Beginning on March 2, 1964, The Doctors ceased its experimental anthology format and became a traditional continuing serial, like all the other daytime dramas on air at the time.[2]
For most of the series, storylines revolved around Hope Memorial Hospital and its patriarchChief of staff Dr. Matt Powers (played by James Pritchett), who started on the program on July 9, 1963, although Pritchett originally appeared on the series during its weekly anthology period, in another role.[3]
The cast for the original daily concept, which lasted from the premiere on April 1, 1963, until July 19, 1963, was:[4]
Jock Gaynor as Dr. William Scott (April 1, 1963 – July 19, 1963, premiere cast)
Richard Roat as Dr. Jerry Chandler (April 1, 1963 – January 17, 1964, premiere cast)
Margot Moser as Dr. Elizabeth Hayes (April 1, 1963 – July 19, 1963, premiere cast)
Fred J. Scollay as Rev. Sam Shafer (April 1, 1963 – 1966, premiere cast)
The early cast for the second, weekly concept, which lasted from July 22, 1963, until February 28, 1964, was:[4]
Richard Roat as Dr. Jerry Chandler (April 1, 1963 – January 17, 1964, premiere cast)
Fred J. Scollay as Rev. Sam Shafer (April 1, 1963 – 1966, premiere cast)
James Pritchett as Dr. Matt Powers (July 22, 1963 – December 31, 1982)
Rex Thompson as Michael Powers (July 22, 1963 – 1966)
Ann Williams as Dr. Maggie Fielding (July 22, 1963 – May 25, 1965)
Ruth McDevitt as Mrs. McMurtrie (Rev. Shafer's housekeeper) (September 16, 1963 - July 9, 1964)
Charles Braswell as Alec Fielding (January 20 – February 11, 1964)
Scott Graham as Dr. Johnny McGill (January 20, 1964 – December 1964)
Joan Anderson as Nora Hansen Lloyd (March 9, 1964 – 1966)
Storylines
In the program's early years, The Doctors was considered to be more bold in storyline choices than its primary rival at the time, General Hospital (which premiered on the same day, with a similar premise to TD). While the doctors on General Hospital worked in harmony with one another for the most part and in some cases were intimate friends, the physicians on The Doctors were shown in stories that balanced personal and professional concerns. Some doctors were depicted as competitive and cutthroat. The Doctors incorporated humor and realism into its storylines, and remained anchored to actual medical work in its setting.[citation needed]
For example, when Matt Powers was on trial for murder, he was forced to rescind his Chief of Staff position. His successor schemed to remove his allies, such as Dr. Althea Davis, from positions of influence in the hospital. Althea's stories included her challenges as a female doctor working with a mainly male staff; one story outlined how Althea's divorce was discussed by the board as a moral issue in a way that no male doctor's personal life had ever been discussed.[citation needed]
James Pritchett (Matt Powers) and Elizabeth Hubbard (Althea Davis) with ten years worth of scripts on the show's tenth anniversary April 1st 1973
Awards and production
In 1972 and 1974, the serial received a Daytime Emmy Award for Best Drama. During that period until a new opening sequence was created in 1977, announcer Mel Brandt (who was also known for his announcing the animated "Laramie Peacock" color opening in the 1960s and 1970s) would inform the audience at the beginning of each episode: "And now, The Doctors, (The Emmy-Award winning program) dedicated to the brotherhood of healing." The iconic theme song "Patterns", which was updated with a new version in 1977 and 1979, stayed with the program through August 1, 1980 and was composed by in-house musician Bob Israel at Score Productions. It debuted with the episode which aired on May 24, 1971.[5]
Episodes of The Doctors were originally taped in black and white at Studio 3B, one of NBC's production studios at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City. It was the last NBC daytime serial to transition from black and white to color on October 17, 1966.[6]
From the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, The Doctors ranked as one of the top five daytime dramas in the United States. It peaked at fourth place in the 1973–1974 television season, behind CBS' As the World Turns and fellow NBC serials Days of our Lives and Another World. However, within a period of three years, The Doctors plummeted from fourth to eleventh in the ratings. The decline in ratings was partly attributed to two serials with which The Doctors shared its timeslot: ABC's One Life to Live and CBS's Guiding Light, which expanded to an hour in consecutive years; Guiding Light made this move in 1977, while One Life To Live along with fellow ABC soap General Hospital expanded in 1978.
