te.

Any time Americans start talking about "communism" pisses me off. Do you even *know* what communism is? There's a great documentary about "Kiruna Swedes" in... ehrm, Swedish, but either way these people ended with bullets in their brains, their children trying to get back to Sweden and communists denying it all happened. This has nothing to do with Social Democracy - believing that society needs a wider social net, believing that we can still vote for our leaders, believing that our neighbour is not some awful human being less deserving than us... is not communism. Stop it the US. Seriously.

I mean, overall the issue with late night isn't "political speech" or not, it's that the financial model just currently isn't working in the current landscape. No matter what happens to Kimmel, the future of late night wouldn't be great even if they went super inoffensive and talked about cuddly kittens (though I guess cuddly kittens might bring in some streaming numbers, so maybe not). But overall, linear ratings are likely to keep going down and they're not making up the difference in digital. This is why The Talk got cancelled and replaced by something as old fashioned like a soap. Either way, Kimmel, Colbert et al shows will likely be the last of their kind. I'm guessing that whatever happens in the future, I think that the time of hugely paid late night show hosts will die with them. I suspect they'll pivot toward a more podcast-but-filmed format to try and get their digital numbers up, while also cutting costs. It's either that or just give up the time slot to affiliates.

To be fair, they had a far less turn around in taping back then in addition to the ratings just starting to dive really fast. So I think she was replaced within three months or so into her run and then JER came in two or three months later. How they kept re-hiring her is beyond me, but maybe she's just really good at pitching things. Looking at her Wikipedia page, she and JER were actually co-headwriters for a week between August 11-18, 2003. Though obviously it was just the transition week.

I agree - I'm also not sure if ABC have any *real* concrete plans on what to do with their late night shows or what to replace them with when the time comes. I suspect they'll want to see what happens to Colbert's slot once he vacates. At this point they'll likely keep Kimmel for a while yet, though I'm pretty sure that in the long-run it's going to be a different format for these late night talkshows (I'm guessing they'll end up leaning hard into podcast-y format to begin with to try and expand their digital presence).

The biggest issue is that there seems to be a huge disconnect with the actress and the actual character. Both Ashley and Derek comes across as being in somewhere in their 30s, but are written as if they've just gotten out of college and it's their first real relationship. Add the whole propping up of Ashley as a character that reached ridiculous levels at one point... it's a case where I think they should've rewritten the character(s) slightly if they wanted to cast Jen Jacobs and Ben Gavin in the roles.

From memory, the ratings really started to fall quickly during Higley's first tenure. It might've been that they were talking about bringing JER on already, but I suspect they were already worried about the profitability of C&B's show and the ratings taking such a quick dive during the Higley era just put them into panic mode. The Salem Stalker storyline definitively came across as an attempt to cut costs massively.

It was lucky essentially. CBS was just getting weaker and the obvious option would've been to push Dallas into the 10PM Friday slot, but even by the 1988-89 season it was still in the lower top 30 and they had so much issues elsewhere that trying to find a replacement for the time slot wasn't on the cards. Dallas pretty much had to fall out of the top 40 for them to finally make that move. Season 6 also seemed to stabilize the show a bit, so that helped.

All I can say is yikes! They were basically going to go into being a full year ahead if they hadn't put in an extended dark period (which means that the actual writing is a year plus ahead). To be honest, they could take a six month break at this point but that won't happen. Corday was way to proud that they could put out stuff during co-vid.

NuTheo is a bit Mumbly McGee right now, but he's not awful and probably just confused by the characters backstory (he's autistic! and also...). I hope he'll settle in soon enough.

Catching up again and why is Kate on the Horton Square plugging away for "One Stormy Night" 😅

I really don't think the show thought this out themselves since Peaches was pretty much a three episode plot device.

Pretty much. Late night is unprofitable at this point due to them not being able to monetize it in streaming and there's been talk about late night shows going the way of the dinosaurs when these hosts contracts are up. This basically gave them an excuse to try and get rid of Kimmel early.

I guess GH did benefit from those moves in certain markets.

TBF, there might be a reason why the US is excluded in this considering I think that the US can access their other channels? No way they've gone through the effort to digitize from 1995 onwards just to stick it on an obscure streamer. They're likely looking for a better deal for the US since that's where AMC was actually a hit (and well, actually aired) for a lot of years.

I'm guessing that Disney have put together this package for sale to digital platforms. It's obvious since they started talking about those Lifetime Movies that they're interested in doing something with the brand, they just don't know what yet. Plus, this is a fairly low-effort and low-cost way to test out potential models for future potential streaming soaps. Even if it doesn't do blockbuster numbers for BEONDTV, it will tell them a lot about the viewing habits about those that do.

So... DAYS OF OUR LIVES, how do you feel about it.

Weirdly, I think both - if there were more hours in the week, then maybe they could've developed both the new characters and the old ones. But as it was, they were fighting for airtime and the old characters won.

TBH, it seemed like they early on would struggle to bring in people outside the "core" group, so all these characters would ultimately be jettisoned off sooner or later. The Schusters were just the first ones after the first storyline resolution, but then you had all the Chernaks, Fowlers, Webbers, Winters, Jills and Rachels that only seemed to pass through the show. Maybe more episodes per week could've eased more characters into staying (though I do like how broken so many characters that pass through end up getting). Unfortunately, losing Allison that early really did a trick on the show - Rachel was sort of working, but then Leigh Taylor-Young got pregnant and they wrote her out, leaving the Carsons without much to do again. I do wonder if the show should've just recast Allison and been done with it, then again, once Jill enters the scene the show is so obviously old hat with the changing 60s. The endless droning about the scandal of her being a single mom while they're also doing more "modern" teen storylines / "race" politics was an interesting contrast at least.

I think she's still living in 1989 when there were 12 soaps on air and vaguely keeping up with one or two episodes per week on VHS was enough to print out an article. It's obvious she maybe at best has dipped into the show during the first few months and haven't found it as engaging, but gets all the wrong takes on what's off. There are certainly things that I think could be fixed with BTG (noteably I think they haven't gotten the pacing right), but her article isn't going to fly with soap fans today. It's not like there's a lot of soaps these days to keep track of.

I feel like this has been an issue since the 80s with the Ewings / Carrington's originally being far more "bad guys", but as the Reagan era started taking hold they became more and more the protagonists that you were supposed to root for. I don't see that changing unfortunately as all soaps seem to be clinging onto that era.

I love it because it was incredibly true to life in a way - sometimes people disappear. With that said, it wouldn't work today. You'd have people arguing about needing to know what happened!

I mean, they kept trying to kill Allison with those movies but she's more resilient than we know, just like the real life actress. I do want to see the daytime soap. TBH, I wonder if Peyton Place would've been better off just recasting her... but then I did enjoy the consequences of her leaving.

If there's one thing I've always been curious about it's how people reacted to Allison just walking out of Peyton Place. To me it's something that's just haunting - we just don't know what happened to her, though there's certainly heavy implications that Jack Chandler killed her and Rachel knew what happened.

Yep. That was earnt. The lily pond catfight was actually kind of random.