j swift
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Everything posted by j swift
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Hell yeah! The Guiding Light historian is making awesome videos, and we'd never get that content if the owners of IP thought they could still make a profit off of it. I find all of that curated content, including the short scenes on Instagram and TikTok, preferable to slogging through whole episodes of old shows. I can only imagine that they were below expectations, given that the project was shut down midstream.
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As it turns out, even 30 years ago when the average soap ratings were 80% higher than today, @Faulkner was correct that the audience for this type of nostalgic content is very small, and efforts have never been profitable. For example, in 1993, when ABC edited and released the VHS for the Greatest Wedding Series. They each sold for $65, which was 28% less than the average price of a tape at that time (distributors preferred the margins in tape rentals, so they kept the purchase price high to encourage rentals). According to the Wall Street Journal, ABC sold 17,000 copies of the series. By comparison, Twin Peaks sold 185,000 tapes that year and Aladdin (the top seller) sold 3 million copies. Thus, the title of this thread is fallacious because actually the potential is little to none. No matter how many times we try to have this discussion. The demand has never proven to be worth the cost or effort.
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My point is rather obvious. Every few months, someone suggests that major media companies should stream old soaps, as if it was a new idea. However, the companies that own the IP have lost hundreds of millions of dollars on that idea. So, regardless of fan support, history has demonstrated that is not a profitable concept.
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Hooray! For Gabi, Gwen, and Theresa, good to see women taking charge. It seems like Alex and Brady's whole "investigation" could have been done over the phone, but I guess that's not as cinematic. I like the banter between those two, it is like dumb and dumber. Maggie, possession is nine-tenths of the law (at least that's what they used to say on The Brady Bunch, where I acquired most of my legal knowledge), don't move out of the mansion until Vivian has a judge's order! And certainly, don't move back to the Horton House, which you should own, but every stray cousin has moved in and never changed to rug.
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LOL, I think I've said my peace on this topic... Retro TV filed for bankruptcy in 2021 after being dropped from 120 affiliates to 80. It was off the air or downgraded to "zombie" channels in NYC, LA, and Chicago from 2015-2019. They've been bought and sold three times, each time for less money, and they've not posted a profit earning since 2008. Lionsgate bought the TV Guide channel to turn it into POPtv for $255 mill, then CBS bought 30% of it and began airing Y&R and B&B. By 2019 CBS bought back the whole channel for $125 mil, less than half of the initial evaluation. SoapNet was launched in 2000, by 2004 they could no longer afford to produce original content like Soap Chat due to low ratings. Within its decade as a channel, it lost carriage on Time Warner Cable due to poor performance. Just like you can't ask GM to bring back Pontiac, streamers don't want to broadcast a product that has already failed. I mean, it's not like nobody has thought about it before...
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She's got a great energy, and she plays the humor well. I assume Theresa doesn't have a job outside the home and lives off Brady's child support payments? Although Tate goes to boarding school, she doesn't seem to be in a hurry to return to the office. Maybe Kimberly is holding down the fort in LA? Because, it makes sense why Kim wouldn't want to go honor the passing of Victor, given that she was one of his longest suffering victims.
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The show continues to be unintentionally funny, which for me is part of the entertainment value. When Belle told Brady that Shawn was "drinking again", I was like, he only stopped for a day. If I'm not mistaken, Belle hasn't even had time to change dresses during Shawn's sobriety. And then, when DVD praised Marlena for helping him even though he was a stranger, I was like, aren't all of her patients strangers? I mean other than those she's related to. He's talking like the expectation would be that Marlena and co. would throw an old man out on the street, but she's so uniquely special that she decided to follow the Hippocratic Oath. Finally, when Alex told Theresa that he couldn't go to dinner because he was off to Greece to investigate, and Theresa responded that she'll take a rain check, it was like, "yeah, you go off and investigate your great Uncle's will with my baby's daddy, I just wait here 'till you guys get back... So funny.
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Talia, it's your first day of work, and you're already downing shots and sleeping with married men? Get it together, sister. I mean, the hospital board convened in the middle of the night, just to offer you a job. At least wait a week before you start making out with strangers in the same hotel that you planned on drugging people with your British ex-boyfriend. Chanel is cute, but you weren't even bi-curious before you made those biscuits. Slow your roll.
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Bill Timoney (Alfred Vanderpool, AMC) and Vanessa Bell Calloway (Yvonne Caldwell, AMC) will be in the revival of Purlie Victorious (the play, not the musical) this season on Broadway.
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Gary was a study in contradictions, (not the least of which were that he was an environmentalist who bought a ranch that required an hour commute by car to his office and his kids), but he looked great in boxers
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@Joseph They were the Forrester twins. Gillian Spencer was on AMC It was certainly a weird time for DOOL because they came on right around the time of Drew and Shane Donovan. So, Shane not only had to worry about his son who was named after his twin being kidnapped by his ex-wife Emma, but also is ISA partner who also had a twin. Of course, Samantha & Marlena were the first real life twins on Days. But, with Tommy/Addie, Cassie/Rex, Sami/Eric, Allie/Johnny, Jules/Carver, Stefan/Jake and all the look-a-likes running around Salem they should have just re-named the show Nature or Nurture. 🙃🙂
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Please let Adam know that I am a huge fan of his account. His pop culture curation is second to none.
