Khan

Oy.

In retrospect, I don't blame Linda Gottlieb for wanting to bring OLTL, and daytime itself, into the 1990's, because the audience simply had become more sophisticated by that point. To me, however, she always came across in interviews and such as one who never appreciated soap operas as an artform - who, in fact, hated everything about the genre, and the show she was hired to work on in particular. I mean, compare Gottlieb to Wendy Riche, whom most of us had never heard of before she took over GH, but who came in and got almost right away how important it was to respect daytime and its' audience; who admitted that her show was not in great shape when she came aboard, but who didn't go out of her way to denigrate it to its' most loyal fans; and who, at the very least, appeared to respect the genre's conventions while still recognizing the need to contemporize.

Ah, yes. The soap opera opening that taught us that a man with a cute butt and a smile will only break your heart in the end.

Poor Ben.

I agree. I think that's true of most of this genre's greats: Marland, Bill Bell, Agnes Nixon, even Henry Slesar, who spent most of his time writing crime stories, but who knew how to do them so they were motivated by characters and not by plot.

I just want to express how much I appreciate your posting these updates, @janea4old, and hope you are doing what you need to in the name of self-care.

Not until BTG reunites Darnell and Debbi and recreates the No 1. Greatest Supercouple in Soap Opera History!!!

You're not alone in your thinking, lol. The two sets are just so similar.

If and when I break into "the industry," I am so keeping my ass off social media, lol.

I think it's because he no longer entertains thoughts of being the next action star or has a Christian fundamentalist wife breathing her hypocritical air down his neck.

EB: "I'll be DAMNED if I take a pay cut!"

LOL!!

Keep in mind, I haven't been watching everyday. But, what I've seen so far? It's okay. It's still coming together, but the potential is there. I'm just like Douglas Marland, though. I need some (more) characters and families on the show who are have-nots. Soaps are nothing without characters who are all about the come up (@All My Shadows).

I wonder if it has less to do with how much money Y&R has and more to do with how that money's being spent. Like, where are the current production team's priorities? Is every available dollar being put up on screen? If not, then where else are the funds going? And does it really have more to do with taste levels than anything else?

Wow. You KNOW a soap is bare bones when they're buying wigs from Especially Yours.

LOL!!

If @Errol's "blind item" isn't about Y&R/Josh Griffith, then it should be. I've never seen Y&R in such creative dire straits in my life, and when you consider both the Lynn Marie Latham AND MAB eras, that's saying something!

Was that a real appraiser from AR, or just some actor they hired for the spoof?

What else? We fight.

As if they would know for certain that DAYS (or any show) would still be on the air 42 years later, right, lol?

Will the numbers remain as high? Probably not. But I think most in this country would agree that "protecting free speech" means protecting even speech you don't necessarily agree with. As former VP Dick Cheney (of all people) once said, in regards to same-sex unions, "freedom means freedom for everyone."

I won't lie: when I first read this story, I thought, "This would make a fantastic movie on the Hallmark Channel: woman gets scammed by 'bad actors' claiming to be handsome soap star on social media, soap star reaches out to victim to offer his support, romance blossoms," lol.

IMO, the problem with Stefano DiMera was that DAYS wanted to take a perfectly sinister mobster and turn him into Blofeld from the James Bond movies. Suddenly, Stefano, along the rest of the DiMera clan, possessed all this untold wealth (that contracted and expanded with each HW'ing regime change) and that also allowed them to control the known, free world through outlandish gadgetry and the like, even though their base of operations was some hamlet in the Midwest. Once we're brainwashing former mercenaries into pretending to be small-town cops, we're admitting that character development is no longer an option.

In the end, 'twas the money that talked.

Like the song says, "but that was another place and another time." Johnny Carson (and Jack Paar and Steve Allen before him) pulled down big numbers for NBC, because the TV landscape back then was so much smaller than what it is today - just the "Big Three" and local, independent stations that did the bare minimum in order to keep their licenses current. If Carson were on today, he'd pull about the same numbers as Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert, and it wouldn't be a reflection on the political content either. But, you know, even Carson saw the writing on the wall when he retired, and that was due to cable TV and the rise of FOX affiliates that were airing "The Arsenio Hall Show" as the younger, "urban" alternative to his show. (The thought of Carson potentially being forced to show grunge and hip-hop acts on "The Tonight Show" in order to keep up still leaves the mind reeling, lol).