vetsoapfan

While I could assess both Alexander and Shipp to be attractive, it was just in a clinical way. Neither of them really appealed to me. I found Jerry ver Dorn a lot cuter, TBH. And Michael Zaslow in his prime was a helluva lot sexier. WOOF!

Carolee Campbell was great, but if she had to be replaced, Rowland was a solid choice. God knows, we've seen a plethora of woefully-bad recasts of formerly-beloved characters on soaps.

I had never seen this. Thanks, @DRW50. I always found Jada Rowland to be so sweet and likeable.

Afternoon TV and Daily TV Serials were my favorites as well, although Daytime TV was a classic under editor Paul Denis. Those were the days. It was hard to watch the soap press crash and burn so badly.

Another soap mag which was around in the early 1970s was TV Dawn to Dusk, but it was a rag; poorly produced and run, in comparison to Daytime TV and Afternoon TV. I don't think TVDTD ever gave out awards. It was such a cheap publication. They'd devote a full page to an oft-seen publicity photo, with an empty comment like, "Mary Stuart enjoys playing Jo on SFT." Big woo. 🙄 They also reported storyline details incorrectly, suggesting their staff didn't pay attention to the soaps. The same misinformation about plots would show up in "letters to the editor" commentary, which told me TVDTD made up those fan letters, themselves (or at least some of them). It was carelessly done and inundated with filler material. Yuck. On the other hand, Daytime TV, Afternoon TV, Daily TV Serials, Rona Barrett's Daytimers and Soap Opera Weekly were class acts. I read them all, cover to cover. Soap Opera Digest was "iffy" at first, but eventually blossomed into a good magazine, before petering out and coming pointless in its declining years. I'm trying to think of what character Lyman could played on TEON temporarily, a while before she began playing Elly Jo. Maybe Sarah Louise Capice? I could see DL filling in for Christopher Norris. Phoebe Smith is another possibility. Nobody would have hired Lyman to sub for Emily Prager as Laurie Ann Karr. At least Sarah Louise and Phoebe Smith were both young blondes.

@slick jones, I enjoyed watching Arlene Dahl as well. She was very colorful and really threw herself in the role. I dropped OLTL in 1983, when ABC fired Jacqueline Courtney, but would still watch it from time to time for years, to see what everyone else was doing. The decade was a disaster for the show, IMHO. Losing Judith Light, Jacquie Courtney, Ellen Holly, Lillian Hayman, Al Freeman, Jr., and so many other once-core players was bad enough, but the decision to go full-out sci-fi camp was painful to see. As the writing deteriorated, the show become unrecognizable. It amazes me how so many soaps self-destructed in that decade.

@DRW50, I clearly recall Lyman's great run as Elly-Jo Jamison on TEON, but have no memory at all of her temporarily subbing for another actress before taking on that part. Soap Opera Digest had not yet been created, of course. The only soap mags that gave out awards at the time (to my recollection) were Daytime TV and Afternoon TV. Of those two, Afternoon TV awarded statues to actors in many different categories, so I wonder if Lyman could be thinking of that publication as the one which gave her an award.

ATWT was one of the few soaps which didn't sink into camp hell in the 1980s. Thanks, @DRW50.

I think many dedicated soap fans daydream about how they could salvage and rejuvenate once-stellar, now decimated, shows. And I'll bet many of those fans could do a better job than the often-incompetent PTB who actually get hired to ruin...er RUN...daytime dramas. Daydreaming keeps us all from going insane over the horrendous state of our cherished soaps.

I was so disappointed in how the soaps were being decimated in the 1980s (asinine sci-fi/fantasy garbage, discarding of vets, an emphasis on gimmicks and gloss over humanity and identifiable human drama), that I wanted to go back to cornerstone basics of the genre. I've actually created a few soaps in my lifetime. The first was during my early high school years; a mystery saga along the lines of The Edge of Night. It didn't really click well, for whatever reason (I was no Henry Slesar), but I figured I'd get better at writing with practice. The second one was at the end of my high school experience. The writing came much easier for me by then, and the words just flowed from my hands as if the stories were writing themselves. I ended up producing 306 episodes of that serial, until real life (school, work, family responsibilities) pulled me away from it. I brought that "world" to a conclusion with a wedding of two principle characters and then said goodbye to it. Occasionally, I must admit, I still daydream about that community today.🙃 The soap I devised when I went back to university in the 1980s was based on people I knew and the issues they had had/were having in their lives. It was predicated on interpersonal relationships mainly. I included some characters who were aspiring to succeed in the entertainment industry. My professor wrote that I had imbued the show with a somewhat idealized depiction of the main family. He described it as being the type of family everybody wishes they had, but so few people ever get. He called it comforting wish fulfilment. That had been my goal! I wrote descriptions and histories of all the main characters, along with projected storylines for the first six months, and then the opening scripts. It took me ages to complete, but it was a joyous experience for me. It was like conceiving and birthing 20 children all at once, ROTF!🤣

Awesome Jocks.

If the MAGAts were easy prey enough to get manipulated into voting for the tangerine-tinted terror, they'll fall for anything.🥺

The cynical (i.e., the dominant) me has the very same thoughts.

