The NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives will become a Peacock exclusive starting on September 12th, ending its 57-year run on broadcast television. NBC has also made the decision to forgo the not-insignificant advertising revenue that it gets from the NBC programs that appear the next day on Hulu in order to move that encore window to Peacock starting next month.
There are now only three daytime soaps left on American broadcast televisions. Those are ABC’s General Hospital and CBS’ The Young and the Restless, and The Bold and the Beautiful. The news, courtesy of Vulture, comes as two other major broadcast titles, Thursday Night Football and ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, also prepare to shift to streaming in the fall.
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Speculation over Days switching to streaming has been occurring for some time now. Days, produced by Corday Prods. in association with Sony Pictures Television, has managed to dodge cancellation multiple times during the past 15 years, with Sony and NBC often engaging in last-minute netagotiations to hammer out deals.
Of the four remaining network daytime dramas, Days has been the least-watched for years now. Naturally, that makes it more difficult for NBC execs to justify renewing the show absent reduced license fees, which Sony has been able to deliver for the most part. However, the Days audience remains incredibly loyal, with NBCU/Peacock execs hoping that they will follow the show to Peacock.
Related: John Clarke Dies, Days of Our Lives Star Was 88
Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
Peacock has made a point of trying to target the various fandoms of something in order to build its subscriber base. For instance, they spent a lot of money to become the home of WWE on streaming. However, despite a strong first quarter, thanks in part to the Super Bowl, Olympics, Bel-Air, and Marry Me, Peacock’s growth has stalled during the spring, bringing new urgency to NBCU having to grow its subscriber base.
“This programming shift benefits both Peacock and NBC and is reflective of our broader strategy to utilize our portfolio to maximize reach and strengthen engagement with viewers. With a large percentage of the Days of Our Lives audience already watching digitally, this move enables us to build the show’s loyal fan base on streaming while simultaneously bolstering the network daytime offering with an urgent, live programming opportunity for partners and consumers,” chairman of NBCUniversal Television and Streaming Mark Lazarus said of the decision.
Peacock has already tested Day’s ability to woo customers through a couple of Days-branded miniseries aired exclusively on the platform. While there’s no official word on how well the specials performed, the fact that the Peacock execs pushed to get the show as a streaming exclusive suggests that it did well.
NBC pioneered the soap genre 73 years ago with the launch of 1949’s These Are My Children, widely credited as the first-ever daytime sudser on TV. Now, NBC will fill the gap left by Days using a new one-hour news program, NBC News Daily, anchored by Kate Snow, Aaron Gilchrist, Vicky Nguyen, and Morgan Radford.
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