Those of us too young to have seen Dark Shadows during its original run don't have a frame of reference for what daytime television was like in those days. By the end of the 1980s, original daytime TV had been canalized by soaps and game shows, with cartoons filling the remaining slots once school let out. This clipping from March, 1970, shows how varied (and competitive) the afternoon market once was, with Dark Shadows straddling that nebulous zone between daytime drama and afternoon children's entertainment.
These days, digital channels like ME TV & Antenna TV have brought the fun back to daytime TV which was destroyed by crap like Maury & Jerry.
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