Texas is an American daytime soap opera that aired on NBC from August 4, 1980, until December 31, 1982, sponsored and produced by Procter and Gamble Productions at NBC Studios in Brooklyn, New York City. It is a spin-off of Another World, co-created by head writers John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington, and executive producer of Another World at the time, Paul Rauch. Rauch held the title of executive producer for the parent series and its spin-off until 1981.
Overview
Initial development and debut The Corringtons' initial concept was for a show set in the antebellum South entitled Reunion, but NBC wanted something more in line with the hugely successful CBS primetime soap Dallas,Grunwald, D: "Who Shot Texas", pages 23-27. TV Guide (Canadian edition), March 5, 1983. which was dominating the ratings. Rauch then chose to have the show revolve around the popular Another World character Iris Cory Carrington, played by Beverlee McKinsey. Iris initially set out to visit her grown son Dennis (Jim Poyner), who had relocated from Bay City to Houston. Within a matter of weeks, Iris reconnected and became romantically involved with her first love, Alex Wheeler (Bert Kramer).
A slew of characters debuted on Another World in the months prior to August 1980, in the hope that when they eventually moved over to Texas, they would have made enough impact with viewers so they would watch Texas, too.
The debut episode featured Iris on a plane, leaving Houston after visiting her son Dennis, who had relocated to Texas with his new love to open an art gallery. During her visit, she reconnected with her first love, self-made millionaire Alex Wheeler. Alex is determined not to let the past repeat itself and lose her again. He arranges for the Bay City-bound jet airliner, which Iris is on, to return to Houston.
During the first season of the series, the stories centered around the daily lives of the wealthy Wheelers and Bellmans and the middle-class Marshalls, and their ranching and oil interests.
The 1981 revamp In November 1981, McKinsey left the show, and the secondary characters seen in the first year were given more story. Texas lost one million viewers upon McKinsey's departure. While Another World, which also lost a million viewers upon her 1980 departure, could afford the drop in ratings, Texas could not, and its days were numbered. To try to appeal to the younger audience, the show rechristened itself Texas: The New Generation.
In the daytime ratings for 1980-1981 season, Texas achieved a 3.8, tied with The Doctors at the 12th position. Its time slot contenders Guiding Light had an 8.2 rating, fourth position in the ratings, as opposed to an 11.4 rating for General Hospital, which was the top-rated serial for the 1980-1981 season. In its second season, the series fell to a 3.6 rating. At the end of its broadcast season, it ended with a 2.7 rating, in the 12th position out of 14 daytime serials. According to A.C. Neilsen, the total viewers for the first two seasons was at 2.8 million, followed by a drop to 2.2 million in the final season.
Simultaneously, Texas aired on CTV in Canada at the 3:00 pm ET slot following Another World, which had also aired on CTV since the early 1970s. The series was immensely popular in Canada, topping the BBM daytime ratings charts for many weeks. Beverlee McKinsey vacationed often in Nova Scotia during her tenure on both shows, according to numerous soap-opera sources. After NBC moved Texas to 11:00 am in April 1982, CTV opted not to follow suit, and continued airing Texas at its original timeslot of 3:00 pm (ET). In addition, Canadian viewers who either lived near the border and had access to NBC terrestrial affiliates or a cable TV subscription had the option of viewing the series mornings or afternoons, respectively.
Hitopah A popular storyline at the end of 1981 called Hitopah involved numerous characters in adventurous settings and intriguing circumstances to locate Sutars Rock, which nonetheless offered comic relief provided by good friends Ruby and Lurleen. Hitopah was about an ancient Indian artifact called the Fire Compass that was covered with runes and which Ruby's boyfriend Beau Baker opened. The opening of the Fire Compass released a toxic gas that turned Beau instantly into a mummy. Then, following some comedic hijinks with Lurleen and Ruby attempting to get rid of the body and make sense of the situation, Gretchen tried to get part of the Fire Compass back from them, leading to a chase to find the secret underground chambers in Hitopah (which contain a huge quantity of petroleum), towards which the Fire Compass is supposed to guide the owner.
Special guests Musical artists were featured on Texas to focus and contribute to some of the characters' storyline, such as siblings Elena and Rikki Dekker both venturing into the musical careers, although short-lived. Almost all serials in the 1980s had notable musical artists appearing on their respective shows, with some of the characters playing rising musical artists, and Texas was no exception, The character of Rikki Dekker (played by Randy Hamilton) gave his rendition of Luther Ingram's R&B hit, "(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right", and notable country music singers of the 1970s and 1980s such as Johnny Paycheck, Tom T. Hall, and Ray Stevens all made appearances as themselves at venues, mostly at the Coop, on the series.
In addition, politicians also made appearances, such as Oklahoma Governor George Nigh and his wife Donna. They appeared in walk-on roles (playing themselves as governor and first lady of Oklahoma) during the show's first month on the air; cast member Lisby Larson (Paige Marshall) serenaded the couple with a rendition of "Oklahoma!". Also, while he never appeared on the actual series, Texas Lieutenant Governor William P. Hobby, Jr., took a tour of the program's Brooklyn studio, and praised the show's realistic visual feel.
Final episodes The last episodes featured a Christmas miracle (snow fell in Houston as Long's character Ashley and her unborn baby, who had been presumed dead after a flash flood, returned home to loving husband Justin) and a New Year's series finale where the local TV station was bought out and all the major characters were fired. The final scene was a bittersweet, final toast, "To Texas!". (They weren't the only ones out of work: The Doctors also aired its last episode on this day, ending a nearly-twenty year run.)
