Dumb Daytime Moves--Moving "The Edge of Night" and the subsequent move to ABC

Before I get into the main plot of this blog entry, let me give you a little back-story.

"The Edge of Night" was the second 30-minute soap opera to air on daytime television (soap operas before then were a scant 15 minutes in length per episode). The first 30-minute soap, just for the phonograph, was "As the World Turns," which will be going off the air tomorrow (or depending on when you read this entry, is already off the air). Both soaps debuted on the CBS Television Network on April 2, 1956, with ATWT airing at 1:30 Eastern Time, and "The Edge of Night" airing at 4:30 Eastern Time. "The Edge of Night" was originally going to be an adaptation of "Perry Mason," which was very popular in radio and literary formats at the time. However, disagreements between the network and Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, would lead to a similar, but different format for the show. "Perry Mason," BTW, would eventually appear on television, in a prime-time drama on CBS from 1957 to 1966.

But I'm getting a bit off-track here. Unlike most soap operas, which dealt with domestic and romantic issues, Edge's main focus was crime, and due to that, as well as its late afternoon timeslot, the show's audience was slated to be, at one point, 50% male. In 1963, the show moved to 3:30 P.M., where it continued to dominate, even against ABC hits "Dark Shadows" and "One Life to Live," as well as NBC's hit game show "You Don't Say." Edge's downfall, however, began on Labor Day, 1972.

CBS was revamping its daytime schedule, replacing its morning sitcom reruns with television game shows (The Joker's Wild at 10:00 AM, The Price is Right at 10:30, and Gambit at 11:00), as well as shifting its soap operas that aired between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM.  You can see where the soaps aired before and after the timeslot change below...

CBS Daytime Schedules
Friday, September 1, 1972
2:00 PM--Love is a Many Splendored Thing (debuted September 18, 1967)
2:30 PM--The Guiding Light
3:00 PM--The Secret Storm
3:30 PM--The Edge of Night

Monday, September 4, 1972
2:00 PM--The Guiding Light
2:30 PM--The Edge of Night
3:00 PM--Love is a Many Splendored Thing
3:30 PM--The Secret Storm

Why the change, you ask?  Well, Procter and Gamble (the company that produced As the World Turns, Guiding Light, and The Edge of Night) wanted all of its soaps to air in one continuous block (although there was no network programming on between 1:00 PM and 1:30 PM).  Because of this move, Edge no longer had as large a male audience as it had during its first 16-and-a-half years on the air.  By 1975, it was the lowest-rated soap on the CBS daytime lineup, so the network told P&G that it was canceling Edge to make room for an extra half-hour of "As the World Turns".  However, this was not the end of "The Edge of Night," as it would end up on ABC's daytime lineup on December 1, 1975, at 4:00 PM Eastern Time.  It would remain in that slot during its last nine years on the air, although its ratings were never as high as they were on CBS.

But wouldn't be the only time a timeslot change for a CBS soap would ultimately lead to it leaving the network...