The soap opera is set on a fictional Wisconsin town called Genoa City but is not related to the real life village of the same name, Genoa City, Wisconsin.
When it first started as a daytime drama on CBS, it was only being broadcast as half-hour episodes, five times a week but eventually it became one-hour episodes on a daily basis starting on February 4, 1980.
The original storyline of “The Young and the Restless” focused on two core families – the rich Brooks family and the working class, the Foster family. But after a recast, all the original characters except for Jill Foster Abbott were written out.
Bell then introduced new core families – the Abbotts and the Williamses. Eventually, other families came into the picture as well including the Newmans, the Winters, and the Baldwin-Fishers.
Amid all the changes over the years, one storyline that remained intact is the feud between Jill Abbott Fenmore and Katherine Chancellor, which now stands as the longest rivalry on any American soap opera.
Indicative of how well-received and acclaimed “The Young and the Restless” is, the soap opera has won eight Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series. It is currently the highest-rated daytime drama on American television. The soap opera has been the leading daytime drama for an unprecedented 1,300 weeks or 25 years.