The Young and the Restless

The Young and the Restless (often abbreviated as Y&R) is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in the fictional Genoa City (named after the real-life Genoa City, Wisconsin). First broadcast on March 26, 1973, The Young and the Restless was originally broadcast as half-hour episodes, five times a week. The show expanded to one-hour episodes on February 4, 1980. On March 17, 2006, the series began airing previous episodes weeknights on Soapnet until its closure on December 31, 2013, after which the series moved to TVGN (now Pop). From July 1, 2013 until 2019, Pop aired previous episodes on weeknights. The series is also syndicated internationally.

The Young and the Restless originally focused on two core families: the wealthy Brooks family and the working class Foster family. After a series of recasts and departures in the early 1980s, all the original characters except Jill Foster Abbott were written out. Bell^{[clarification needed]} replaced them with new core families, the Abbotts and the Williamses. Over the years, other families such as the Newman family, the Barber/Winters family, and the Baldwin-Fishers were introduced. Despite these changes, one of its most enduring storylines was the four-decade feud between Jill Abbott and Katherine Chancellor, the longest rivalry on any American soap opera.

Since its television debut, The Young and the Restless has won 11 Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series. It is also currently the highest-rated daytime drama on American television, a rank it has held for 34 years as of the end of the 2021–22 season. As of 2008, it had appeared at the top of the weekly Nielsen ratings in that category for more than 1,000 weeks since 1988. As of December 12, 2013, according to Nielsen ratings, The Young and the Restless marked an unprecedented 1,300 weeks, or 25 years, as the highest-rated daytime drama. The serial is also a sister series to The Bold and the Beautiful, as several actors have crossed over between shows. The serial aired its 13,000th episode on November 13, 2024. On February 27, 2024, the series was renewed by CBS to run through the 2027–2028 television season.

Some well-known celebrities got their start on The Young and the Restless, including Eva Longoria, David Hasselhoff, Tom Selleck, Paul Walker, and Shemar Moore. Many other celebrities have made guest appearances on the show, including Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, Wayne Gretzky, Il Divo, and Enrique Iglesias.

To compete with the youthful ABC soap operas, All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital, CBS executives wanted a new daytime serial that was youth oriented. William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell created The Young and the Restless in 1972 for the network under the working title, The Innocent Years! "We were confronted with the very disturbing reality that young America had lost much of its innocence," Bell said. "Innocence as we had known and lived it all our lives had, in so many respects, ceased to exist." They changed the title of the series to The Young and the Restless because they felt it "reflected the youth and mood of the early seventies." The Bells named the fictional setting for the show after the real Genoa City, Wisconsin, a community on U.S. Route 12 in Wisconsin along the Illinois-Wisconsin state line located between their then-home in Chicago and their annual summer vacation spot in Lake Geneva.

The Young and the Restless began airing on March 26, 1973, replacing the canceled soap opera, Where the Heart Is. Bell worked as head writer from the debut of the series until his retirement in 1998. He wrote from his home in Chicago while production took place in Los Angeles, California. Originally, Bell wanted to shoot the series in New York City; however, CBS executives felt that Los Angeles would be more cost effective. John Conboy acted as the show's first executive producer, staying in the position until 1982. Bell and H. Wesley Kenney became co-executive producers that year, with Edward J. Scott assuming the position in 1989. Bell then became senior executive producer. Other executive producers included David Shaughnessy, John F. Smith, Lynn Marie Latham, Josh Griffith, Maria Arena Bell, and Paul Rauch.

In the mid-1980s, Bell and his family moved to Los Angeles to create a new soap opera. During this time, his three children, William Jr., Bradley Bell, and Lauralee Bell, each became involved in soap operas. Lauralee Bell worked as an actress on The Young and the Restless. Bradley Bell co-created The Bold and the Beautiful with his father. William Bell Jr. became involved in the family's production companies as president of Bell Dramatic Serial Co. and Bell-Phillip Television Productions Inc. "It's worked out very well for us because we really all worked in very different aspects of the show," William Bell Jr. said. "With my father and I, it was a great kind of partnership and pairing in the sense that he had a total control of the creative side of the show and I didn't have even the inclination to interject in what he was doing."

After William J. Bell's 1998 retirement, a number of different head writers took over the position, including Kay Alden, Trent Jones, John F. Smith, Lynn Marie Latham, Scott Hamner, Josh Griffith, Maria Arena Bell, and Hogan Sheffer.