CBS has announced that daytime show "The Talk" will be coming to end in December. The show launched in 2010, after replacing daytime show "As The World Turns" which ran from 1956 to 2010. It was part of a moment where networks were clearing out soaps. The Guiding Light was canned in 2009 and replaced by a revival of Let's Make a Deal . ABC would go on to replace two of it's soaps the announcing in 2011.
The Talk was made as a lower cost alternative to making soap opera programming and gave CBS a networked daytime talk show. In concept, the show was CBS doing their own version of The View , a few women around a table talking about stuff. Though, as that show became more political "The Talk" was less political but did talk about issues. Overtime, it shifted hosts and focus, experienced controversy and weathered the pandemic. An interesting thing it did more in 2021 was add male hosts to its panel, making it different than "The View".
Soaps seemed to be on their way down, even more. NBC had moved their only soap Days of Our Lives to the streaming service Peacock in 2022 to make room for more news. Then a surprise news item popped up in March 2024, CBS had already renewed Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, but there was news that CBS was developing a new daytime soap.
That's a surprise because the last new soap that premiered on network TV was 1999's Passions which ended in 2007, when NBC decided to have another another hour of The Today Show. The Gates was the title, a soap opera about a wealthy black family. Of course, that did mean some more speculation. CBS had just renewed two soaps so those weren't going, this didn't say Paramount Plus, and that meant , either a game show is going or "The Talk" and then thinking, would CBS can the game shows or the weakest link- The Talk?
Now it seems that "The Talk" is the one that's going. CBS hasn't announced officially more about the soap, but December end for "The Talk" seems to make it feel like a January soap premiere. This does make an interesting change as this was a soap being worked on by Procter and Gamble 15 years after a soap being made by Procter and Gamble was canceled , now the talk show that replaced that is being replaced by a soap. It's also an interesting move to make a new soap when speculation was the there could come a time ABC and CBS would either cancel their last soaps or move them to sister streaming services.
Days of Our Lives fans did find something nice about new daily streaming episodes, no more having to worry about the network breaking away for either actual breaking news or random things that aren't really news, but the network feels they need to do even though they have a news streaming channel that could cover that. CBS soap fans (and game show fans) have the trouble of times when CBS does the same. Of course, with Paramount+ a viewer could watch there too, and gives P+ another hour of drama daily.
If that's the time slot holding, "The Talk" airs on CBS at 2pm ET/ 1c, 1 or 2pm in the Mountain Time zone, 1pm in the west. After ABC destroyed its 2pm ET slot after the end of "One Life to Life" and a failed talk show took its place, they put "General Hospital" there and gave an hour to local stations. Some stations like ABC owned stations on the East still air GH in the OG slot of 3pm ET, but in some markets General Hospital airs at 2pm/1c at the same time as "The Talk". Now this could cause a soap race, but maybe not. NBC did make "Days of Our Lives" flexible in where stations could air it, and that could let markets decide where the show could run and not be affected by running up against another soap. CBS could give this show a flexible slot to allow their stations a space to air it either earlier or later than GH in markets. Though CBS might feel "The Gates" would be a different audience grabber than GH. That will be interesting to see.
The idea of a daily soap in "The Age of Streaming" (TM) isn't a bad one. Compared to a talk show, since we know all network shows end up on streaming, this allows a daily drama to be also on a streaming service and where as a talk show like "The Talk" relies on being current to a point, meaning an episode could become outdated on things quickly, soaps don't.
It is nice that CBS is trying something different instead of going with another daytime news department based show. They've done something different in late night and now trying a new daytime idea, or more returning to old format once thought to be on the decline.