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I'm interested in the news about the actor who plays Rocky quitting. I feel a general suspicion about the accuracy of UK Tabloids. In this instance, Conley was already cast in a holiday panto, which I learned from Celebrity Big Brother can be very lucrative. The news is pegged to a supposed argument he had with the BBC, not production. So, isn't there some chance that he was going to quit, and Eastenders is using this to promote their Christmas-6 murder story, and to throw off suspicion from a more likely victim? Either way, it furthers my original concern that previewing a story 12 months in advance is very risky due to multiple unknown variables.
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whoops
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That is why the WGA plans to picket. If a show says that they can go on without writers, it diminishes their value. It is also kind of tricky that shows like Sheri and Kelly&Mark use their producers like writers, but don't give them credit. However, that's a separate issue.
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Also, it may be snarky to say, but they're a little long in the tooth for a "love on the run" story. And both Ava and Harris would need a lot of character rehabilitation before I would invest any interest in whether they survive. This is a logical question because they were in a locked facility protected by guards. If it were written that they shared a collective paranoia, and it was a sensitive mental health story, that could be interesting (who am I kidding?).
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Again, just to create a balanced dialogue. Vivian makes sense because Phillip is back. And it will be a catalyst for uniting Maggie with Justin’s family which secures her role as one of the oldest characters on the show. And the mystery of Victor’s will has me intrigued as to what will happen next. Arguably without Vivian as an antagonist, and with Sarah living outside of Salem, Maggie would have limited future story potential. So, if we care about the vets, we should celebrate this plot. ( hyperbole? , just a little, haha).
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To play devil’s advocate on the John’s father story, it has played out over very few episodes because it is of little consequence. Unlike the prior revelations, this only serves as a course correction. He is still the adopted Alamaine heir. He is still not part of the Dimera family. And no other part of the cannon has been retconned. It is just a sweet little cameo that gives story to the vets who were not involved in Victor’s funeral. It reminded me of similar cameos like Sammy Davis Jr on GH. A small event to promote the show and give a showcase for an older actor. But, it is a meaningless detail in John’s history other than giving him a nice guy as his biological father. John’s a senior citizen, meeting his family of origin no longer has the impact it did a decade ago when they last told this story. And why not do a stunt to promote the show? Especially if it can add a little levity to a sad time in the rest of the story
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I've been thinking the same thing all day! I guess none of the other daytime talk shows have writers?
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Gary Ewing could get it. Not that bright, prone to addiction, and not always loyal. But, boy oh boy could he wear a pair of boxers!
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It is ironic, in retrospect, that the Stefano's obsession with Marlena got a lot of explanation in the cannon, but Hope is just sort of collateral damage. It is no wonder that Hope was the one to finally shoot Stefano, because he tortured her just for sport. His main beef was Roman/John, not Bo. He whisked Marlena off to Paris, while Hope was stuck in New Orleans (a nice place to visit, but the humidity would be hell for a woman with her hair texture). And he was really only interested in the older doppelgänger version of Hope, which no woman wants to hear.
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Agreed, what's missing (in part) is the turn that precipitated Reg's motives. In hindsight, I can't even recall why he chose to come back to Bay City while everything was going well in Paraguay. Scott and Mary experienced the softer side of Reginald, but from the moment he wakes everyone up to announce his return, he's a jerk. Now, if they explained that he financed Mary's philanthropy through stolen art, that would have created some tension. Or if he was upset that Donna let Carl steal the family's money, we could have understood his frustration. But, torturing Donna, while Victoria seems blind to his motives, makes no sense. As for the coincidental timing of Mary's employment, that feels like it got confused with the idea of Scott as the third triplet. Mary was said to work for the Loves after Cheryl was born to earn some extra cash. Of course, Scott was older than Cheryl. But, it would have made no sense for Donna to have triplets, give one away, keep one, and then drag the third one down to Paraguay to live for a couple of years until Mary has an accident, gets amnesia, and is shuffled off to raise Scott. It was only recently from discussion on this thread that I realized that Mary had never met Michael because he was banished during Donna's pregnancy, before Mary worked at the mansion. However, it makes no sense with the re-write that Donna goes nuts because she remembered that she had sex with John, and he might have fathered the twins. If John was missing after fighting in Vietnam and the twins were born in 1967, the math doesn't add up. John is younger than Michael, and if Donna was 18 when she gave birth, wouldn't John have been around 16? So, wouldn't there be at least two years when he lived in Bay City before Vietnam? And if Michael was banished when Reg found out that Donna was pregnant, wouldn't she have known she was already pregnant when they had sex? So how would it be possible for John to be the daddy? It is like Donna took one look at the photo of John holding the twins and forgot where babies come from.
