ABC’s daytime drama, General Hospital turns 57 today, and remains the current longest-running soap opera on the air.  GH debuted back on April 1, 1963.

The show was created by the husband-and-wife team of Frank and Doris Hursley.  Originally, the soap was not given a name of a particular town in which the drama of the hospital was set in.  However, that all changed in the 1970’s when GH was set in Port Charles.

GH expanded from a 30-minute show to a 45-minute show on July 26, 1976 and eventually went to a full-hour where it has remained back on January 16, 1978.

Throughout its decades on the air, GH was the impetus for two spin-offs; Port Charles, (which aired from 1997-2003) and primetime’s GH: Night Shift (2007-2008),

The show went through many ups and downs over its history, but things changed dramatically for the better, when by the end of the 1970’s and facing cancellation, ABC brought in executive producer, Gloria Monty to steer the ship.  Monty created supercouple Luke and Laura played by Tony Geary and Genie Francis, and opened the show up with exciting location shoots, and from then on GH has remained a firm mainstay in the daytime line-up.

Today, Frank Valentini is the series executive producer, and the soap is co-written by the head writing team of Dan O’Connor and Chris Van Etten.

As 80%, as of now, in the US are reported to be homebound due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the latest ratings for the week of March 23, 2020, GH drew 2.57 million viewers,- its strongest week since March 19, 2018.  So, more eyeballs are tuning-in to the drama in Port Charles.

Share your congratulations and well-wishes to the cast, crew, and creatives at General Hospital for 57 years of drama, romance and intrigue via the comment section below.

Days of our Lives has quite the episode planned for fans today.  Look for the returns of Shawn Christian (Daniel), T-Boz (Sheila), Greg Rikaart (Leo) and more drama and comedic hijinks to stir up the pot in Salem.

Now, Arianne Zucker (Nicole) and her real-life beau, Shawn Christian will also help make the episode even more special, now that they announced yesterday that they will be up on their individual Instagram accounts at 1PMPST.  The duo will chat with fans on both of their feeds.while hanging out together.

You can join the party by following Ari at @ari8675 and Shawn at @ShawnChristian

We can tell you just how much fun these two are during live broadcasts from our Soap Nation Live Daytime Emmy Nominations special 2019 in which Arianne was the co-host and Shawn was a very special surprise in-studio guest.

Get ready for today’s DOOL on April Fools today.  Check out Ari and Shawn’s announcement for today’s IG live with them below.

So will you be hanging out with Shawn and Ari on IG today? Let us know in the comment section.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Hope everyone is staying safe, healthy and hopeful.🙏 If you’re looking for a little escape APRIL 1st we’re GOING LIVE TOGETHER at 1pm during Days of Our Lives. 😳 We’ll chat with you all on BOTH our feeds. 🐵🙈🙉 Join us @ShawnChristian & @ari8675

A post shared by Shawn Christian | Actor (@shawnchristian) on Mar 31, 2020 at 10:23pm PDT

With the coronavirus changing our lives every today, and a return to production in the air for so many TV series, General Hospital will now air four new episodes a week to stretch out the remaining episodes they have banked before the COVID-10 pandemic forced soap opera production to come to a full work stoppage.

Now, starting this Friday, om the April 6th, the ABC daytime drama series w will air repeat episodes every Friday through May 22.

These encore presentations will be called “Flashback Fridays,” and each episode will feature an introduction from a  General Hospital cast member.

To kick things off, this Friday, the series will air a repeat of last year’s 56th-anniversary episode, with an  intro by Laura Wright. GH fans will recall that episode centered around the reading of the late Gail Baldwin’s will.

According to The Wrap:  :At the time of the production break, the ABC soap had enough episodes pre-taped to carry originals into May.”

Tomorrow on April 1st, will also mark GH’s 57th anniversary.

So what do you think of the plan to stretch out original episodes bu adding in one encore a week; until GH can get back to producing more episodes? Comment below?