I've seen so many posters over the years who are bright, creative, well-versed in soap history, and who care deeply about the integrity of the genre. I'd put the shows' chances in their hands a lot faster than I would allow any of the "usual suspects" to take control of the dramas they've already helped decimate. When I returned to university in the 1980s, I created a bible for a new soap and presented it in my screenwriting class. It was in reaction to how badly I saw the network shows being butchered at the time. The creative process was thrilling; a total joy, and I still smile when I remember the positive feedback I received from the professor and my fellow students. I was used to seeing written commentary from professors on my work. This one wrote me a long, complimentary note on the final page of the bible, but also graded it 97%, A+. I was beaming ear to ear for days!

Right. Literally for decades, soaps mesmerized their audiences with tales of romance, family conflict, class struggles, and recognizable interpersonal-relationship sagas. We didn't need relentless, heavy violence. We didn't need clones, mad scientists, extra-terrestrials and demon possessions. We didn't need gaggles of plastic himbos and bimbos pushing beloved vets off-screen. We only needed to see people whom we cared about, and the intelligent, moving progression of their lives. Flashy sets, gaudy gimmicks, and high-falutin' hairdos be damned. The characters and the words were important.

This is the perfect way to encapsulate the situation. So many morally-reprehensible stories were foisted on the show and its characters in ATWT's dwindling years. Rape should never be used as a cheap plot device or in a way that degrades the victim. Jack's sexual assault was another heinous example of how nasty the the show's tone had become. The fact that people like Hogan Sheffer, Ron Carlivati, Jean Passanante, Charles Pratt, Dena Higley, etc., somehow end up winning awards for their material, decimates the credibility and integrity of the awards, IMHO. Soaps used to have a solid moral core and did not originally wallow in the gutter, rolling around in filth and depravity just to be cool, hip, campy, or whatever else modern-day PTB aim for. Thank you. Cruelty, degradation and misogyny are not components which lend themselves to successful soaps, which have always been predicated on warmth, family bonds, and providing a comforting haven for their audience. The genre has been crippled because the cynical and ignorant executives in charge understand neither the shows nor what the audience wants to see.

Janice Lynde responded to the original Facebook post. Janice Lynde Top contributor My Little Sister, our PumpkinSo sad to hear this, Pam… May you soar with the Angels

I have a feeling that the backstage dramas of the soaps are a heck of a lot more enthralling than anything we see on screen.

I've seen writers producing poor scripts for primetime TV and movies before, but not to the same overwhelming degree as in daytime TV. They generally don't get hired by everyone else under the sun once their initial work bombs big-time. On soaps, even the worst of the worst stay in the same positions for YEARS.

What absolutely boggles my mind about daytime TV is that no matter how many times weak/incompetent producers and writers fail in the soap world, they keep getting hired by other serial to wreak the exact same type of damage. (Or worse.) It's freaking unreal.😡

That's a good point: if a show's state is not mentioned for many years, it's easier for the revolving door of never-ending newbies in charge to miss out on or get confused about previously-established facts.

I don't believe Lemay was the one who negated the fact that the show was originally set in Michigan. Aside from a few curious character mutations, he did seem to care about the past. I think AW switched the local to Illinois in the 1980s or later. I don't think TPTB always knew or remembered the past well enough to give new headwriters full accurate information, anyway. Lemay wrote a story about Pat Randolph killing a predator named Greg Bernard who was targeting her daughter. The writer referred to a teenaged Pat killing her boyfriend (Tom Baxter) by stabbing him, as she later killed Greg. But in reality, Pat had shot Tom with a gun, so TPTB were lax in knowing or correctly relating established facts to the current scribe. Is the specific murder weapon of a long-gone character a vital component 15 years after the fact? Probably not to most viewers, but for those who had been watching way back when, little mistakes like this can be grating. I'm not devastated that AW changed Bay City's home state along the way, but I see this as another grating point that a little research could have prevented. Soap viewers have loooooong memories, LOL!

To me, there were some weaker writers on ATWT in the 1980s pre-Marland, but starting in 2000, the advent of the show's associated with Hogan Sheffer and Jean Passanante, the quality plummeted and remained in the toilet for the show's remaining years. It's amazing that so many actors were still able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I just don't think KMS was one of them.

What was most frustrating, is that RTPP was weakly written at the beginning and remained tedious for what seemed months on end. Then, in its last stretch, it suddenly perked right up and turned itself around significantly. Unfortunately, by that time NBC was fully committed to How to Survive a Marriage, and went ahead and cancelled the flourishing RTPP in favor of HTSAM. Ironically, history repeated itself. HTSAM was dreadfully written in its opening months. NBC fairly quickly gave up on it and changed its time slot to compete with the ratings powerhouse ATWT. Wouldn't you know it, NBC hired Rick Edelstein to take over the writing reigns and the quality soared. It turned into a rich, layered, deep psychological drama along the lines of Harding Lemay's Another World. Alas, NBC axed this newly-shining soap too.

I have a long-time friend with whom I used to watch soaps religiously when we were kids. When I told him about SON recently, I suggested that he jump into the forums so he could join the discussions about vintage daytime TV. He was incredulous that this TGL thread alone was up to a whopping 1183 pages. He asked, "How can anyone even talk about a long-cancelled soap that much?!?" Then I reminded him that he has brought up the topic of The Guiding Light EVERY SINGLE TIME he has phoned me in the last 50 years!🫢 So, he became sheepish and embarrassed, but relieved to know he's not alone in is undying love for his favorite show. TGL community rocks!