NBC was having a tough year: First, President Carter withdrew the U.S. Olympic Team from the 1980 Moscow Olympics. NBC had won the broadcasting rights and would now be unable to promote their new 1980 fall lineup to a huge summer audience. Second, Loren Michaels and the remaining members of the Saturday Night Live original cast had left the show. And third, there were strikes: the actors were on strike from July to October and there was the looming threat of a writers strike. Brandon Tartikoff, head of NBC Entertainment programming, would deliver winning seasons in a couple of years with hits like Cheers, The Cosby Show, and Miami Vice … but during this period of time, NBC was trailing the other two networks.
The problem? ABC had the top soap in every time period and our viewership was very light on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In terms of plot development, soap operas were extremely formulaic: Some members of the cast would put the week’s story in motion on Monday. On Tuesday, other members of the cast would discuss the event that occurred on Monday. Wednesday, some cast members would further the plot and on Thursday, other cast members would discuss what happened on Wednesday. Friday, there would be some conclusions and actions to set up the next week’s story. Viewers were watching our soaps on Tuesdays and Thursdays because they wouldn’t be missing anything on their favorite shows.
The solution: We decided to promote each of our four soaps like a movie of the week to increase interest in the storylines. During each soap, the entire lineup (The Doctors, Days of Our Lives, Another World, and Texas) would be promoted in one spot, but each of the other three soaps would have its own “movie of the week” spot. The strategy was to hook the Tuesday viewers of NBC soaps with interesting storylines and bring them back on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Due to the perfect storm resulting from unanticipated events, the network was looking to daytime programming to generate revenue. Daytime was the most profitable network daypart for all three networks because most soap operas were produced by Procter & Gamble and the FCC allowed more advertising during the daytime than prime time. During this tough year, our mission was to improve the ratings and rankings of the NBC daytime lineup.
