Why Atlanta-based CBS soap ‘Beyond the Gates’ got a second season

In an age of shrinking audiences for broadcast networks, CBS took a big swing by launching the daytime soap opera “Beyond the Gates,” which has been shooting in Atlanta since last fall and debuted on the network in February.

So far, CBS has hit a home run. The drama, according to Nielsen, is beating ABC’s long-standing soap “General Hospital” by 7% among women 25 to 54, their key target audience. (Both air at 2 p.m. daily.)

“Beyond the Gates” is also up 67% from what it replaced a year earlier, “The Talk,” based on multi-platform measurements, including viewership on the Paramount+ streaming service.

The network did not release how many unique viewers the show attracts on any given day.

The soap, set fictionally in Maryland, focuses on a wealthy African American family that is grappling with an array of secrets, betrayals and deceit inherent in the genre.

It’s the first new daytime soap opera any network has tried to launch in more than a quarter century and the first one in which most of the lead actors are Black. The executive producers and several of the actors (Tamara Tunie, Daphnee Duplaix) have extensive soap opera backgrounds, enabling the series to quickly hook fans seeking something new.

For Atlanta’s hurting TV and film community, this show’s survival is important because it is one of the few productions that shoots all year round, generating 250-plus hourlong episodes per year. This provides full-time work for 200 crew members, actors and producers in a world that is packed with gig jobs.

And if a soap opera gains enough traction, it could survive for years and, in some cases, decades. “General Hospital,” for instance, debuted in 1963.

The series shoots at two-year-old Assembly Studios in Doraville, which uses space that was once a General Motors plant off Buford Highway and I-285.

“I am thrilled,” said Hilton Howell, head of Atlanta-based Gray Television, which owns Assembly, in a text to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Monday after the news came out. “I am very happy it airs on our CBS stations nationwide and proud it is filmed at Assembly. It’s a great show with an exceptional cast.”

This is also the first broadcast network soap opera that was not shot in either New York City or Los Angeles.