Vee

John, does it really feel like a good use of your time to argue with a star of Abbott Elementary about soaps on the Internet?

Corday is an avoidant and absentee personality. He loves credit for elements that get praise but when it's anything else he claims he's totally uninvolved or blames the media for calling attention to it. He'd announce a media blackout of the major entertainment trades for this if he could. He'll probably beg whatever's left of SOD for an 'exclusive' next. And no, cutting off their access doesn't mean you stop reporting. I don't believe for a second he didn't know all about this. He will claim he didn't. The reality is he most likely knew it all for years but believed Alarr was the only man who could keep the trains running on time who he could 'trust'. That is what most of daytime comes down to now, as I already said.

A very, very smart interview overall.

You used to be unable to pry Martha Madison away from a soap or social media involving a soap she was on tbqh, so that tracks. I feel bad taking a light jab at that aspect of her public life if it is her; it's horrible for anyone.

As I said in the thread about this news, re: why this stuff is allowed to continue for years at soaps including Y&R - Further, the little remaining 'official' soap press (and most of the online soap sites as well tbqh) have absolutely zero interest in doing anything but transcribing press releases and retaining access to the last of the soaps. It's real easy for former soap magazine staff or current online soap bloggers to show out on Twitter whenever a piece of news comes out, but where were you when you knew about it as a supposedly 'open secret' for years and said nothing while reporting on Ken's 54th Plan to Save Days?

Exactly. People need to stop assuming they are the first person any of this shít has ever occurred to, and listen for once vs. just talking.

Again, it's partly because veteran staff closely guard and protect these cushy positions for themselves or their friends or relations. (I'm not condemning them for this in any way or questioning their talent, but one example of a family pipeline is the Cullitons and Claire Labine.) GH has picked up some new talent, particularly talent of color, in the last decade BTS. But I think they also cut a few of them very recently. And the less said about the last tatters of the soap press which happily regurgitate press releases, pointedly ignore any scandals (I'll never forget when they haughtily threatened to name a fairly well-known abusive actor at an ABC soap in the early 2000s while complaining only in a blind item) because it's for 'the good of the soaps' and then act like they're so cool showing out only on Twitter while they're barely making rent, the better. Yes, that includes Soap Opera Digest and what was Soap Opera Weekly. No, I am not going to hear excuses for them. From anyone.

Albert Alarr is clearly awful but is far from the only problem at Days. It goes to Corday.

They can't afford her. Barbara is likely doing it as a favor to Y&R - she is very busy in horror movies these days both in front of and behind the camera.

I assume Jamey will respond to this serious issue via a series of Dynasty-related memes.

Which is why this continues to go on at these shows. Few are left who know how to maintain this kind of production cycle, and few new people are allowed to be trained or cultivated in writing or production if they're not close friends or family (because these are in fact seemingly very lucrative positions for a creative in the post-Netflix era, and the existing veterans want to preserve their own income), and then the networks or owners don't care about the soaps at all beyond them filling a timeslot. So we have this.

Again, I'm an extremely lapsed viewer but my first thought was Wally Kurth.

The love scene anecdote reminds me of one Steve Fletcher told about Rauch coming in on those at OLTL in the '80s, inserting himself into the scene. Is @Khan still around? He used to enjoy these guessing games. Didn't Sony just let Morina quit Y&R quietly many, many, many months after the initial public allegations?

He's always been like that though, about so many things. I am barely plugged into Days in this era as a viewer, let alone BTS so the most I'd ever heard was that Alarr had a heavy hand and could be an ass. This doesn't surprise me though, not after Morina or Paul Rauch or I'm sure many others. And Melissa Archer's harrowing thread about some of her time at OLTL indicates to you how little we really ever know even about shows very close to us.

Corday will do nothing unless forced, and then blame the media.

Again, we discussed this a bit in the GH thread and the answer is no one knows lol. My personal take is she existed/exists but no one remembers. It is all a mess. This is very often the case.

There's lots of shitheels out there. But the answer 90% of the time is don't engage your audience on social media.

Wow. Next up: Ken Corday blackballs Deadline from getting PR releases. (This is a joke)

I think a line or two years ago suggested Victor was dead.

It doesn't make a ton of sense. RC heavily invested in plot points from "The Gift" a decade later, but Erin Hershey Presley only being on for I think a day to get brutally murdered was dumb and the budget and focus choices (Heather, Todd, the terrible twink hired to play Rafe Jr.) hurt the story as much as some of the insane plot twists. They offer an alternative and very poor cover explanation for who Caleb 'really' is in the GH world at one point (crazy guy named Stephen Clay convinced he was a vampire who killed his wife Livvie, with no explanation as to why Lucy would believe in a vampire fantasy), then IMO basically dump it all at the end with Caleb's hinted-at survival and taking back of the magic ring before he exits town unnoticed. This to me suggests he is real and Lucy was right all along, that the ring and its magic made people believe the alternative facts. It just wasn't the way to handle it - they needed to do something clearer and go all in, then get rid of it all. And not make it look like it was done for $16.

Yes. IIRC it was suggested at the time they were together again, no other mention beyond that.

I think streaming still can be good for entertainment, as it was at the outset and in many of the ways you describe. But when everything in it is driven by a ceaseless drive for endless content, nostalgia bait, algorithmic analysis and tech bros focused on the next quarter vs. any industry longevity, it's not a recipe for future survival for entertainment. That has to change. I think we may well be at an inflection point for the industry not unlike the end of the '60s, just as Harris describes. But this period resembles the '60s in many ways, not just in media.

Real awkward coming in a few hours ago, writing a reply in the PC thread and finding myself surrounded by 3000+ bots. Maybe this can also lead to a firmer monitoring of our favorite troll and/or trolls who have continued making obvious and only slightly less obvious sockpuppets for years.

Another thread I think is relevant to the above and the dug-in philosophy re: the strikes from the great Mark Harris:

An accurate thread: Also accurate: