When CBS moved the show from its longtime time slot of 12:30 PM Eastern to 2:30 PM Eastern so that Les feux de l'amour (1973) started their afternoon line-up, Procter and Gamble Productions was unhappy with this. NBC offered them their old 12:30 time slot, so P&G moved the show there. Promos asking viewers to "Follow the Search" did not mention the show's new network by name; they simply said "another network." Ironically, the show got far worse ratings in its four (final) years on NBC than it did in the year it occupied the 2:30 time-slot on CBS.
The series finale, which aired the day after Christmas in 1986, ended with a montage of the show's main cast members bidding the audience goodbye set to "We'll Be Together Again" by Lou Rawls. Love of Life used the same song for its series finale nearly seven years earlier, but used a version sung by Tony Bennett.