dick Van Dyke later recalled it was so awful that he auditioned for other work during its run). Play Your Hunch, a game show imported from CBS’s morning lineup, assumed its post.

Three months later, on April 10, 1959, The Peter Lind Hayes Show and The Liberace Show signed off, the former because of strong competition (Top Dollar and Love of Life on CBS and Concentration and Tic Tac Dough on NBC) and the latter because his reruns looked more polished than his live show. Their respective replacements were the half hour The George Hamilton IV Show (yet another castoff from CBS, this time from its Saturday noon-1 p.m. slot) and Music Bingo (a game show from NBC’s summer 1958 nighttime slate, previously installed at 2-2:30 p.m. daily on ABC).

By the end of 1959 the George Hamilton IV Show and Music Bingo were history, and ABC retreated its kickoff time to noon daily, still running until 6 p.m. except from 1:30-2 p.m. Its newest tack was reruns of other networks’ nighttime TV series - The Restless Gun from NBC, Love That Bob from both NBC and CBS, and The Gale Storm Show from CBS (the latter ABC also imported to be part of its nighttime lineup in the fall of 1959; unfortunately, it collapsed there opposite To Tell the Truth on CBS). ABC employed that tactic in the next two years (The Texan, Jane Wyman Presents), plus brought over two game shows from NBC, Queen for a Day and The Price is Right. As for other new game shows, variety shows and dramas, ABC tried its fair share, but none ran longer than two years except for Seven Keys (1961-64) and The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show (1962-65), the latter being a transfer from NBC. Indeed, at any time on the schedule, at least four shows on ABC daytime came from CBS or NBC originally.

The results of these efforts were not too impressive, even when ABC sliced off the 5-6 p.m. slot in 1961, and ratings remained flat except for its first soap opera, General Hospital, which began in 1963 and managed to surpass its NBC competition in 1964, the newly launched soap Another World. By the fall of 1964, of every $10 of advertising spent on network daytime programming, $5 went to CBS, $3 to NBC and $2 to ABC. Almost all ABC series finished third in their time slots, sometimes a distant third at that, and for much of 1964 it was unable to program shows from 1-2:30 p.m. (although it did move The Price is Right to start its lineup at 10:30 a.m.). With the network coming in first place in nighttime for the first few weeks of the 1964-65 season, this situation was untenable to ABC officials. Drastic changes had to be made, and they were.

From September 1964 to September 1965, ABC canned all but three daytime series: General Hospital, reruns of Father Knows Best and The Young Marrieds (which would end in March 1966). Slowly the network broke through with new hits - The Dating Game (late 1965), The Newlywed Game and Dark Shadows (1966) and One Life to Live (1968). At the end of 1968, ABC received an unexpected gift when Monty Hall transferred his Let’s Make a Deal, the first NBC series to make a dent in the ratings opposite As the World Turns, to the network in the same time slot. The ratings gains were so big that ABC finally moved up to second place in daytime in 1969, due also in part to it cutting its lineup back to start at noon rather than 10:30 a.m. with reruns of Bewitched.

In the 1970s ABC moved its startup time to 11:30 a.m. (CBS and NBC still started at 10 a.m., as they would into the 1990s) and fluctuated from first to third place as the race between the networks tightened. Every All My Children (1970), Password (1971) and Split Second (1972) it added as a hit were balanced out by losers like The Girl in My Life (1973), Blankety Blanks (1974) and The Neighbors (1975). It was not until 1978, when it lengthened All My Children, One Life to Live and General Hospital to one hour each, that ABC finally became #1 in daytime for an extended period. The news was not all good, however; ABC’s affiliates resisted expanding its daytime schedule, so the best it could do was to start at 11 a.m. rather than 11:30 and run to 4:30 p.m.

During the 1980s the All My Children-One Life to Live-General Hospital triumvirate held sway from 1-4 p.m., but other periods remained problematic. The Edge of Night, brought over from CBS in 1975, had fewer stations clearing it each year from 4-4:30 p.m., which led to its cancellation in 1984. Family Feud and Ryan’s Hope ran out of gas from noon-1 p.m. and went off, and the new soap Loving, begun in 1983, found few adherents. Nothing worked well from 11 a.m.-noon after The Love Boat reruns in the early 1980s, either.

