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.