The Doctors (1963 TV series)

The Doctors
The title card used from 1980 to 1982.
Created by	Orvin Tovrov
Starring	James Pritchett Elizabeth Hubbard Ann Williams David O'Brien
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	5280
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Original release
Network	NBC
Release	April 1, 1963 – December 31, 1982

The Doctors is a soap opera which aired on NBC from April 1, 1963, to December 31, 1982. There were 5280 episodes produced, with the 5000th episode airing in November 1981. The series was set in Hope Memorial Hospital in the fictional "Madison," located somewhere in New England.

From anthology to serial

Originally, The Doctors was not supposed to be a conventional soap opera. It first aired in 1963 for a trial run as an anthology series with self-contained episodes about medical emergencies. When the show was brought back in 1964, the show adopted a serial form of storytelling. For most of the series, storylines revolved around Chief of Staff Matthew Powers (played by James Pritchett).

Storylines

The Doctors was considered to be more risqué in storyline choices than its rival, General Hospital (which premiered on the same day). 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 much more cutthroat.

For example, Dr. Powers was put on trial for murder, was forced to rescind his Chief of Staff position, and became very depressed. Another doctor took over Powers' spot and immediately schemed to remove his allies, such as Dr. Althea Davis, from positions of influence in the hospital. In another storyline, one doctor's nurse found out that he killed his rival and made it look like suicide. When he discovered that she knew the truth, he tormented her every day at work until she committed suicide herself, allowing him to get away with the murder.

Another medical storyline that was notable on the show was that of cancer. Doreen Aldrich (played by Jennifer Wood and then by Pamela Lincoln), suffered from leukemia.

Awards and production

In 1972 and 1974, the serial received a Daytime Emmy for Best Drama. In the years following, announcer Mel Brandt 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.

For most of its run, The Doctors was packaged and sponsored by the Colgate-Palmolive company through its Channelex division; in September 1980, NBC took over production in-house.

Broadcast history

The popularity of The Doctors began flourishing in the late 1960s, when it was featured in advertisements for NBC's 90-minute serial block. NBC aired the show in the timeslot of 2:30 p.m. Eastern/1:30 Central, in between Days of our Lives and Another World, two highly rated shows. Aside from succeeding an 18-month-long early effort by entertainment mogul Merv Griffin to establish a daytime talk show when it premiered, The Doctors did not leave its timeslot for nearly sixteen years. This is an extraordinary feat for daytime shows of its day, especially since some of its victims in the ratings were long-running favorites such as CBS' House Party with Art Linkletter and ABC's Dating Game. Broadcasting history's longest-running soap opera, CBS' The Guiding Light, also competed against The Doctors on several occasions.

From the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, The Doctors was among the higher-rated soap operas of its time. In the 1973-1974 television season, the show peaked at fourth place, 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. This was partly attributed to two soaps with which The Doctors shared its timeslot: One Life to Live and Guiding Light, expanding to an hour in consecutive years. ABC expanded One Life to Live from 45 minutes to an hour in 1976 and CBS expanded Guiding Light to an hour in length in 1977. In 1979, the ratings for The Doctors took another hit after NBC decided to extended its own soap opera, Another World, to 90 minutes from 60. This necessitated an earlier start time for Another World, which aired at 3:00 PM at the time, and a move of The Doctors to 2:00 PM, which alienated many of the series' longtime followers. However, the ratings drop was not as severe, as The Doctors finished the season just two-tenths of a point lower in the Nielsen ratings. Still, the move after nearly sixteen years did cause some damage to the ratings, and the worst was yet to come.

In August 1980, NBC moved The Doctors to a timeslot that caused a much larger ratings decline. On August 4, 1980, The Doctors moved from 2:00 PM EST to 12:30 PM EST to make room for Texas, a spinoff of Another World. The hit youth-oriented Ryan's Hope on ABC and the long-running Search for Tomorrow on CBS were already airing in that timeslot, and several NBC affiliates preempted the entire 12:00 PM hour to air local newscasts and various other syndicated programming. With the loss of affiliates and the solid performance of the other two soaps in the timeslot, The Doctors went from a 6.1 rating at the end of the 1980 season to a tie with Texas for last place with a 3.8 rating in 1981. The serial then finished with a 3.3 rating at the end of the 1982 season, leaving The Doctors in last place by itself.

