<Tr> <Th_colspan="2"> External links </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Website </Td> </Tr> <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>

When did young and the restless first air