Days of Our Lives
Days of Our Lives (also stylized as Days of our Lives; simply referred to as Days or DOOL) is an American television soap opera that aired on the network NBC from 1965 to 2022 and currently streams new episodes on Peacock. The soap is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday since November 8, 1965.[3] A co-production of Corday Productions and Sony Pictures Television, the series was created by husband-and-wife team Ted Corday and Betty Corday.[1] During Days of Our Lives' early years, Irna Phillips (creator of former NBC stablemate Another World as well as its former CBS rivals, As the World Turns and Guiding Light) served as a story editor for the program and many of the show's earliest storylines were written by William J. Bell, who would depart the series in 1975 to focus full-time on The Young and the Restless, which he created for CBS in 1973. Following the 2007 cancellation of Passions, Days of Our Lives remained the only soap opera airing on NBC.[4] On August 3, 2022, NBCUniversal announced that it would relocate the series exclusively to its Peacock streaming service beginning September 12 after 57 years on the network and leaving NBC as the only Big Three network without a daytime serial.
For other uses, see Days of Our Lives (disambiguation).Days of Our Lives
- Days
- DOOL
Soap opera
- Herb Stein
- Phil Sogard
- Albert Alarr
- Grant Johnson
- Steven Williford
- Charles Albertine
- Tommy Boyce
- Bobby Hart
United States
English
14,430[2]
- Ken Corday
- Janet Spellman-Drucker
30 minutes (1965–1975)
60 minutes (1975–present)
- Corday Productions
- Screen Gems
(1965–1974) - Columbia Pictures Television (1974–2001)
- Columbia TriStar Domestic Television (2001–2002)
- Sony Pictures Television (2002–present)
November 8, 1965 –
September 9, 2022
September 12, 2022 –
present
The series is set in Illinois, in the fictional city of Salem, and primarily focuses on two groups – the Brady and the Horton families.[5] Other families, however, are also frequently represented including the DiMera and Kiriakis families. The actress Frances Reid (who played the matriarch of the Horton family, Alice Horton), remained with the show from its inception until her death in 2010; her last, formal appearance had occurred in December 2007.[6] Suzanne Rogers is the longest-serving member of the program's current cast, and the longest-serving current cast member of an ongoing American soap opera, having appeared on the show since August 1973 (Rogers celebrated 50 years on Days of Our Lives in 2023).[7] Susan Seaforth Hayes – the second longest-serving actor currently on the program – is the only cast member to appear on Days of Our Lives in all seven decades it has been on the air, having made her first appearance in December 1968 as a recast of original character Julie Olson.[8]
Due to the series' success, daily episodes were expanded from 30 minutes to 60 minutes on April 21, 1975.[5] Days of Our Lives has been syndicated in many countries, internationally, in the years since its debut.[9][10][11] The soap was given the title of "most daring drama" in the seventies, due to the episodes venturing into topics that other soaps of the era would not dare to cover.[12] The show's executive producer is Ken Corday, who has held that role since his mother, Betty, relinquished showrunning duties upon her semi-retirement from the program in 1986,[13] with Janet Spellman-Drucker serving as co-executive producer. As of March 2023, Days of Our Lives has been renewed through September 2025. The soap celebrated its 14,000th episode on December 17, 2020.
