Peyton Place (TV series)

Peyton Place was America's first long-running nighttime soap opera.

Ratings and schedules

When the show premiered in 1964, Peyton Place aired twice a week. Both installments of the show were Top 20 hits in the Nielsen ratings, and this inspired ABC to air the show three times a week starting in the fall of 1965. Many television historians, now, consider this move to be overkill. The season ratings for Peyton Place never rose into the Top 30 shows again, and the serial's production was dropped down to two episodes a week, accordingly. In 1969, with the show losing viewers with each episode, Peyton Place was only aired in one installment a week until the final episode was shown in June.

Related Topics:
Nielsen ratings - 1965

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The show was one of the first seen on network television to talk about sex and infidelity in a frank manner. As such, ABC brass would only allow the show to be aired at 9:30 PM Eastern time, an hour in which many kids and teenagers were to be in bed. With the show in a ratings slump in 1968, the show was moved to 8:30 PM in order to get the viewers they had once shunned.

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