On March 29, 1982, NBC moved The Doctors for a third time in as many years. This time, the move was made to accommodate the serial's former ratings rival, Search for Tomorrow. Search had been moved from its 12:30 PM timeslot to accommodate an earlier starting time for The Young and the Restless and moved to 2:30 PM. Series producer Procter & Gamble was not happy and insisted on getting its old timeslot back, but CBS would not budge and elected not to renew Search when its contract came up in early 1982. NBC was willing to give the (at the time) longest running television soap opera the slot. In a complicated switch, Search switched networks and took over for Password Plus on NBC's daytime schedule, while The Doctors was moved into the 12:00 noon slot Password Plus had given up after its cancellation. The lost affiliate problem, which beset The Doctors upon moving to 12:30, grew when it moved to the noon timeslot, as many more markets preempted the first half of the hour for newscasts than they had the second half. In markets that did air The Doctors, the ratings were further eroded by the hit game show Family Feud on ABC and the first half of The Young and The Restless, which by then had become a major phenomenon in its own right, in certain time zones on CBS. The already-falling ratings for The Doctors plummeted to previously unheard of levels. NBC itself didn't help the situation; on April 26, 1982, NBC moved the dying Texas, which had never done well in the ratings, to 11:00 AM to serve as the lead-in for The Doctors. By the time NBC canceled the long running serial in 1982, it had reached a 1.6 in the Nielsens; this was the lowest level any soap opera had reached in the history of the rating system, breaking the record that the short lived 1970 soap The Best of Everything had set with a 1.8. The Doctors aired its final episode on December 31, 1982, some three months before it would have celebrated its 20th anniversary on NBC.

The 1.6 rating for The Doctors stood as an all-time low by itself for over twenty-seven years. However, the long-running Guiding Light, which ended its final year in September 2009, tied the mark with an identical rating. Those two soaps, along with The Best of Everything, Sunset Beach, Port Charles, and Passions, are the only network soaps to end their runs with a Nielsen rating below 2.0. Passions, Guiding Light, and Sunset Beach finished with a sub-2.0 Nielsen rating twice; and each of these series except Sunset Beach finished their final year with a sub-2.0 rating.

Cast

The five core characters during the series' run were:

• James Pritchett as Dr. Matt Powers
• Ann Williams, Bethel Leslie, and Lydia Bruce as Dr. Maggie Fielding Van Alen Powers
• David O'Brien as Dr. Steve Aldrich
• Carolee Campbell, and later Jada Rowland, as Carolee Simpson Allison Aldrich
• Elizabeth Hubbard (replaced briefly by Virginia Vestoff, 1969-1970) as Dr. Althea Davis

Several well-known actors and actresses had roles on The Doctors throughout its long run:

• Armand Assante as Dr. Mike Powers
• Hillary Bailey as Kit McCormick
• Alec Baldwin as Billy Aldrich (1980-1982)
• Ellen Burstyn as Dr. Kate Bartok
• Dixie Carter as Dr. Julie Pearson (1977-1982)
• Ted Danson as Dr. Mitchell Pearson (1977-1982)
• Julia Duffy as Penny Davis
• Jonathan Frakes as Tom Carroll
• Jock Gaynor as Dr. William Scott (1963-1964)
• Gil Gerard as Dr. Alan Stewart
• Kathryn Harrold as Nola Dancy Aldrich #1 (1975-1977)
• Adam Kennedy as Brock Hayden (1965)
• Louise Lasser as Jackie
• Franc Luz as Dr. John Bennett
• Nancy Stafford as Adrienne/Felicia Hunt (dual role)
• Anna Stuart as Toni Ferra Powers
• Kathleen Turner as Nola Dancy Aldrich #2(1977-1979)
• Thor Fields as Erich Aldrich #1 (1977-1981)
• Ian Ziering as Erich Aldrich #2 (1981-1982)
• Kim Zimmer as Nola Dancy Aldrich #3 (1980-1982)
• Chris Calloway as Ivy Gooding Dancy
• Rex Robbins as Murray Glover
• Kathy Bates as Phyllis
• Denise Nickerson as Katie Harris
• Victoria Racimo as Tia Mahala
• Katherine Glass as Mary Jane Match #3 (1978-1981)
• Meg Mundy as Mona Aldrich Croft (1971-1982)
• Jennifer Wood as Doreen Aldrich #1 (1975-1977)
• Pamela Lincoln as Doreen Aldrich #2 (1977-1979)
• Jocelyn Somers as Althea Davis #3 (1977-1981)

External links

• The Doctors at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com show