No soap opera is an island. When Helen Trent died in June, the bell was really tolling for Ma Perkins, The Second Mrs. Burton and all their kin. Over the past decade radio networks have been steadily losing time to their affiliated stations (who prefer to schedule local disk jockeys, with whom they can make far more money). Across the country fewer stations scheduled network drama every season; sooner or later the "soaps" had to go. NBC scrapped them at the beginning of this year. Last week CBS announced that the last seven on the air would die on...
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