FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

All My Children (often shortened to AMC) is an American television soap opera that aired on ABC from January 5, 1970, to September 23, 2011, and on The Online Network (TOLN) from April 29 to September 2, 2013, via Hulu, Hulu Plus, and iTunes. Created by Agnes Nixon, All My Children is set in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, a fictional suburb of Philadelphia, which is modeled on the actual Philadelphia suburb of Rosemont. The original series featured Susan Lucci as Erica Kane, one of daytime television’s most popular characters. The title of the series refers to the bonds of humanity. All My Children was the first new network daytime drama to debut in the 1970s. Originally owned by Creative Horizons, Inc., the company created by Nixon and her husband, Bob, the show was sold to ABC in January 1975. The series started at a half-hour in per-installment length, then was expanded to a full hour on April 25, 1977. Earlier, the show had experimented with the full-hour format for one week starting on June 30, 1975, after which Ryan’s Hope premiered.

From 1970 to 1990, All My Children was recorded at ABC’s TV18 at 101 West 67th St, now a 50-story apartment tower. From March 1990 to December 2009, it was taped at ABC’s Studio TV23 at 320 West 66th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. In December 2009, the locale for taping the series moved from Manhattan to less costly Los Angeles, California. The show was then produced in Stages 1 and 2 at the Andrita Studios in Los Angeles, California, from 2010 to 2011, and then at the Connecticut Film Center in Stamford, Connecticut. All My Children started taping in high definition on January 4, 2010, and began airing in high definition on February 3, 2010. All My Children became the third soap opera to be produced and broadcast in high definition.

At one point, the program’s popularity positioned it as the most widely recorded television show in the United States. Also, in a departure from societal norms at the time, All My Children, in the mid-1970s, had an audience that was estimated to be 30% male. The show ranked No. 1 in the daytime Nielsen ratings in the 1978–79 season. Throughout most of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, All My Children was the No. 2 daytime soap opera on the air. However, like the rest of the soap operas in the United States, All My Children experienced unprecedented declines in its daytime ratings during the 2000s. By the 2010s, it had become one of the least watched soap operas in daytime television.

On April 14, 2011, ABC announced that it canceled All My Children after a run of 41 years due to low ratings. On July 7, 2011, ABC sold the licensing rights of All My Children to third-party production company Prospect Park with the show set to continue on the internet as a series of webisodes. The show taped its final scenes for ABC on August 30, 2011, and its final episode on the network aired on September 23, 2011, with a cliffhanger. On September 26, 2011, the following Monday, ABC replaced All My Children with a newly debuted talk show The Chew. Prospect Park had suspended its plan to revive the series on November 23, 2011, due to lack of funding and unsuccessful negotiation with the union organizations representing the actors and crews. On January 7, 2013, Prospect Park officially brought back its project to restore All My Children as a web series. The show taped its first scenes for Prospect Park TOLN on February 18, 2013, and its first episode on the network aired on April 29, 2013. However, the new series faced several behind-the-scene obstacles throughout its run. On November 11, 2013, several All My Children cast members announced that Prospect Park had closed production and canceled the series again. ABC regained the rights to All My Children in December 2016. In December 2020, it was announced a primetime spinoff, Pine Valley, was in-the-works at ABC.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Question of the Day

If the 25th wedding anniversary is silver and the 50th is gold, what are the 10th and 11th?There are two methods of determining this. Under the traditional method, aluminum or tin is the proper gift for a 10th anniversary. In contemporary usage, diamond jewelry is recommended. The 11th is steel, fashion jewelry, or accessories.

Advice of the Day

It’s good luck to spill wine on a tablecloth.

Home Hint of the Day

Use an old paint roller to spread glue quickly over large surfaces.

Word of the Day

Argy-bargyA verbal dispute; a wrangling argument.

Puzzle of the Day

Which is heavier, a half or a full Moon?The half, because the full Moon is twice as light.

Died

• Queen Mary I of England– 1558
• Auguste Rodin(sculptor)– 1917
• Roger Peckinpaugh(baseball player)– 1977
• Immanuel Velikovsky(author)– 1979
• Dick O’Neill(actor)– 1998
• Esther Rolle(actress)– 1998
• Abba Eban(statesman, dominated Israeli diplomacy for decades)– 2002
• Irving Brecher(comedy writer)– 2008

Born

• George Grote(historian)– 1794
• Titian Ramsay Peale(artist)– 1799
• August Wilhelm Ambros(composer)– 1816
• Grace Abbott(American reformer)– 1878
• Lee Strasberg(director)– 1901
• Isamu Noguchi(sculptor)– 1904
• Hershy Kay(composer)– 1919
• Stanley Cohen(biochemist)– 1922
• Rock Hudson(actor)– 1925
• Bob Mathias(decathlon athlete)– 1930
• Gordon Lightfoot(singer)– 1938
• Martin Scorsese(director)– 1942
• Danny DeVito(actor)– 1944
• Tom Seaver(baseball player)– 1944
• Daisy Fuentes(model & television host)– 1966
• Sophie Marceau(actress)– 1966
• Raquel Castro(actress)– 1994

Events

• The U.S. Congress met for the first time in the Capitol, Washington, D.C.– 1800
• Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer sighted Antarctica– 1820
• First U.S. postage stamp of American eagle issued– 1851
• Douglas C. Engelbart patented the computer mouse– 1970
• A turkey was plucked in 1 minute 30 seconds, setting world record– 1980
• Arnold Schwarzenegger inaugurated as Governor of California– 2003
• The soap opera All My Children taped its 9,000th episode– 2004
• The world’s oldest champagne (salvaged from a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea) was uncorked and sampled. Wine experts date the bottles as being from the early 19th century.– 2010

Weather

• Remarkable aurora borealis shows were seen throughout the United States– 1835
• A tornado touched down in Cass County, Indiana– 1978

COURTESY www.almanac.com