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In the age of digital streaming and on-demand cable television, fewer shows are managing to stave off elimination despite the unparalleled access many viewers have to endless catalogs of available programming.
While the daytime drama has long been a benchmark and a tool for networks to fill daytime timeslots with appealing content, only a handful have sustained the rigors of the television rating monster. Two soap opera series that can flex their muscles better than others include “The Young and the Restless” and the longest-running soap in production, “General Hospital.”
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Still airing 46 years after it premiered on March 26, 1973, “The Young and the Restless” continues to be a driving force for CBS. A series regular since her debut on the drama, Melody Thomas Scott has portrayed "Nikki" since 1981. Scott spoke to Fox News about the show’s ability to remain relevant for nearly a half-century.
Melody Thomas Scott attends The Hollywood Museum hosts lobby tribute "Remembering Lucy" to Lucille Ball at The Hollywood Museum on April 24 2019 in Hollywood, Calif. (Photo by Gabriel Olsen/Getty Images)
“Well, of course, we love when people grow up with it because that just creates another generation of fan and it keeps going and going and going. We're very fortunate,” said Scott, 63, who recently celebrated her 40th anniversary as a cast member. “They said I’d never last, and yet here we are 40 years later,” she added.
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Scott felt it necessary to tout the show’s longevity, considering many of its counterparts have come and gone in the years since its inception, and viewers have been born and bred watching the countless romances and storylines surrounding its characters.
“There are only four soaps on the air anymore. There used to be 17. So we're very proud to still be number one and still be on the air. And I think there are reasons that we are still on the air, if I do say so myself – nothing to do with me,” Scott quipped.
L-R Melody Thomas Scott, Eric Braeden and Christian Le Blanc at The Paley Center for Media on November 10, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Renard Garr/Getty Images)
“But it's always been the finest and looks the most luscious, I think, than any other show. And the audience, they're not sophisticated enough to say ‘Oh, well their lighting is better and their camera work is [better].’ They don't know any of that. They just know that when they watch it, they love to look at the screen and see what everything is itself. And we have great actors and great writing.”
The Daytime Emmy-nominated actress said she has many memories of being a young performer in Hollywood and spending hours on Hollywood Boulevard – even pointing up to a second-floor window atop the Hollywood Museum where she recalled sitting up in a window seat watching the Christmas parade with her drama coach year after year.
“It was a different time. Los Angeles was a different city then. Yeah, there were hippies, but you know they were peaceful. There was nothing to be alarmed about," Scott lamented. "It was just a more innocent time and nobody was really afraid of anything. And in Hollywood was still something exciting, something that everybody wanted to be a part of. And I felt so lucky."
Still, Scott said her biggest career accomplishment is that she’s remained employed on “The Young and the Restless” for four decades.
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“I suppose I should say my 40th anniversary of 'Y&R,' shouldn't I?” Scott joked when pressed about her achievements. “I mean, it just happened and it was an amazingly wonderful time, wonderful day. I'm still writing thank you notes from all the gifts I got. So, that was an extreme highlight. But I've had so many wonderful breaks in my career and I started when I was three years old. I could start telling you names, TV shows way before you were born. It would mean nothing to you.”
A Daytime Emmy Award-winning actress and “General Hospital” regular, Carolyn Hennesy echoed Scott’s sentiment about the allure and pull of the modern soap opera, adding that viewers simply “know our characters better than they know their own biological family.”
Carolyn Hennesy stars as Diane Miller in the soap opera series "General Hospital." (Suzette Troche-Stapp)
“We're their family. We are sometimes more of their family. They can count on us to deliver more than they can count on their family,” explained Hennesy, 56, who has 38 seasons and 450 episodes as "Diane Miller" to her credit in addition to a glut of other film and television projects.
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“We are a trusted commodity. And that's why they get hooked in and it plays on, you know -- their desire for love and their desire for sex and their desire for revenge and for wealth. And all of the poignant moments too. But you can count on us every single day.”
Other daytime dramas still currently airing new episodes include, “Days of Our Lives” (54 seasons) and “The Bold and the Beautiful” (32 seasons), the former of which is NBC’s longest-running series in the network's history and the second longest-running daytime soap still in production.
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