<P> The Young and the Restless (often abbreviated as Y&R) is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS . The show is set in a fictional Wisconsin town called Genoa City, which is unlike and unrelated to the real life village of the same name, Genoa City, Wisconsin . First broadcast on March 26, 1973, The Young and the Restless was originally broadcast as half - hour episodes, five times a week . The show expanded to one - hour episodes on February 4, 1980 . In 2006, the series began airing encore episodes weeknights on SOAPnet until 2013, when Y&R moved to TVGN (now Pop). Pop still airs the encore episodes on weeknights, starting July 1, 2013 . The series is also syndicated internationally . </P> <P> The Young and the Restless originally focused on two core families: the wealthy Brooks family and the working class Foster family . After a series of recasts and departures in the early 1980s, all the original characters except Jill Foster and Katherine Chancellor were written out . Bell replaced them with the new core families, the Abbotts and the Williamses . Over the years, other families such as the Newmans, Winters, and the Baldwin - Fishers were introduced . Despite these changes, one storyline that has endured through almost the show's entire run is the feud between Jill Abbott and Katherine Chancellor, the longest rivalry on any American soap opera . </P> <P> Since its debut, The Young and the Restless has won nine Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series . It is also currently the highest - rated daytime drama on American television . As of 2008, it had appeared at the top of the weekly Nielsen ratings in that category for more than 1,000 weeks since 1988 . As of December 12, 2013, according to Nielsen ratings, The Young and the Restless was the leading daytime drama for an unprecedented 1,300 weeks, or 25 years . The serial is also a sister series to The Bold and the Beautiful, as several actors have crossed over between shows . In June 2017, The Young and the Restless was renewed for three additional years . </P> <P> To compete with the youthful ABC soap operas, All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital, CBS executives wanted a new daytime serial that was youth oriented . William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell created The Young and the Restless in 1972 for the network under the working title, The Innocent Years! "We were confronted with the very disturbing reality that young America had lost much of its innocence," Bell said . "Innocence as we had known and lived it all our lives had, in so many respects, ceased to exist ." They changed the title of the series to The Young and the Restless because they felt it "reflected the youth and mood of the early seventies ." The Bells named the fictional setting for the show after the real Genoa City, Wisconsin, which was located on their way from their then - home in Chicago to their annual summer vacation spot in Lake Geneva . </P>

When did the young and the restless end
find me the text answering this question