After 60 years, it's still going

 

Like sands through the hourglass...

It debuted in 1965 and Days of Our Lives is still going strong. Well, as strong as it can living on a streaming app owned by NBC/Comcast, Peacock. In the past couple of years, the decision was made to move the show from public broadcast television to the Peacock app. I'm sure there was a financial reason for doing it, but it was a decision that many people hated. It's not hard to see why they hated the idea.

Before it was removed from television, it was one of the remaining four soaps still being broadcast. ABC Network has General Hospital. NBC had Days of Our Lives. CBS had two soaps...The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. Granted, out of all the remaining soaps, DAYS was the least awarded (sadly) and the ratings weren't the best. I think that is because of generations. Not the show Generations, which was a soap that was on NBC in the 2000s. It was controversial, but that's for another time. General Hospital has a very loyal and long time following. 

Like viewers of DAYS, GH has had viewers since its debut in 1963. It is a daytime ratings booster for ABC and I feel like it is in a perfect time slot that fits the schedules of younger people getting sucked into soaps. On CBS, Y&R airs earlier in the day which is more of a housewife time frame, unless someone takes a break long enough to watch. I'm speaking in terms of the Central Time Zone where Y&R airs from 11am till noon. The state news is at noon for 30 minutes and then B&B airs for 30 minutes. This used to be perfect timing when soaps were a common thing on daytime television. After B&B, As The World Turns aired from 1pm to 2pm and then The Guiding Light was from 2pm to 3pm. For moms that didn't want their kids to watch soaps, that was perfect timing for the kids to get home and the television to be smut free. That's not the case for the Eastern Time Zone where the shows air an hour later. The Guiding Light was coming on here just as the kiddies were getting home. Those were the days.

I'm currently watching the DAYS episode from May 19th of this year. I'm a month behind! Thing is with soaps...you can be a month or more behind and almost pick up where you left off if you don't have the ability to view past episodes. I have the Peacock app for that reason and to see all the other shows and movies on it. I mean...who doesn't like Murder She Wrote?! 

Anyway, for a show that's been on for 60 years, one would wonder how someone could keep up with stories and timelines. Maybe that's my superpower. I used to watch DAYS with my mom as a child and things stuck. I remember weddings, killings, evil doings, and births. I can weirdly sit down and draw out a family tree of all the families on the show. The Horton, Dimera, Brady, Johnson, and the Kiriakis families are pretty much all tied together through marriages, affairs, and other life events. We see that in real life. People say it's just smut, but hey, soaps only get their cues from real life. The only thing that isn't real life is the snatching of babies from the hospital, switching blood test results to make baby daddies think they aren't, or someone dying nine different times and coming back until the actor dies in real life. That really happened. On both DAYS and GH! Not the frequency, but the coming back from the dead bit. On GH, it may not have been death, but they wouldn't go away and stay away. The Cassadine family was as ruthless as the Dimera family is on DAYS. There always has to be a villain or there wouldn't be a story. It's always conflict - resolution.

I'm pretty sure no one is going to read this, or if they do, they won't get this far. I could go on and on about DAYS because I love its history. It's not a girly thing to love a soap. It's a program and I've watched it for a long time. These characters are somewhat family to me now. The good ones and the bad ones equally have a place in my brain. There are characters that I hate with a fiery passion and there are those that I love with as much passion. The ones on it presently aren't the worst. There have been some crazy ones through the years...Satan being one of them. That storyline went on for way too long. Thankfully, that writer is gone and has been replaced by writers that understand the history of the show and want to incorporate it into current lines. I appreciate that and hope they continue. I've seen enough dying and coming back to last me the rest of my life. New characters are needed to keep the show going and the interest in it to continue. There are people from the past that could be brought back and there are children of the families that could also be brought back or even shown for the first time. That's a financial issue and one that DAYS has been worried about for years. Hopefully Sony will continue to be a part of the production along with the Corday family that started the show.