averaging an 8.5 rating and 29% share, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing still struggled in its new timeslot of 3:00 p.m. against two new competitors: ABC's General Hospital and NBC's Another World, which consistently won the timeslot. On February 12, 1973, CBS announced that Love Is a Many Splendored Thing would end its run on March 23. The lead characters on Love Is a Many Splendored Thing were recast multiple times. The departure of stars Charleson, Birney and Mills led to a revolving door of cast replacements, such as Bibi Besch. The show focused upon other characters, such as the strong-willed Betsy Chernak Taylor (Andrea Marcovicci), and complex storylines involving politics and blackmail, but its ratings failed to recover quickly enough to avoid cancellation. Immediately after the cancellation, CBS moved the highly popular The Price Is Right into the vacant timeslot. Legacy The show is notable for its strong focus on young characters. Along with ABC's Dark Shadows, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing particularly targeted young viewers along with soap operas' traditional audience. The show predated the premieres of One Life to Live (1968) and All My Children (1970), two other soap operas that also attracted young audiences. Organist Eddie Layton introduced the influences of jazz and pop music to the show's score in contrast to the heavy symphonic and theatrical organ style of more established soap operas. Later soaps would continue to move away from organ music to contemporary light orchestral and synthesizer-based scoring. Surviving episodes All 1,430 episodes of Love Is a Many Splendored Thing were recorded on videotape at the CBS Broadcast Center Studio #41 in New York City. As with most soap operas of the late 1960 and early 1970s, the show's tapes were routinely wiped for reuse. Although the master tapes were erased, some rare kinescopes of episodes remain in the possession of private collectors. Only seven videotapes of the series are confirmed to exist, archived as non-circulating copies at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The archived episodes were telecast on March 8, 16 and 24, 1971, April 1 and 9, 1971 and March 12 and 20, 1973. A 1967 kinescope episode in the public domain episode may be viewed at the Internet Archive. Awards and nominations Prior to its cancellation, the show was nominated for four Emmy Awards: 1971: Outstanding Achievement in Daytime Programming James Angerame, technical director Victor L. Paganuzzi,