'''''All My Children''''' is an American soap opera that has been broadcast Monday through Friday on the ABC TV network since January 5, 1970. Originally a half-hour in length, the show moved to an hour in 1977. '''''AMC''''' has taped over nine thousand episodes, with the 9,000th episode having aired on December 16, 2004. It is videotaped at ABC's television studio on West 66th Street in New York City. As of July 31 2006, the show has a filmed (as opposed to taped) appearance.
''All My Children'' was created by Agnes Nixon. Although Nixon had previously created ''One Life to Live'' for ABC following her success with ''Another World'' and ''The Guiding Light'', ''All My Children'' was her first love and first major creation. She set the show in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, a small suburb of Philadelphia.
The title of the show refers to the brotherhood of man. Nixon believed that it doesn't matter who one was, what one looked like, or where one was from — for every human being was a child of God. The poem at the start of the ''All My Children'' photo album reads: ''The Great and the Least, The Rich and the Poor, The Weak and the Strong, In Sickness and in Health, In Joy and Sorrow, In Tragedy and Triumph, You are ALL MY CHILDREN''. The poem, which epitomizes the goal of ''
All My Children'''s storytelling, was penned by Nixon herself.
With the death of core cast member Ruth Warrick in January 2005, two original cast members, Ray MacDonnell and Susan Lucci, remain.
At one time, the program was so popular that it was the most widely-recorded television show in the United States. The show ranked #1 in the daytime Nielsen ratings from 1978-1979. Throughtout most of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, ''All My Children'' was the #2 rated daytime soap on the air. The show still enjoys a sizable fan following, usually ranking near the middle in the daytime ratings, with between two and three million people watching each day.
History
In the 1960s Agnes Nixon, then head writer for ''The Guiding Light'', tried to sell a property called ''All My Children'' to NBC, then CBS, then NBC again through the auspices of sponsor Procter & Gamble. Despite her success and sponsor support, it was not until the start of 1970 that her brainchild finally aired.
Agnes Nixon strived to create a soap that was topical, and could illustrate social issues to the audience. She wanted all this while also injecting regular humor into the script, something that had not been tried by other soap writers before. To keep the
.jpg)
