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.
William J. Bell
In 1972, CBS executives wanted a new daytime serial that was youth oriented. William along with his wife Lee Phillip Bell created The Young and the Restless for the network under the working title, "The Innocent Years". However, before the show went into production, he had to rename the series as Bell mentioned...""We were confronted with the very disturbing reality that young America had lost much of its innocence,"". ""Innocence as we had known and lived it all our lives had, in so many respects, ceased to exist."" They renamed the series to The Young and the Restless because they felt it "reflected the youth and mood of the early seventies." He spent between ten and sixteen hours a day writing stories.