As the 1978–79 season began, the entire NBC soap opera lineup was suffering in the ratings. While The Doctors was not alone in this, the network began a series of relocations involving the veteran serial that year, which would amplify the series' ratings trouble and eventually lead to its demise. The first move was done to help boost the ratings of Another World, which after tying for the top spot in the daytime serial ratings in 1978 had dropped to eighth place in 1979. In an unprecedented (and since unrepeated) move, NBC decided to extend Another World and make it the first serial to run for 90 minutes daily. The Doctors, as part of the schedule shuffle that ensued, was moved to 2:00/1:00p, which placed it against the second half of As The World Turns on CBS and the first half of One Life to Live on ABC. The ratings declined slightly, but NBC was not done.
Procter & Gamble Productions (PGP), the producers of Another World, began development on a new serial in 1980 that would evolve into a spin-off of that serial set in Houston. The new program, Texas, was picked up by NBC who envisioned it as a daytime version of CBS' hit primetime drama Dallas. NBC needed to free up one hour of its schedule for Texas, and did so by cutting the runtimes of Another World (which reverted to its previous 60-minute slot) and The David Letterman Show by 30 minutes each. Launching on August 4, 1980, Texas was placed in the 3:00/2:00p.m. hour with Another World moving to 2:00/1:00 to serve as its lead-in.
The Doctors was once again displaced as a result of the move, being shifted to the only open spot on the network's lineup, the 12:30p.m./11:30a.m. slot following Card Sharks. The noon hour would often see affiliates of the three major networks opt not to air their offerings for at least part of, if not all of, the timeslot and usually air a local newscast or some other programming, and The Doctors disappeared from some markets when it made the move. In addition, the 12:30 timeslot was a competitive one for the three networks. ABC's competition came from Ryan's Hope, which had been beating The Doctors by nearly a full ratings point in the overall rankings. The serial's competition on CBS originally consisted of the long-running Search for Tomorrow, which was also pulling in significantly higher ratings than The Doctors had been. In June 1981, CBS moved The Young and the Restless to 12:30 and the ratings faded even further. The Doctors fell to a 3.8 rating at the end of the 1980–81 season, which was tied for last place with Texas.
NBC had not completed its reshuffling of the daytime lineup, though, and a Procter & Gamble serial was again at the forefront for the latest shift. In addition to the aforementioned Another World and Texas, PGP was the production company for Search for Tomorrow. When The Young and the Restless was moved, it took over the timeslot that had been home to Search for Tomorrow since its 1951 premiere. PGP was not willing to renew its contract with CBS to continue carrying the serial unless the network was willing to move it back to its original time; as things stood, Search for Tomorrow was airing at 2:30/1:30, which placed it against the second half of its fellow PGP production Another World.
NBC, however, was willing to do what CBS would not and began negotiating with PGP to move the long-running serial to its daytime lineup. NBC agreed to return Search to 12:30p.m./11:30a.m., which it did upon moving to the network on March 29, 1982. Once again, this required a shuffling of the schedule. On the day Search for Tomorrow switch from CBS to NBC one final time change was made for The Doctors to 30 minutes earlier now starting at noon a time slot that had been occupied by Password Plus, which was cancelled to make room for Search for Tomorrow.
Both moves did not help matters, as NBC's serial lineup as a whole had been struggling for some time. The Doctors continued to be the lowest rated of the group, and the move to noon exacerbated the issue. The only serial ahead of it in the ratings was its new stablemate, which saw viewership drop by half after its move from CBS. NBC tried to remedy the situation by cancelling two more of its game shows, Battlestars and Blockbusters, and using that sixty minutes to relocate Texas, which had not found an audience, to 11:00/10:00a.m. on April 26, 1982, so it could serve as the lead in for the two veteran serials airing in the noon hour. The move did not work as all three serials finished with lower ratings; The Doctors saw its ratings cut even more, eventually falling below a 2.0.
NBC announced the cancellation of The Doctors (along with that of Texas) during the fall of 1982, and the last episode aired on December 31, 1982. The show once again finished in last place as part of the still-struggling NBC daytime lineup, which failed to see one of its serials finish in the top five in the final Nielsens for a fifth consecutive season. The ratings for The Doctors bottomed out at 1.6, less than half of what they were the year before and nearly one-fourth of what they were three years earlier. The final number broke a record set by the short-lived ABC soap The Best of Everything, which pulled a 1.8 rating at the conclusion of its only season in 1970; only Sunset Beach (1997–1999) and Passions (1999–2007), two later NBC serials, finished a season with a lower final rating.[citation needed]
The ninety minutes freed up by the cancellations of The Doctors and Texas were filled by game shows beginning the following Monday. The Doctors saw its place taken by Just Men!, which was cancelled after thirteen weeks. The noon timeslot would not receive a stable show until Super Password premiered in September 1984, which ran until March 1989.[citation needed]
In July 2014, Retro TV announced that it would begin broadcasting reruns of The Doctors in the latter half of the year, starting with episodes from December 1967.[7]
On September 29, 2014, the network began airing two episodes of The Doctors each weekday, starting at 12 p.m. (ET)/11 a.m. (CT).[8]
Retro TV started off their reruns of The Doctors in September 2014 with the episode which originally aired December 4, 1967,[9] and stopped its run of episodes with the December 31, 1979 episode on April 23, 2020, at which point syndication on Retro TV restarted with the December 4, 1967 episode on April 27.