NBC replaced Texas with the game shows Wheel of Fortune and Hit Man (the latter of which was cancelled after 13 weeks despite an increase in the network's ratings in the 11:30 am timeslot), as well as reruns of 1970s primetime shows.
Cast and characters Entire run Actor/ActressCharacter Carla Borelli Reena Bellman Cook Dekker Elizabeth Allen Victoria Bellman Josephine Nichols Kate Marshall Jerry Lanning Justin Marshall Lisby Larson Paige Marshall Carrington John McCafferty Billy Joe Wright Barbara Rucker Ginny Hampton Marshall Connor Caryn Richman Elena Dekker Randy Hamilton Rikki Dekker
Partial run Actor/ActressDurationCharacter Beverlee McKinsey 1980–1981 Iris Cory Wheeler Jim Poyner 1980–1981 Dennis Carrington Bert Kramer 1980–1981 Alex Wheeler Gretchen Oehler 1981–1982 Vivien Gorrow Lee Patterson 1980–1981 Dr. Kevin Cook Robert Gerringer, Clifton James 1980–1982 Striker Bellman Stephen D. Newman 1980–1981 Barrett Marshall Donald May 1981–1982 Grant Wheeler Pam Long 1981–1982 Ashley Linden Marshall David Forsyth 1981–1982 T.J Canfield Harley Jane Kozak 1981–1982 Brette Wheeler Shanna Reed 1980–1981 Terri Dekker Kin Shriner 1980–1981 Jeb Hampton Benjamin Hendrickson 1981 Chris Shaw Christopher Goutman 1982 George St. John Stephen Joyce 1981–1982 Bubba Wadsworth Tina Johnson 1981–1982 Lurleen Harper Walker Alexandra Neil 1981–1982 Ruby Wright Wheeler Virginia Graham 1982 Stella Stanton Elizabeth Berridge, Terri Garber 1981–1982 Allison Linden Daniel Davis 1980–1982 Eliot Carrington Dody Goodman 1982 Mavis Cobb Catherine Hickland 1980–1981 Dr. Courtney Marshall Chandler Hill Harben, Jay Hammer 1980–1981 Max Dekker James Rebhorn 1981–1982 John Brady Dana Kimmell 1980 Dawn Marshall Sharon Acker 1982 Judith Wheeler
Broadcast history
In the run-up to the premiere of Texas in the summer of 1980, a handful of characters was introduced on Another World, in the hope that once Texas began airing on August 4, 1980, the viewers who had become invested would continue watching as Iris Bancroft and these newer characters moved to Texas. The premiere of Texas came at a time when NBC's daytime lineup (consisting of Another World, Days of Our Lives, and The Doctors) had fallen into ratings trouble, after a highly successful period in the early and mid-1970s. Its parent series had even tried expanding to ninety minutes daily in 1979, but the move resulted in a downturn in ratings.
In order to create the sixty minutes on the schedule needed for Texas, Another World and The David Letterman Show, which aired in the morning, each were cut thirty minutes. Texas was then slotted at 3:00 PM Eastern, with Another World preceding it at 2:00; this move resulted in the long running soap The Doctors, which had been previously airing at 2:00 PM, being relocated to 12:30 PM.
Due in no small part to the then-peak success of ABC's General Hospital, Texas remained in the bottom echelon of the daytime serial chart with a 3.8 rating, tying with The Doctors for last place, 12th, in 1980. However, the show's numbers fell gradually after its first year. The struggles of Texas also affected the ratings of its mother show, Another World, in such a way that the latter show was no longer NBC's highest-rated soap. The 1980-1981 season had Another World finish with a 5.1 ratings by comparison to a 7.1 during the previous season (1979-1980). In that same season, Days of our Lives became the highest-rated serial on NBC.List of US daytime soap opera ratings#1970s
The show had a very difficult task from the beginning in the ratings for NBC; its 3:00 pm timeslot competitors were ABC's General Hospital, then the highest-rated daytime soap opera due in large part to the popularity of the Luke and Laura storyline, and CBS' Guiding Light, which had undergone a ratings resurgence due to popular, more youth-oriented stories and characters created by headwriter Douglas Marland. At that time, NBC was third in the ratings. The serial finished with a 3.8 in the ratings for its first year.
Critics complained that Iris Bancroft (who was known on Another World as being a villainess) had become too tame in her new environment in Houston, and that other roles were poorly cast or suffered from paper-thin writing. In early 1981, the Corringtons were replaced as head writers. Other casting moves were made with little gain, such as hiring away well established and popular General Hospital star Kin Shriner (Scotty Baldwin) in October 1980, at great expense, to be cast as Jeb Hampton, only to give him almost nothing to do except as a supporting role until he finally departed the series in August 1981.
In addition to popular Shriner, veteran actor Jay Hammer, who had a notable credit role as Allan Willis during the 1978–1979 season on the primetime CBS sitcom The Jeffersons, replaced Chandler Hill Harben in February 1981 as Max Dekker. The character was paired off with Carla Borelli's character, Reena Bellman Cook. They both brought charisma to the roles, but their storyline was short-lived, as Hammer's contract ended, and Max was killed off in a fatal explosion.
Gail Kobe and Pam Long In late 1981, Gail Kobe became executive producer and Pam Long (who appeared on the show as Ashley Linden Marshall) became head writer. The show began to improve in quality, but the ratings remained in the basement due to numerous factors such as losing affiliates due to timeslot rescheduling, contributing to the show's cancellation.