During the summer of 1983, WDTN was exempted from running ABC's soap operas after 2 p.m., since WKRC-TV's signal easily covered Dayton. As a result, the station ran cartoons and off-network sitcoms in place of "One Life to Live" and "General Hospital". By the late 1980s, these were replaced with first run talk shows such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (at 4 p.m.), "The Montel Williams Show", and "The Jerry Springer Show". WDTN would begin its talk block at 2 p.m. during the week. In 2000, Time Warner Cable (Dayton's largest cable system) dropped the Cincinnati network affiliates to make room for new cable channels. The Cincinnati stations had been available on cable in the Dayton area ever since cable arrived there in the mid-1960s. As a result, ABC soap viewers could no longer see "One Life to Live" or "General Hospital", while over-the-air viewers could still pick them up on WCPO-TV (which had become Cincinnati's ABC affiliate in 1996). As a result, in the fall of 2000, "General Hospital" returned to WDTN's schedule, where it stayed until the station returned to NBC in 2004.