With Days of Our Lives taping a full half a year in advance, a whole lot of things can go wrong.

First, stories can easily leak and ruin suspense. Also, when actors are hired or fired, we learn about it so early it takes the excitement out of debuts and exits. (Think Kate Mansi and now Vincent Irizarry, for example.)

And, of course, the biggest drawback is that with so many episodes in the can ahead of time, if a story isn’t working, there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do to put the brakes on it for six months and that can drive viewers away in droves.

Unfortunately, Executive Producer Ken Corday tells Soap Opera Digest that it’s the only way to keep the show going.

“The money that we’re getting to produce the show is not what it was two years ago, four years ago, six years ago,” Corday told Digest. “So, we have to contract the production of the show, and we’re doing eight shows a week as opposed to five shows a week.

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So we get way far ahead and we’re not using the studio, we don’t have to pay studio overhead, and etc, etc for 13 out of 52 weeks. That’s the only way we can make our nut.”

If DAYS didn’t stick to this production schedule, there would be no DAYS, Corday warns.

“It is an absolute necessity. There’s no other way of doing it, unless NBC was going to give me a nice Christmas present and make things the way they were in 2010. The face of the business has changed. We make the same show for less.”

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