I honestly don't get the whole younger crowd attention span thing.

With so many shows that just drop like 8 episodes and then disappear for a year or more, you'd think that crowd would love soaps since they never go away.

29 minutes ago, anthonymolchan said:

Did we know that Beverly Penberthy was living with Ahlzeimers before Dorothy Lyman mentioned it in the book?

There were some rumors going around about her health, but nothing concrete

7 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

I honestly don't get the whole younger crowd attention span thing.

With so many shows that just drop like 8 episodes and then disappear for a year or more, you'd think that crowd would love soaps since they never go away.

I think it's partly just them having no cultural cachet now, partly the quality, but I really do think being an hour (or 32 minutes minus ads - however much it is now) hurts.

I guess there's still B&B, but I haven't been able to watch that in a very long time.

4 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I guess there's still B&B, but I haven't been able to watch that in a very long time.

Don't worry you're not missing much 😂

B&B just might be the weakest soap out of the five, no matter how long an episode could be

On 10/7/2026 at 6:25 PM, Soaplovers said:

Was it a tense and cold set because it was all the way in Brooklyn away from everyone else so they were stuck with one another? Did the set become more warm and welcoming in the later years (say the late 80s and 90s)?

It seems like the Texas set was the complete opposite.

The cast members do talk about making friends with the people they rode to the studio with, and that both the Texas cast and the AW cast had houses (in the Hamptons? Somewhere out of the city) where some of them went to have fun on the weekends. Some of them were quite close and remained close to people they worked with.

1 hour ago, anthonymolchan said:

Did we know that Beverly Penberthy was living with Ahlzeimers before Dorothy Lyman mentioned it in the book?

I didn’t watch TLR.

I missed Dorothy's comment about Beverly in the book. Does anyone remember what part of the book her quote is in? Or even the page number? I'd like to look it up. But I don't want to read the entire book again. Thanks you.

Sadly, I think only reading the dialogue in books transcends age. I've come across that many times as someone who used to run a book group. I also think that a lot of teens back during the 90 minute AW time would not have had the attention spans to watch even a 30 minute soap let alone a 90 minute one. My mother was one of those. The only reason she had any knowledge of soaps was because they played in the office she worked at. Even now, it's an ordeal to get her to sit and watch something. She would never sit for a soap opera or episodic drama, but she watched all-day streams about court cases.

It's interesting to me because a lot of these GEN-Zers or older people like my mom will then watch hours of vertical dramas, Tik tok skits, or shorter form BLs, but if you were to suggest they watch a soap, that's a step too far for them. Yet most of the content they consume is based on the soap opera format.

In our forum, are there any AW fans old enough to remember the set used for Liz Matthews' house when the role was played by Audra Lindley and Nancy Wickwire? Although I was not watching AW at that time, I have seen a few photos of the interior of Liz's house, and one photo of the exterior. Unfortunately all of these photos are relative close-ups of the actors on set, so the set itself is not featured prominently. From what little I can see in the photos, the set included a baby grand piano, a curved staircase with decorative metal railing, and a fireplace mantle. And that's not much detail. The exterior photo (a set inside the studio) shows the area outside the front-door, and the house appears to have stacked-stone exterior walls. Again, not much detail, but that's all I have found.

When Liz returned to AW played by Irene Daily around 1974, she moved into an apartment or condo, and no mention was made of her previous house.

So I'm curious if anyone actually remembers Liz's house set from the pre-Irene Daily years, and can you describe it in more detail? I'm assuming Liz's house was not exactly a mansion (or perhaps it was a mansion), but considerably larger and more stylish than Jim and Mary's house. Please share whatever you remember.

On 10/9/2026 at 9:40 PM, chrisml said:

I don't think short attention spans is the real problem. A lot of people watch BL shows or K-Dramas for example and those are usually between forty minutes and 90 minutes. Granted, those are usually 8 to 16 episodes, but I think people would watch a one hour soap per day or they would binge them on the weekends. I think the problem is they have to be entertained. When was the last time the soaps did anything that had viewers saying, "I need to see this?

Honestly for me, it's Beyond the Gates. I am constantly surprised by that show.

On 10/10/2026 at 5:38 PM, Tisy-Lish said:

I missed Dorothy's comment about Beverly in the book. Does anyone remember what part of the book her quote is in? Or even the page number? I'd like to look it up. But I don't want to read the entire book again. Thanks you.

What I wouldn't give for an index.

I find Dorothy's mention of Beverly Penberthy with Alzheimer's on p 113 of the book.

9 hours ago, Xanthe said:

What I wouldn't give for an index.

