Another World (often shortened to AW) is an American television syndicated soap opera. The original version ran on NBC for 35 years from May 4, 1964 to June 25, 1999. It was created by Irna Phillips along with William J. Bell, and was produced by Procter & Gamble Productions at NBC Studios, 1268 East 14th Street in Brooklyn.
Set in the fictional town of Bay City, from 1964–87 the show opened with announcer Bill Wolff intoning its epigram, “We do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds,” which Phillips said represented the difference between “the world of events we live in, and the world of feelings and dreams that we strive for.” Another World focused less on the conventional drama of domestic life as seen in other soap operas, and more on exotic melodrama between families of different classes and philosophies.
In 1964, Another World was the first soap opera to talk about abortion when such subjects were taboo. It was the first soap opera to do a crossover, with the character of Mike Bauer from Guiding Light, which was also created by Irna Phillips, coming from Springfield to Bay City. It was also the first to expand to one hour, then to ninety minutes, and then back to an hour. It was the first soap to launch two spin-offs, Somerset and Texas, as well as an indirect one, Lovers and Friends, which would be renamed For Richer, For Poorer. Another World was also the first soap opera with a theme song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, "(You Take Me Away To) Another World" by Crystal Gayle and Gary Morris, in 1987. On March 31, 1999, it was announced that NBC canceled Another Worlddue to low ratings, with its final episode on the network airing on June 25, 1999. Shortly after the show's conclusion, NBC retained the timeslot, replacing Another World with another soap opera, Passions, on July 5, 1999. The original version can be seen on the syndicated block "It's Worth Seeing Again," and on the subchannel Soapnet.
The revival version was launched in 2014 as a weekly syndicated soap opera. Another World is also the third soap opera that Lady Luck Productions is producing (The Edge of Night & Peyton Place), but the only one that is an hour long. The series is produced by Lady Luck Productions, in association with Procter & Gamble Entertainment. During the NAHL off-season, UPN would air repeats of Another World on their Friday Night lineup.
Development[]
Irna Phillips envisioned Another World as a spin-off of her popular soap opera As the World Turns, but CBS did not have room for it and would not allow a spin-off to air on a competing network. Phillips instead sold the show to NBC (eager to snap up a show by the successful Phillips), removing references to ATWT 's Oakdale and cancelling plans to have character crossover appearances by the Hughes family. (Ironically, two characters from another CBS soap, Guiding Light—attorney Mike Bauer and his daughter Hope—would cross over from Guiding Light to Another Word in 1966, remaining for a year before returning to GL). Despite the severed connections to As the World Turns, the name Another World remained, as a reference to its origins. Expectations were so high that Another World had six weeks of commercial time sold in advance.
On November 22, 1963, a group of executives (including Executive Producer Allen M. Potter and director Tom Donovan) met at the Young & Rubicam ad agency in New York to discuss the show’s opening story, the death of William Matthews, when they heard the news of another death in Dallas: the assassination of President Kennedy.
After opening with a death in the core Matthews family, Irna planned to follow up with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, a septic abortion, a shooting, and murder trial. As Allen M. Potter explained, “Irna just didn’t want to take a chance on waiting for the ratings. She felt that with this kind of showy story she could build an audience more quickly.” Said Tom Donovan, “In construction, Irna was attempting to follow the structure of As the World Turns. Irna would never conceive of a story not based on a family.”
Revival[]
After the cancellation of the series in 1999, there was a reunion of Another World on Soapnet on Oct. 24, 2003. In 2013, Procter & Gamble announced that they wanted to do a revival of Another World, taking place 15 years following the last episode. On Jan. 20, 2014, Lady Luck Productions agreed to help produce the soap opera, and on Sept. 3, 2014, Another World returned to the airways. UPN agreed to air reruns of Another World following the NAHL season on their Friday Night Lineup.