The Black Audience Makes ABC Dominant in Daytime

In addition to whites mesmerized by Nixon's brilliantly written story line, a major black audience began to watch that would anchor One Life to Live for its next forty years. Although blacks were only 12% of the population, the staff writer Gordon Russell told me they were watching in double their numbers to provide a full quarter of One Life's viewers.

As I met that black audience I was amazed by its variety: professional women; doctors and dentists, who scheduled their patients around us; college kids, who scheduled their classes around us; hospital workers, who brown-bagged their lunches, sought out a TV set at the hospital at the appointed hour and watched as a group; domestic maids, who chose that hour to set up shop in front of the TV to do their ironing; grandmothers, who baby-sat their grandchildren while their daughters went out to work. We even drew men. I never forgot the guy who brought his Wonderbread delivery truck to a screeching halt in the middle of the street to chase me for half a block to get my autograph.

High-wattage black stars became passionate fans, folks like Lena Horne, jazz pianist Hazel Scott and Sammy Davis, Jr. Some asked to play cameos. Hazel brought her sidemen and played at Carla's first wedding. Sammy came aboard to play Chip, a small-time hood

Courtesy of ABC-TV

Meanwhile, the ratings were so dramatic, the network went back to Nixon and implored her to make them another golden widget. On that cue, she began preproduction work on All My Children.

On Children's debut two years later, to "capture" the readymade black audience watching the Carla story, Nixon included a major black story line on Children starring John Danelle. When the targeted audience tuned in to catch John, they pumped Children's ratings and made the second Nixon soap as successful as the first.

General Hospital, the California soap that aired directly after us, now took a page from the Nixon playbook, added a black story line of their own, and watched their ratings climb.

At the time, soaps were only half an hour.

As the black audience spread out to undergird all three shows and watch them in a string, they made ABC the dominant player in daytime for the next two decades, from 1968 to 1988.

That is no idle boast. In 1988 Nielsen Research published the landmark study Television Viewing Among Blacks, which posited the importance of the black audience to soaps in general and ABC soaps in particular.

SOURCE: A.C. Nielsen, as reprinted in USA Today

In regard to the top five shows favored by the black audience, all three ABC shows make the list.

Do note that Nielson makes an unintentionally ironic observation: "Except for One Life, all have black story lines." Although the Carla storyline attracted the black audience that had spread out to undergird all three shows and make ABC dominant in daytime, One Life had killed it three years earlier.