I find Dorothy's mention of Beverly Penberthy with Alzheimer's on p 113 of the book.

Thank you! I'll check it out.

SOAP OPERAS BLACK WOMEN: A POSITIVE PORTRAYAL BY WINSTON MAJETTE BIG RED...MAY 21, 1983

Past television soap operas have rarely produced an image for Black women as strong, goodwilled women. Most of the characters have been maids, servants and mothers struggling through poverty. These characters showed a lesser side of the Black woman’s presence in society. Today on soaps the situation has altered. We have tenacious Black women setting a precedent of strength and invulnerability with their roles.

One of the women that has taken her character and role to the limits of positive and inspiring images is Petronia Paley. Petronia and several other well known Black actresses from the daytime television soaps will be featured on upcoming issues of this feature series on Soap Operas Black Women. Petronia plays the role of Quinn Harding, a coordinator of a major construction company, on the soap Another World. Petronia has brought about respect and power in Quinn. “The character lives with you everyday,” says Petronia, “and I’ve grown with her since the beginning—when she was merky.” Television hasn’t begun to tell the strife and tribulations that Black women go through emotionally and socially. Quinn Harding and many other Black TV soap women bring sensation to the set with their competitive capabilities and emotional adjustabilities. Quinn rose from the stints of poverty to become the head of a white maledominated business. Petronia is an actress who is and has always been conscientious about her ^career in everyway.

“When I decided to switch my major in college to acting, I was serious about it and really wanted it. I toured Europe and Africa and after graduation, I came to New York,” says Petronia. Petronia proclaims, “I’ve worked hard at what I do and for a Black actress I want to be as good as I can be.” Many TV networks don’t initiate any work into portraying Blacks as positive images. They just take whatever available stereotype there is and blow it out of proportion. The idea that ninety percent of today’s Black youth are thieves, muggers and prostitutes is easily from the roles of Black characters on TV. With this in mind, the negative depictions of Blacks must be put to an end. Petronia notes, “There are few positive Black images on TV today. Quinn is a very good character (for Blacks) and I would call her a heroine. She’s got confidence and is very outgoing. In past history there has been much discrimination against women in sports, politics and entertainment. Black women have had to fight harder for all of them and more. Petronia adds, “I am very interested in being a Black woman. I want to also be a human Black person."

Thank you @Paul Raven for the article. I am so thankful that I've been able to go back and see some of Paley's work on AW. The character and the actress classed up the show. I think it's a stain on AW's legacy that they killed off Quinn.

On 10/14/2026 at 12:43 PM, chrisml said:

Thank you @Paul Raven for the article. I am so thankful that I've been able to go back and see some of Paley's work on AW. The character and the actress classed up the show. I think it's a stain on AW's legacy that they killed off Quinn.

It was so depressing to see everything around Quinn dismantled. She started off as part of Steve Frame's Blackhawk office and various people worked and interacted there. Quinn had various connections to different people in Bay City including an assortment of other adult black characters who weren't all part of a nuclear family or token love interests. She adopted Thomasina and became close to Lily. But Frame Harding Construction lost importance and Lily left town; the only other adult black character was Thomasina's father-in-law Grant Todd and he was killed off; Thomasina and Carter left town not long afterward. By the time they introduced Zack Edwards, Frame Harding was on the ropes and Quinn was struggling.

I liked Quinn with Rachel and in a lot of ways I think that Quinn would have been a better friend for Rachel than Felicia. Not that I am saying that we should have had only one of Quinn or Felicia, or that Rachel should not have interacted with Felicia, but the period when they tried to create drama by making Felicia Rachel's best friend so that there would be tension over Mitch Blake always felt very unnatural to me.

In the Lisanti book Petronia Paley says she did not have any negative experiences with Paul Rauch and felt he was supportive of her as Quinn.

Edited October 17Oct 17 by Xanthe

I did not know that Kaitlin Hopkins (Kelsey Harrison) had been in the Bat Boy musical.

So Tom Lisanti's book includes some plot summaries to show what was going on in the series as actors came and went. One thing that caught my attention was the description of Janice's past and the plot to kill Mac. I think I knew that the book Harry Must Die described the method that Janice was in the process of using to kill Mac, but I don't think I realised that supposedly she had used the same method to kill Howard Battis and believed the book was about her, not just a coincidence.

Harry Must Die was an unpublished manuscript that Cory was acquiring. Who was the author and how did they know how Janice had killed Howard?

Howard Battis was supposed to be Evan's biological father. Evan had a vendetta against Rachel for killing his mother. Was it ever mentioned that his mother had killed his father?