By the end of the 1980s, CBS led ABC in daytime, a status that has remained since that time. It was not until 1997, when ABC added The View to its 11 a.m.-noon lineup and gave up programming from noon-1 p.m., that the network finalized its current daytime schedule.

The first half century of ABC’s daytime programming has had its fair share of dramatic ups and downs. For a full picture of their impact beyond this article, visit ABC’s Top 10 Greatest Daytime Programming Successes and ABC’s Top 10 Greatest Daytime Programming Mistakes.

50 Years of I Love Lucy

On Monday, Jan. 5, 1959, from 11-11:30 a.m. Eastern Time, CBS inaugurated daily reruns of its most successful 1950s series, I Love Lucy. The sitcom had spent six years on the nighttime schedule - from Oct. 15, 1951 through June 24, 1957 - and finished #1 four of those years, as well as #2 in the 1955-56 season (behind The $64,000 Question) and #3 in the 1951-52 season (behind Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts at #1 and The Texaco Star Theater at #2). It was truly a monster success there, and it would be the same in daytime.      

I Love Lucy was not the first sitcom to be rerun in daytime, nor even the first one on CBS. NBC had the distinction of doing the first, a series called Comedy Time that reran I Married Joan and some lesser NBC properties from 1956-58. CBS made its initial foray in the field in the fall of 1956 with Our Miss Brooks, which ran from 2-2:30 p.m. to replace the unimpressive Johnny Carson Show - yes, the future host of The Tonight Show at one time followed As the World Turns, believe it or not. Why CBS chose Our Miss Brooks over I Love Lucy is somewhat puzzling, given the latter’s ongoing and bigger popularity, and that CBS already repeated I Love Lucy on early Sunday and then Saturday evenings from 1955-56 with considerable success. Apparently CBS worried about overexposure for its top nighttime series and decided to go with a cancelled show instead.

Our Miss Brooks did not set the daytime world on fire. After a year CBS replaced it with a daytime edition of Beat the Clock. The network prospered in mornings and afternoon the next year with hit soaps and games, but the controversy in late 1958 over whether all the “big money” games were rigged in the face of many facing investigation (including The $64,000 Question) led CBS to can a couple in daytime, like Dotto and For Love and Money. That left room for new shows, ones that the network hoped would have no suspicions surrounding them. And what could be less on the up-and-up than the genuine comedy of Lucille Ball and company?

So at the start of 1959, CBS adjusted its morning lineup and moved Arthur Godfrey Time up a half hour to allow for the addition of I Love Lucy, while the latter also aired Thursdays from 7:30-8 p.m. (the show returned to nighttime reruns from September 1957 through September 1959). The reason for the move was that after dominating daytime for much of the time since he debuted in 1952, Godfrey had spent the last year or so losing to The Price is Right on NBC, leading to that network establishing a solid wall of game shows that challenged CBS considerably before 1 p.m., including Concentration, Tic Tac Dough and It Could Be You. In effect, I Love Lucy was installed to stop the bleeding on the CBS morning schedule.

The result did not destroy The Price is Right by any means - indeed, by the time I Love Lucy moved to 10-10:30 a.m. in March 1961, The Price is Right still held sway at its same time slot on NBC and was the second-highest rated daytime game show, behind Concentration. Yet the series had established its own considerable following, and to the relief of the CBS brass, the public did not hold anything against Ball when she divorced her I Love Lucy co-star and real life husband Desi Arnaz in May 1960. In fact, a month later CBS saturated viewers with the chance to watch I Love Lucy every day of the week.

In the summer of 1960, along with the daytime repeats, I Love Lucy popped up Saturday mornings from 11:30 a.m. to noon (it ran Saturday mornings from October 1959 through September 1960), and Sunday evenings from 10-10:30 p.m. under the series title Lucy in Connecticut, featuring the 1956-57 season episodes when the Ricardos moved to the suburbs (c’mon, you remember that!). The network apparently was having withdrawal pains facing the fact that the 1960-61 nighttime season would be its first one in nine years without having Lucy on at least a semi-regular basis (Lucy and her gang did occasional specials on The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse from 1957-60).

