The residents of Salem are permanently relocating to Peacock this fall.
Days of Our Lives, the longest-running entertainment series the network has ever aired, will leave the network in September. Its new home will be on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming platform, beginning Sept. 12.
NBC will fill the daytime spot vacated by Days with NBC News Daily, an hour-long show anchored by Kate Snow, Aaron Gilchrist, Vicky Nguyen and Morgan Radford. Affiliates will also have the option to add local news to the hour.
“This programming shift benefits both Peacock and NBC and is reflective of our broader strategy to utilize our portfolio to maximize reach and strengthen engagement with viewers,” said NBCUniversal Television and Streaming chairman Mark Lazarus in a statement. “With a large percentage of the Days of Our Lives audience already watching digitally, this move enables us to build the show’s loyal fanbase on streaming while simultaneously bolstering the network daytime offering with an urgent, live programming opportunity for partners and consumers.”
Library episodes of Days of Our Lives stream on Peacock, and the service has also housed two miniseries (subtitled Beyond Salem) in the past year.
The soap opera, produced by Corday Productions in association with Sony Pictures Television, is in the middle of a two-season order that will take it through the 2022-23 season. The coming season will be its 58th, making it the second longest-running daytime drama in American TV history behind ABC’s General Hospital. Days will pass Guiding Light, which also ran 57 seasons, in the fall.
Days was the least watched of the four daytime dramas on the broadcast network last season, averaging about 1.7 million viewers per day on NBC (an average that does not include any streaming lift). That’s about half of what the top soap, CBS’ The Young and the Restless (3.47 million), draws on a daily basis. Converting a portion of those viewers to Peacock subscribers (or keeping the business of those who already are) would be a boost for the streamer, whose paid subscriber numbers stayed flat at 13 million (along with 28 million active accounts) in the second quarter.
Ken Corday executive produces Days of Our Lives, and Albert Alarr is co-exec producer. Ron Carlivati serves as head writer.
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