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Port Charles

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Port Charles was a soap opera which aired on ABC from June 1, 1997 to October 3, 2003. The show aired 1633 episodes, which included a two-hour pilot which kicked off the series, aired in primetime.

The show was a spin-off of the popular General Hospital. It first featured seven interns in a competitive medical school program. In the first episode, tenured nurse Audrey Hardy (played first on General Hospital by Rachel Ames, who reprised the role on the new serial) was injured and an intern had to operate on her with a power drill to save her life. In the first few years, Port Charles got a reputation for focusing most of its energies on the medical school program, setting more of its main action in Port Charles General Hospital than was seen on the parent show, General Hospital.

Over the years, Port Charles became a soap opera with complex younger characters and ended up focusing on stories about forbidden love, vampires, and resurrection to life after death. The soap opera switched from the regular writing format, instead creating thirteen-week story arcs which are more commonly used on Spanish telenovelas. This allowed the cast, crew, and writing staff to only work six months out of the year.

The show was canceled in the summer of 2003; some fans speculated that it was due to the fact that the show was nominated for Best Daytime Drama and lost at the Daytime Emmy Awards to As the World Turns. In reality, the show, which was owned by ABC, was losing money with each week and was not aired in many parts of the country. This, in turn, brought down ratings and halted revenue.

Since the show only taped for six months out of the year, the remaining episodes were aired with the cast not allowed to return to tape resolutions to storylines. In fact, the final episode was a cliffhanger; heroine Alison (Erin Hershey Presley) didn't know who the father of her baby was.

After the show was cancelled, many former cast members went on to star on another soaps. Currently on different soaps are Kin Shriner (As the World Turns as Keith Morrissey), Julie Pinson (Days of our Lives as Billie Reed), Kelly Monaco (General Hospital as Samantha McCall), Thorsten Kaye (All My Children as Zach Slater), Michael Easton (One Life to Live as John McBain), Ian Buchanan (All My Children as Dr. Greg Madden) and Marie Wilson (As the World Turns as Meg Snyder).

Cast of characters

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