ABC's General Hospital is the latest daytime drama to set a target date for return to production -- though it appears to be something of a moving target.
Sources confirm to Soap Central that General Hospital is delaying its restart by a week. The longest-running soap currently in production had originally planned to hit the studios this week. That plan, however, has been pushed back by a week amid a spike in coronavirus cases in the Los Angeles area. The schedule change has also altered the ABC soap's broadcast schedule. Starting July 13, General Hospital will begin airing three weeks of episodes that aired just before the work stoppage. The repeats are designed to help viewers get back up to speed on everything that has happened in Port Charles.
As Soap Central previously reported, The Young and the Restless also pushed back its planned restart date by a week. The CBS soap is now scheduled to get things back up and running this week.
Both GH and Y&R will follow The Bold and the Beautiful, which became the very first U.S. scripted TV show to resume production when it began filming again Wednesday, June 17. Unfortunately, the series had to hit pause just one day later to work on its coronavirus testing protocols but was finally able to resume production once more on Wednesday, June 24.
NBC's Days of our Lives, meanwhile, has opted to hold off on returning to production until September 1. DAYS is the only soap airing new episodes. The NBC soap's often maligned production schedule worked in its favor: DAYS has enough episodes in its bank to air through October.
All four network soap operas suspended production in mid-March amid an industrywide production shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Y&R and B&B ran out of original episodes at the end of April and began airing throwback episodes curated into theme weeks. GH ran out of new material in May and also began airing throwback episodes that have weekly themes.
This article has been modified from its original version to include new start dates for General Hospital, Days of our Lives, and The Young and the Restless.
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