in the Nielsens, WDTN in Dayton, Ohio preempted the series upon joining ABC in January 1980 in favor of Woody Woodpecker and Super Friends cartoons. Later, the station would air such shows as Hour Magazine, Geraldo and Maury in the show's timeslot until September 2000, when the station's new owners, Sunrise Broadcasting (which purchased the station from Hearst Television two years prior), pulled Maury from the station's schedule, due to what it called "community standards", and brought General Hospital back to Dayton. In Vermont and Plattsburgh, New York, WVNY dropped General Hospital from the schedule in the 1980s and would only bring it back in 1995. During that hiatus, General Hospital still aired on Montreal's CFCF-DT, whose signal was decently available in Vermont and Plattsburgh. Ever since the 1991–1992 season of General Hospital, the show has had a steady decline in ratings. On and off, it would rank between third and fifth place in the Nielsen ratings, with CBS's The Young And The Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful coming in first and second place, respectively. General Hospital remained in between third and fifth place in the ratings during that time, and from late 1991 to 1996 All My Children held the title of ABC's highest-rated soap. After months of speculation and cancellation rumors, Deadline Hollywood reported on April 11, 2012, that ABC quietly made the decision to keep General Hospital on the air and to cancel instead the lower-rated talk show The Revolution. On June 26, 2012, ABC officially announced that General Hospital would move to the 2 p.m. ET/PT timeslot starting on September 10, 2012, and that the network would give the 3:00 p.m. hour back to its affiliates, as it was the recommended time slot for Katie Couric's new, ABC-syndicated talk show, Katie. Encore episodes were shown every weeknight on the former cable channel Soapnet, with a marathon on Saturday and classic episodes at 4 a.m. EST and 5 a.m. (3 a.m. and 4 a.m. CST). Production of General Hospital was suspended in March 2020 as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The show had banked roughly two months' worth of episodes at that time. By airing repeats on "Flashback Fridays", General Hospital was able to air original episodes through the end of May 21, 2020. This will be followed by several weeks of vintage episode repeats. Production resumed on July