Getting back to daytime, Arthur Godfrey had to leave his show on April 24, 1959 for lung surgery. CBS replaced him with Sam Levenson, but ratings fell opposite Treasure Hunt on NBC, so he went off at the end of September 1959 to be replaced by repeats of another sitcom from Desilu Studios, December Bride. It performed better, and lasted in daytime until 1961. In the meantime, CBS never let Godfrey return to its morning lineup and began giving more thought to the viability of daytime sitcom reruns thanks to December Bride and I Love Lucy.

The explosion of daytime reruns came after I Love Lucy fended off Say When on NBC from 10-10:30 a.m. in the spring and summer of 1961, then moved a half hour later and eventually forced Play Your Hunch off NBC in 1963. By then, CBS had followed it with The Real McCoys (titled The McCoys in daytime) and Pete and Gladys in the morning hours, and the ratings advantage grew bigger, even with ABC trying to expand its presence in the period. All three shows won their time periods handily. After knocking off Word for Word and then What’s That Song? on NBC from 1963-65, CBS moved I Love Lucy up one more time in the fall of 1965, kicking off each morning slate from 10-10:30 a.m. It was just as popular as it had been the last few years, limiting Fractured Phrases on NBC to a fractured run of 13 weeks and keeping its follow-up Eye Guess a far runner-up in the period.

But on Feb. 10, 1966, there was at least one person very unhappy with the I Love Lucy reruns. CBS News President Fred W. Friendly wanted the network to pre-empt the show in favor of live coverage of hearings on Vietnam by the U.S. Senate, as ABC and NBC were doing. He was overruled and resigned in protest later that week.

Six months later, CBS finally retired I Love Lucy from daily rotation, replacing it with reruns of Candid Camera. No longer worried about shows in daytime reruns while still on the network, Candid Camera joined The Beverly Hillbillies and The Andy Griffith Show as holding this status on CBS, with The Dick Van Dyke Show from 11:30 a.m.-noon being the one exception on the lineup. Presumably that was the reason for I Love Lucy going off the air, even though the extra exposure did not prevent the nighttime Candid Camera from being cancelled at the end of the 1966-67 season. (Ironically, when Candid Camera repeats ended in the fall of 1968, CBS replaced it with reruns of Ball’s second series, The Lucy Show.) Anyhow, its daily run of seven and a half years remains a record for any repeats on a network

CBS brought I Love Lucy back one more time in 1967, on Sundays from 5-5:30 p.m., before ending Aug. 27, 1967. The series then was available for rerun on local stations, and many of them installed it on their daily schedules, particular CBS stations. By 1974 Mad magazine spoofed the network’s New York City affiliate WCBS by putting a mock I Love Lucy episode summary from the 1950s against one for the present day, with only difference being the former one aired at 9 p.m. on Channel 2 and the latter at 9 a.m.

Indeed, I Love Lucy thrived in the 1970s even as most other black-and-white series no longer found favor in repeats. It was so popular that a dance version of the I Love Lucy theme called “Disco Lucy” made the top 30 on the music charts in 1977.

Some markets ran it more than once daily, a rather groundbreaking move at the time, and one which Lucille Ball did not approve. “When I heard one day that I Love Lucy was rerun seven times a day in some areas, I didn’t like it - every time you turn on the water tap, you get me,” she told Cecil Smith in TV Book in 1977. Some speculated than Lucy resented that the series had a better reputation than her later shows, The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy. One thing is for sure, neither of those have had the durability of I Love Lucy in reruns, which continued strongly in the 1980s, 1990s and today, thanks in part to great exposure on Nick at Nite and TV Land as well as several local stations still carrying it.

Besides its record run, the daytime reruns of I Love Lucy on CBS established the network’s programming philosophy that, for better or worse, dominated its morning schedule from the fall of 1962 through the fall of 1972. It showed that some viewers preferred the old and familiar - even on its ninth rerun - than try a new show. Most importantly, it showed the durability of I Love Lucy itself, as it ended as a top-rated daily offering nine years after its last show was in production. No other program can or will match that achievement. It is a testament to the care and craft of everyone involved of I Love Lucy, a true TV classic.