Soap operas are not quite dead yet, but they have been on life support for a while.

CBS is hoping to resuscitate the genre, though. The network announced Wednesday it was developing a new daytime drama to be called The Gates, working with their content partners the NAACP. The last time a new daytime soap was introduced on the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS and NBC), it was 1999, when Passions began its eight-year run on NBC.

The Gates, which according to the network, “follows the lives of a wealthy Black family in a posh, gated community,” will be the first soap opera with a predominantly Black cast in 35 years, since the show Generations debuted on NBC. That program only lasted until 1991.

Michele Val Jean, a screenwriter for The Bold and the Beautiful since 2012, will serve as writer, showrunner, and executive producer. Val Jean has also written for shows like General Hospital and Santa Barbara. Sheila Ducksworth, president of the CBS Studios NAACP venture, will also executive produce along with Leon Russell, Derrick Johnson and Kimberly Doebereiner.

“The Gates will be everything we love about daytime drama, from a new and fresh perspective,” Ducksworth said in a statement. Nothing more is known about the drama, as characters, storylines and casting are not set. The show does not yet have a launch date.

Procter and Gamble is also part of the development team, which is fitting because the company was very involved in soap production for years, in addition to sponsoring the shows. The term soap opera is derived from the commercials for soap and other household cleaning products from companies like P&G that paid the bills on daytime dramas.

If picked up, the addition of The Gates will bring the number of daytime dramas currently broadcasting to 4, with two appearing on CBS,  The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, and one on ABC, General Hospital. NBC’s The Days of Our Lives is still in production, but only available for streaming on Peacock.

Soap operas were enormously popular on television since they moved to the new medium from radio in the 1940s and 50s. That popularity began to ebb in the 1980s as the programs’ main audience, women who worked in the home, began to decline. As the number of women in the workplace began to increase, the number of daytime dramas began to decrease. Expense was also a factor, as talk, reality and game shows were infinitely cheaper to produce than hour-long dramas with large casts that aired every weekday with no reruns.

ABC had axed 2 out of 3 of their long-running daytime dramas by the 2010s, and CBS similarly cut two of their soaps by 2012, including the longest running of all sudsers, Guiding Light, which began as a radio serial and ran for 72 years before the network pulled the plug in 2009.