Have Soapmags always been flunky's , only doing what the soaps tell them to do? Has there ever been a time when they did any hardhitting reporting or has it always been the way it is now?

Soap Opera Digest seems to be caught somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, they have spent years being the lap dog for Days Od Our Lives. Every third cover (or more!) features Days. It's always "The Plan To Save Days" or "Changes Coming To Days That Fans Will Love!". It's always the same crap. Inside, however, they always give the Editor's Choice or Performer of the Week laurels to shows like As The World Turns. So there heart is with quality, but they also do what they are told.

Soap Opera Digest seems to be caught somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, they have spent years being the lap dog for Days Od Our Lives. Every third cover (or more!) features Days. It's always "The Plan To Save Days" or "Changes Coming To Days That Fans Will Love!". It's always the same crap. Inside, however, they always give the Editor's Choice or Performer of the Week laurels to shows like As The World Turns. So there heart is with quality, but they also do what they are told.

When I first started reading Digest, they didn't really hold back that much. The Best and Worst of a certain year were almost always brutally honest. Now, they go with safe choices and pick stuff that they know won't piss off the readers or the execs.

A magazine called Afternoon TV in he late 70's and early 80's used to run critiques and articles that were not afraid to criticize the shows.

I think Jon-Michael Reed was the editor.

I recall he criticized Eileen Fulton's performance during the Bennett Hadley story saying she was ad-libbing(badly)He dissed the other actors an the story in general.

La Fulton took umbrage and her letter was published defending the other prformers and denying the ad libbing accusation.

Both SOD and SOW used to be far more informative and 'hard hitting'.

SOD and SOW are getting bad with the ass kissing lately. It's so bad they're making SID look good. Say what we will about SID, but they're lips aren't planted firmly on anyone's ass the way SOD and SOW's are

all the mgazines suck. ATWT is the soap that got massive youtube hits, mentions on ET, and mentions on soft news programs in this country and outside it...and yet the soap magazines don't feel it's worth a cover and instead opt for the same spoon fed garbage about the same soaps they always cover feature? How is a GH article on "nothing will ever be the same again!" because of Jason and ___ in any way more newsworthy than Noah and Luke on ATWT?

I must pat myself on the back, if I may. I got so sick of seeing the same 3 soaps on the cover every week (Y&R, GH and CONSTANTLY, DAYS) that I kept harrassing SOD until I got to talk to some of the higher-ups. They told me that issues featuring those soaps sold better. However ,when I told them in no uncertain terms, that many of us subscribers were sick of seeing Drake Hogestyn on the cover every week, he said they would go to a new system. On the newstand, it would still be the same 3 soaps on the cover, but subscribers would get ALL the soaps represented. Although I thought he was giving me a line of bull, sure enough the subsriber issues were soon featuring all the other soaps!