Watch Another World Online

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, but used the name Another World in 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.”

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