| Texas | |
|---|---|
Series title card |
|
| Genre | Soap opera |
| Created by | John William Corrington Joyce Hooper Corrington Paul Rauch |
| Starring | Beverlee McKinsey Bert Kramer Daniel Davis |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of episodes | 617 |
| Production | |
| Camera setup | Single-camera |
| Running time | 48 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Procter & Gamble Productions |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original run | August 4, 1980 – December 31, 1982 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Another World |
Texas is an American daytime soap opera which aired on NBC from August 4, 1980 until December 31, 1982. Created by John William Corrington, Joyce Hooper Corrington, and Paul Rauch, the show is a spinoff of Another World. It is the first daytime soap opera to air hour-long episodes from its inception.
Contents |
The Corringtons' initial concept was for a show set in the Antebellum South entitled "Reunion", but NBC wanted something more in line with the hugely successful primetime soap Dallas.[1] Rauch then chose to have the show revolve around the popular Another World character Iris Cory Carrington, played by Beverlee McKinsey. Iris initially set out to visit her grown son Dennis (Jim Poyner), who had relocated from Bay City to Houston. Within a matter of weeks, Iris became involved with her first love, Alex Wheeler (Bert Kramer). A slew of characters debuted on Another World in hopes that when they moved over to Texas they would take fans with them. The show had a difficult task from the beginning, as the series' main timeslot competitors were General Hospital, then at its most popular, and Guiding Light, which was going through a resurgence and enjoying great ratings at the time as well.
Critics complained that Iris (who was known on Another World as being a villainess) had become too tame, and that other roles were poorly cast or suffered from paper-thin writing. In early 1981, the Corringtons were replaced as head writers.[1] Other casting moves were made with little gain, such as hiring away General Hospital star Kin Shriner at great expense, only to give him almost nothing to do until he finally left. To contribute to the show's music characters' storyline, real-life country artists such as Johnny Paycheck and Tom T. Hall made appearances as themselves.
In November 1981, McKinsey left the show and the secondary characters seen in the first year were given more story. Texas lost one million viewers upon McKinsey's departure. While Another World, which also lost a million viewers upon her 1980 departure, could afford the drop in ratings, Texas could not, and its days were numbered. To try to appeal to the younger audience, the show rechristened itself Texas: The New Generation. In the daytime ratings for 1980 - 1981 season, Texas achieved a 3.8, tied with The Doctors at the 12th position. Its contenders Guiding Light had an 8.2 ratings, 4th position, as opposed to General Hospital's 11.4, the highest rated soap opera, respectively. In its second season it fell to a 3.6 rating. At the end of its broadcast season it ended with a 2.7, 12th out of 14 daytime serials. The total viewers for the first two seasons was at 2.8 million followed by a dropped to 2.2 million in the final season. Texas was more popular in Canada, topping the daytime ratings charts for many weeks.[1]
In 1982, Gail Kobe became executive producer and Pam Long (who appeared on the show as Ashley Linden Marshall) became Head Writer. The show began to improve in quality, but the ratings in the United States remained in the basement.[1]
The last episodes featured a Christmas miracle (snow fell in Houston as Long's character Ashley and her unborn baby, who had been presumed dead after a flash flood, returned home to loving husband Justin) and a New Year's series finale where the local TV station was bought out and all the major characters were fired. The Doctors also aired its last episode on this day. The final scene was a bittersweet final toast, "to Texas!" Executive producer Kobe and writer Long would go on to make their mark on Guiding Light for much of the 1980s.
Production staff on Texas included Tim Cagney, Carolyn Culliton, Charles Edwards, Richard Gullieth, Pamela Hammer, John Knutz, Michele Poteet, Dorothy Purser, Samuel D. Radcliffe, Paul Rader, Eric Rubinton, Gary Tomlin, Joyce Corrington, William Corrington, Paul Rauch, Gail Kobe, Bud Kloss, Judy Lewis, Robert Calhoun, Mary S. Bonner, John P. Whitesell, Kevin Kelly, John Pasquin, Bruce M. Minnix, and Andrew D. Weyman.
The premiere Texas came at a time when NBC's daytime lineup (consisting of Another World, Days of our Lives, and The Doctors) had fallen into ratings trouble, after a highly successful period in the early and mid-1970s. The show aired from 3:00-4:00 PM (EST) and caused a small domino effect on the NBC daytime schedule: Another World, which had previously aired from 2:30-4:00 PM, was scaled back to 60 minutes and aired from 2:00-3:00 PM. The Doctors, which aired from 2:00-2:30 PM, moved to 12:30-1:00 PM.
Thanks in no small part to the success of ABC's General Hospital, Texas remained in the bottom echelon of the ratings chart, tying with The Doctors for last place in 1980. However, the show's numbers fell gradually after its first year. The struggles of Texas also had an impact on the ratings of its mother show, Another World, in such a way that the latter show would no longer be NBC's highest rated soap.
By April 1982, the ratings for Texas were at a critical low point, and NBC, as part of a reshuffling of its morning lineup and a last ditch effort to save the show, moved Texas to the 11:00 AM slot, which the hit game show Wheel of Fortune had oreviously occupied. As part of this shuffle, NBC moved Wheel of Fortune to 10:30 AM and cancelled Blockbusters and Battlestars. However, this move failed to help Texas in the ratings in any way. In fact, the ratings problems for Texas may have been exacerbated by NBC's move. Although Texas would no longer face off against General Hospital at 3:00 PM, it found itself in a head-to-head duel with CBS' hit game show, The Price is Right. While Wheel of Fortune did cut somewhat into The Price is Right's ratings at 11, Texas was unable to make even the slightest dent in that time slot due to the latter's popularity. Therefore, NBC cancelled Texas and the still-struggling The Doctors (which had been bumped up to Noon to make room for Search for Tomorrow at 12:30 PM) on December 31, 1982. Strangely enough, Somerset, the first spin-off of Another World, aired its finale on the same date six years earlier.
NBC would experiment with other programming in the 3 PM timeslot after the move of Texas, as two sixty-minute game shows would occupy the slot over a period of nearly two years. The first of these game shows, Fantasy, ran for thirteen months and ended its run in October 1983 to make room for the Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour, which was cancelled in July 1984. NBC's next offering in that timeslot was the soap Santa Barbara, which ran for nine seasons and was also the last network program NBC aired in that slot; following Santa Barbara's cancellation in 1993, NBC returned the hour to its affiliates.
Soon after Texas' cancellation, cable's TBS began re-airing the show in a weekday morning timeslot, but shown in 30-minute episodes, versus one-hour installments[2] These airings of Texas were paired with a new half hour soap, The Catlins, which was one of the few made-for-cable soaps.
In 2006, Procter & Gamble began making several of its soaps available, a few episodes at a time, through America Online's AOL Video service, downloadable free of charge.[3] Reruns of Texas episodes began with the show's first episode from August 4, 1980.
As of January 1, 2009, Procter & Gamble announced that Texas and three other of its cancelled soap operas would no longer be streamed on AOL Video.[4] The notice referred to exploring other options to make the shows available for viewing. The last Texas episode made available through AOL Video was #339, which originally aired on December 4, 1981. Thanks to the Internet, numerous clips of the show are available at viewers' convenience on YouTube.
There are known to be five missing episodes so far:
Episodes 78-163 were once available at AOL, but removed sometime in spring 2008.
Although episodes 1-77 are still available through the WMV stream URLs, AOL has completely removed the embedded player pages at the website.