What are some defunct soap mags and syndicated columns? I know of these mags:

Daytime Magazine--1st magazine to cover soaps, right? When did it fold?

Soap Opera Update--Angela Shapiro created this, it folded in 2002.

Soapdish-This dirt cheap rag I believed folded around 1998.

Old syndicated columns:

Tune In Tommorrow--Written from the 70s to the 90s by several different writers.

Candice Havens--She was frequently inaccurate,

Jonathan Reiner--What ever happened to this guy anyways?

Edited December 16, 200915 yr by soapfan770

Our much-missed pal SteveFrame had a huge collection of issues from Afternoon TV magazine, which I believe was sent out from the late 60s/early 70s up until somewhere in the early-mid 90s.

Episodes, it was a glossy People-sized (though not as thick) magazine that was devoted to the ABC soaps. My mother subscribed to it, it was her favorite as she only watched ABC. It had nice large pictures and articles, I wish they still printed it.

SOU was a good magazine, they seemed to pack a lot of information into each issue and they would sometimes do a little bonus magazine that was attached to it.

ETA: Folks were just talking about Jonathan Reiner yesterday in I believe the ATWT's cancellation thread. I enjoyed his time at the TV Guide website, though I do believe his gay witticisms paved the way for Daniel Coleridge and Nelson Branco.

Edited December 16, 200915 yr by SFK

LMAO Daniel Coleridge...I completely forgot about that guy. He wrote a book called "The Queer Eye for Soaps" and was allegedly some soap actor's lover. But yes Reiner was a 90s version of both Coleridge and Branco, although more entertaining and truthful.

I remeber SOU in the 90s too being a good magazine and I would always buy the SOU MVP awards issue. Then at some point I only went with SOD. Shame they folded, although this old snippet seems to have the opinion it was for the best:

The End Of SOU

From MediaWeek, 6/24/2002, Vol. 12 Issue 25, page 3 had this little snippet buried in the text:

...Soap Opera Update, the 13-year-old, 145,000-circulation biweekly published by Bauer Publishing USA, will fold in the fourth quarter and be merged into sister title Soaps in Depth...

I must say that I am shocked. Not that SOU will fold. It is long past time for that rag to die. I’m shocked that 145,000 people were dumb enough to spend money on that piece of crap every other week. I can’t even recall taking the time to read it in the supermarket checkout line this year.

Imagine, no longer will we see the tacky covers proclaiming “BIG (Insert Name of Soap Here) SHOCKER” or “WHY (Insert Soap) WILL BE CHANGED FOREVER” or “WHY (Insert Soap) WILL NEVER BE THE SAME”. Oh, that’s right…SID still exists and SOW now uses the “SHOCKER” headlines as well.

There was also a Soap Opera Magazine, which folded sometime in the late 90s. I think it started in the early 90s. I still have a few issues of that somewhere, one with Nina/Ryan/Tricia on the cover from around the time Nina accidentally shot Ryan. They weren't too bad, they had a fan encounters section, and even though they weren't overly critical, I liked their methods more than "Hit or Miss" or "Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down." They would have "Fast Forward" for bad stuff, "Rewind" for good stuff, and "Pause" for mixed stuff.

Wasn't there also a Soap Opera Now which ran for one or two issues in 1997 or 1998? I think Jonathan Reiner was involved with that.

LMAO Daniel Coleridge...

Wasn't there also the "Soap Opera Update" awards to coincide with the magazine?

Thank you for mentioning SOM Carl, I wasn't sure if SOU was really the magazine I was thinking of, I knew there was another one I may have been confusing it with. Still not sure, I'm going to go Google image. Damn, I shouldn't have recycled all of those old magazines! (I should have sold them, actually.) Uhhh, YES, Zendall, the Soap Opera MVP awards, I don't know how many times they aired, but I have one year's awards ceremony on tape. It was on Lifetime and hosted by Linda Dano. It's funny because when she's introducing "her old pal" Bob Woods and someone else from OLTL, I can't remember, she mentions that once upon a time she played a character named "Gretel Cummings" on OLTL, I believe her first soap role.

I used to have an old Daytime TV, it was threadbare even then, I found it at a yard sale or something. The main stories were about how Gloria Monty had gone too far by firing Peter Hansen and Susan Brown, and how the show had also wasted Sherilyn Wolter and Brian Patrick Clarke in their last months on GH. There was also an interview with Sally Sussman Morina about her writing for Y&R and how she was involved in a lot of Ashley stuff, and an interview with Victoria Wyndham, where she talked about how she wanted to see more MTV-type stuff on soaps and she was managing her son's rock band. And there was a story with, I think, Peter Brown, where he talked about how all the people who were in the first production of Godspell ended up meeting a spouse in the production and settling down.

Edited December 17, 200915 yr by CarlD2

Soap Opera News, which I had to buy an issue of because it had a fabulous cover of Jack/Carly/Hal on it.

I used to love Soap Opera Update's glossy pictures. But they were so weird not knowing what to do with their recaps. They put them in a little booklet that was either inside or outside of the actual magazine. They got bought up by SID, 'cause one unfortunate month, I ended up buy both a SOU and an SID, that was exactly the same. PISSED. ME. OFF.

Lost my stupid copy of Soap Opera Monthly, with a fabulous pic of Jack and Carly on it.

I loved SOU.I loved there pictures.I also remeber how they always used to have a section about the real life couples.

I remember SOM.

I'd pick it up if SOW was not available.

Do those year end special mags still exist?

Episodes, it was a glossy People-sized (though not as thick) magazine that was devoted to the ABC soaps. My mother subscribed to it, it was her favorite as she only watched ABC. It had nice large pictures and articles, I wish they still printed it.

I LOVED Episodes!

That looks great. What was "The Essence of Loving"?

Episodes! There was a commercial for Episodes during the AMC 20th anniversary episode when I watched it on YouTube or wherever it was I saw it. Jackie Zeman and some random guy from GH were hawking it rather enthusiastically.

I don't think this really counts as a column or magazine, but it was a recap service. Back in the 90s, I remember there was a special page in the phone book with phone numbers for most of the soaps, and if you called it, there'd be a voice giving you recaps of what had been going on. When did they stop that?