The Young and the Restless
The Young and the Restless (often abbreviated as Y&R) is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in a fictionalized version of Genoa City, Wisconsin. First broadcast on March 26, 1973, "The Young and the Restless" was originally broadcast as half-hour episodes, five times a week. The show expanded to one-hour episodes on February 4, 1980. In 2006, the series began airing encore episodes weeknights on SOAPnet until 2013, when it moved to TVGN (now Pop). As of July 1, 2013, Pop still airs the encore episodes on weeknights. The series is also syndicated internationally.
The Young and the Restless storylines
Along with every other daytime soap, "The Young and the Restless" has suffered audience erosion, with very noticeable losses during the O.J. Simpson trial. For many months, The Young and the Restless was not shown at its regularly scheduled time during the televised Simpson trial. A trailer sometimes ran at the bottom of the TV screen informing viewers to use their VCRs to tape Y&R at random hours like 2:27 a.m., 4:26 a.m. There was not a set re-broadcast time after midnight, and this was years before the internet was in homes, which would have allowed viewers to watch online as you can in 2014. Many long-time viewers simply gave up trying to figure out when to set their VCRs, and gave up permanently on the show. Y&R permanently lost millions of viewers as a result. Every year after the Simpson trial, Y&R has mostly lost viewers.