Episodes from December 1967 to September 1980 are available to watch on demand for free at Retro TV's It's Real Good TV site. The October 1980-December 1982 episodes were not provided to them and are apparently no longer available.[10]
The Doctors has been distributed by SFM Entertainment, which has 4,865 episodes available for syndication, only 290 episodes short of the entire run.[11]
As of July 2018, Retro was running the series seven days a week, but from three different periods of time, with Monday through Friday with one time frame, and then Saturday and Sunday each with two additional respective time frames in the series.[citation needed]
The year 1970 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of notable television-related events in that year.
The year 1971 involved some significant events in television. Below is a list of notable TV-related events.
The year 1972 involved some significant events in television. Below is a list of notable television-related events.
The year 1974 involved some significant events in television. Below is a list of television-related events of that year.
The year 1975 involved some significant events in television. Below is a list of television-related events which happened that year.
The year 1968 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events in 1968.
The year 1966 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events in that year.
The year 1965 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events in 1965.
The year 1964 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events which occurred in that year.
Search for Tomorrow is an American television soap opera. It began its run on CBS on September 3, 1951, and concluded on NBC, 35 years later, on December 26, 1986.
Texas is an American daytime soap opera that aired on NBC from August 4, 1980 until December 31, 1982, sponsored and produced by Procter and Gamble Productions at NBC Studios in Brooklyn, New York City. It is a spin-off of Another World, co-created by head writers John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington, and executive producer of Another World at the time, Paul Rauch. Rauch held the title of executive producer for the parent series and its spin-off until 1981.
Gary Lockwood is an American actor. Lockwood is best known for his roles as astronaut Frank Poole in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and as Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell in the Star Trek second pilot episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (1966). He starred in the only American film by French New Wave director Jacques Demy, Model Shop. He played numerous guest television roles from the early 1960s into the mid 1990s, and played the title role in The Lieutenant (1963–1964).
Richard Evelyn Vernon was a British actor. He appeared in many feature films and television programmes, often in aristocratic or supercilious roles. Prematurely balding and greying, Vernon settled into playing archetypal middle-aged lords and military types while still in his 30s. He is perhaps best known for originating the role of Slartibartfast in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Other notable roles included the lead role of Edwin Oldenshaw in The Man in Room 17 (1965–67), Sir James Greenley alias "C" in The Sandbaggers (1978–80), and Sir Desmond Glazebrook in Yes Minister (1980–81) and its sequel series Yes, Prime Minister (1987).
Peter Jeffrey was an English actor. Starting his performing career on stage, he later portrayed many roles in television and film.
Bob Stewart was an American television game show producer. He was active in the TV industry from 1956 until his retirement in 1991.
ABC Daytime is a division responsible for the daytime television programming block on the ABC Network and syndicated programming. The block has historically encompassed soap operas, game shows and talk shows.
Sheela Celine is an Indian actress and director who appears predominantly in Malayalam cinema. Paired with Prem Nazir, they hold the Guinness World Record for acting in the largest number of films (130) together as heroine and hero. Sheela is a four-time winner of Kerala State Film Award. She came back to acting in 2003 through Manassinakkare after 22 years. In 2005, she won the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the Malayalam film Akale. In 2019, Sheela was honoured with the J C Daniel Award, the Kerala government's highest honour for outstanding contribution to Malayalam cinema. She was also one of the highest paid actresses, reportedly paid more than her male counterparts, of her time.
NBC Daytime was the daytime programming block of NBC. It historically featured many soap operas, game shows, and talk shows. Its main competitors were CBS Daytime (Paramount) and ABC Daytime (Disney).
In regard to children's programming, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) has aired mostly programming from Walt Disney Television or other producers. This article outlines the history of children's television programming on ABC including the various blocks and notable programs that have aired throughout the television network's history.
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