The show has been parodied by the sketch comedy series SCTV (as "The Days of the Week") and the sitcom Friends, with some cast members making crossover appearances on the show, including Kristian Alfonso,[14] Roark Critchlow,[15] Matthew Ashford, Kyle Lowder and Alison Sweeney.[16] The show has had high-profile fans such as actress Julia Roberts[17] and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.[18]
Broadcast[edit]
Domestic broadcast[edit]
Episodes of Days of Our Lives were first made available on digital platforms in July 2003, when SoapCity, a now-defunct website owned by Sony Pictures Digital Networks, began offering same-day and archived episodes (dating back to the series' 1965 premiere) for streaming or direct download via its SoapCity Download subscription offering (available on either a monthly subscription or on a discounted pay-per-episode basis).[113][114] In June 2007, episodes of the series began to be offered via iTunes.[115]
Under an agreement reached with Sony Pictures Television in March 2004, cable network Soapnet began airing same-day rebroadcasts of Days of Our Lives each weeknight at 7:00 and 11:00 p.m. (later 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. towa) Eastern and Pacific Time (with classic episodes sometimes filling the slot during NBC-predetermined preemptions), along with a (usually) five-hour-long weekend block of the past week's episodes; Days aired on the network until its closure in December 2013.[116] On August 24, 2015, Pop began airing same-day rebroadcasts of the show as part of an early-prime-time soap opera repeat block that included CBS soaps The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. (CBS's namesake parent, CBS Corporation, owns the cable channel and operated it as a joint venture with Lionsgate at the time.)[117][118] Pop dropped Days of Our Lives from its lineup after the April 15, 2016, broadcast.[119]
NBC began making same-day episodes of Days available for streaming on the show's NBC.com subpage on August 10, 2009. The ten most recent episodes are available for viewing, with each episode being streamable for 16 days after their original airdate.[120] Recent episodes of the series were also available on Hulu from 2008 until August 2015, when the streaming service abruptly removed Days from its NBC program offerings, leaving General Hospital as the only remaining American daytime soap among Hulu's offerings.[118]
Almost unchanged since the show's debut in November 1965, Days of Our Lives's title sequence shows an hourglass, with sand trickling to the bottom against the backdrop of a partly cloudy sky, accompanied by the spoken words, "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives."[150] The title sequence has been modified only three times since the series first premiered:
The hourglass sequence was also used during the show's closing credits until November 2001 (when the network replaced it with a split-screen generic credit reel to incorporate video promos for other NBC daytime and prime time programs); it was replaced thereafter with a black background in international and, later, online airings. A sunset variant of the CGI sequence (which had been used for the closing credits from 1993 to 2001) remains in use as Corday Productions' closing credit vanity card.
From the show's debut in 1965 until March 1966, announcer Ed Prentiss spoke the aforementioned opening phrase, following it with the notation "Days of Our Lives, a new dramatic serial starring Macdonald Carey."[150] Carey, who had played Dr. Thomas Horton since the show's premiere, took over reading the opening epitaph in April 1966; for the following 28 years, his introductory voiceover added with "This is Macdonald Carey, and these are the Days of Our Lives."[151] After Carey's death from lung cancer in April 1994, the secondary part of the introduction was removed from the sequence out of respect for Carey and his family. At intermission (between 1975 and 2011), Carey also voiced the show's mid-program bumper – which usually preceded a network promo that led into the local ad breaks during the fourth commercial break of each episode – reading, "We will return for the second half of Days of Our Lives in just a moment."[150]
The light orchestral theme music that accompanies the opening titles was composed by Charles Albertine, Tommy Boyce, and Bobby Hart, and was the first soap opera theme to be performed by an orchestral ensemble. Boyce and Hart were tasked by Ted and Betty Corday to create a theme for the show that sounded similar to "Sunrise, Sunset," which the Cordays had recently heard while seeing the Broadway version of Fiddler on the Roof. After the Cordays approved their third submission, reminiscent of organ music Hart remembered hearing when his mother listened to radio soaps, Albertine was brought in to write the orchestration for the piece, adding a flute-and-bells broken arpeggio borrowed from his 1952 piece "Music for Barefoot Ballerinas", and a bridge section for the extended theme music.[152][153] The theme has only been updated twice: in 1993, when a more conventional orchestral arrangement of the instrumental theme (arranged by musical director Steven Reinhardt) debuted with the introduction of the CGI sequence, and in May 2004, when a grander orchestration was introduced, coincident with the revelation that the characters thought to have been killed by the Salem Stalker had actually been carried off to the island of Melaswen. This version was only used in eight episodes, before reverting to the 1993 arrangement that has remained in use ever since.[152] In June 2009, the instrumental theme was abbreviated to allow extra airtime for the episodic plot, shortening it from 32 to 17 seconds and commencing from the orchestral flourish.
Notable fans[edit]
Days of Our Lives has had many high-profile fans. In 1976, Time magazine reported that then-Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall would call a recess to court proceedings around the 1:00 p.m. hour to watch the show.[169]
Actress Julia Roberts admitted at the 2002 People's Choice Awards that she was a fan of Days of Our Lives, had asked to be seated near the cast, and upon winning her award stated, "I'm freaking out because the cast of Days of Our Lives is sitting behind me."[170] In 2004, during the show's Melaswen storyline, Roberts' interest was considered notable enough that Entertainment Weekly quoted her saying that "the show has gotten a little wacko."[17]
A 1998 Time article mentioned that Monica Lewinsky was a passionate fan of Days of Our Lives, so much so that she wrote a poem about the series in her high school yearbook. The article compared her whirlwind experiences in the White House to a story on the show.[171]