Jesse played ALL MY CHILDREN’s Adam Chandler Jr. from 1998-2001 (and was nominated twice for a Daytime Emmy)

All My Children is a US soap opera that has been broadcast Monday through Friday on the ABC TV network since January 5, 1970. Originally a half-hour in length, the show moved to an hour in 1977. AMC has taped over nine thousand episodes, with the 9,000th episode having aired on December 16, 2004. It is videotaped at ABC’s television studio at 77 West 66th Street in New York City.

All My Children was created by Agnes Nixon. Although Nixon had previously created One Life to Live for ABC following her success with Another World and The Guiding Light, All My Children was her first love and first major creation. She set the show in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, a small suburb of Philadelphia. The title of the show refers to the brotherhood of man. Nixon believed that it doesn’t matter who one was, what one looked like, or where one was from for every human being was a child of God. The poem at the start of the All My Children photo album reads: The Great and the Least, The Rich and the Poor, The Weak and the Strong, In Sickness and in Health, In Joy and Sorrow, In Tragedy and Triumph, You are ALL MY CHILDREN. The poem, which epitomizes the goal of All My Children’s storytelling, was penned by Nixon herself.

With the death of core cast member Ruth Warrick in January 2005, two original cast members, Ray MacDonnell and Susan Lucci, remain.

At one time, the program was so popular that it was the most widely-recorded television show in the United States. The show ranked #1 in the daytime Nielsen ratings from 1978-1979. In the early 1980s, as well as the early to mid-1990s, All My Children was the #2 rated daytime soap on the air (behind CBS’s The Young and the Restless). The show still enjoys a sizable fan following, usually ranking near the middle in the daytime ratings, with over three million people watching each day. In late 2004 the show’s ratings picked up again, and it tied other soaps for second place for the first time since 1995. By mid 2005 it had then leveled back to its usual middle of the pack spot. Since the beginning of 2006 the ratings have steadily gone up and by April 2006 All My Children was placing as high as 3rd and beating out fellow ABC sudser General Hospital as the top rated soap on the network.

Jesse McCartney returned to All My Children on Sept 8th and 12th of 2006, playing himself and not the role of JR Chandler, which he played from 1998-2001. [pictured]