What was the moment and exact storyline that made you love that particular soap opera?

[AMCOLTLLover]

I really tried hard to remember back to the days of Atwt with my gran and Connor without Mark. I don’t think I’ve watched her without him. It felt like they were always on together or the story was always somehow related to them in a way. 
But I didn’t liked Connor that much. I just remember that there were two Connor’s and Grandma explained to Me what a recast meant. I didn’t liked either one tbh. That character was way too forced to be like a heroine 

[Contessa Donatella]

Okay. It's alright. Allyson Rice-Taylor was the original Connor Walsh & she was much beloved by many of us fans. And, her being summarily fired, for what seemed like no good reason, was a sore spot for fans, who equally hated Susan Batten in the role. But, Connor had a whole life before they forced the pairing with Kasnoff. 

[AMCOLTLLover]

Oh ok. I didn’t know that.. I mean I was really young and don’t remember much of Connor 1 to be fair. Maybe if I would go back and watch some classic episodes I would like her. There were some classic episodes posted a few months ago that I downloaded from 1996 and ofc it had Connor and mark in it. He is still rubbing me the wrong way. I don’t why. I really tried not to be like my 5-6 year old again and to like them but I just don’t see the appeal of that pairing. I mean I enjoyed Atwt from 2000’s which most fans hated.

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but I will get into the first Connor thing and try to watch some Of her and will post in the Atwt thread about it. 
 

Edited September 8, 2023 by AMCOLTLLover

[soapfave06]

I believe Connor and Mark in one of the episodes released on SoapClassics DVDs, that was my first time seeing them and they were in a barn maybe “making love” as well as another episode and there was definitely something about them that turned me off and brought the whole episode down. I couldn’t imagine watching them day in and day out during their actual era. 

[1974mdp]

OLTL- The Billly Douglas story in the early 90s. I was a gay teen coming out at the same time as the story aired, and it meant so much to me to see a gay teen, who was going through some of the same stuff I was, represented on TV. This was back in the day when soaps actually tackled social issues often before other forms of media. I watched the show on and off during the rest of its years, but it always held a special place for me because of that story.

[Contessa Donatella]

OH! Mark was so wrong for RealConnor. And, wasn't that Stern & Black tenure?! 

Remember they had the "treehouse of luv" URGH. 

And, most people do not know but they planned to have Mark show his bare buttocks in a love scene. There was music on a CD for the "butt" scene & someone found out & called Michael Kape because Soap Opera Now was the only mag that hadn't gone to press yet & he put in a Blind Item & when they actually taped the show they did not do the bare buttocks! Thank god. 

No, of course. You had no way of knowing!! You are blameless! To us that was during the ABC-ification of ATWT! Susan Batten was known for playing Luna on OLTL. Connor was a power business woman a lot like Lucinda, only younger, and they stuck Batten in Connor's office the first day & she dusted the blinds on the windows. ATWT fandom roared half with laughter & half with derision that the actress didn't know how to Act like a powerful businesswoman!! Good luck. It would be great if you saw the real Connor in a different light. And, I still liked some of the oughts! 

[Contessa Donatella]

After AW was canceled, I was still an NBC baby with DAYS but I did not watch PSSN. Most AW fans didn't. I don't remember if I watched any of the last 6 months of BEACH. I had tasted it at different times but never made it a daily habit. I liked Ben & Meg and also Lesley & Sam Behrens. But I felt like I had a gaping hole which needed filling where AW had been. I got into AMC, GH, GL, The City, PC, back into ATWT. I'm trying to remember what I really loved in what show. GH I had begun even before AW was canned. Riche/Labine was right up my alley. Robin/Stone/HIV/AIDS/Nurses Ball, Mary Mae, Laura then, Lucky & Liz, Liz's rape & the reivisitation that Michele Val Jean so masterfully wrote to tie Luke raping Laura to Liz's rape to Lucky learning the real history of his parents, etc. And I really loved PC & called it the little soap that could. But the biggest love of all came out of my late coming to GL. I just loved the whole show & couldn't get enough of it. Harley, GUSH, Buzz, Company, Holly, Blake, Ross, Olivia then Otalia, Jami and out of it all, total bonus, Jill Lorie Hurst & I became close personal friends. I tease her that when she gets finished with her book I am the first pass because I am the right person to proofread & copy edit it! 

[Fevuh]

GL and ATWT were my shows....I remember ATWT being dreadful during the Stern and Black years, but back to GL - I remember during a writer purge at Guiding Light that the actors and actresses had a part in saving JLH's position because they all loved her and basically said - whatever y'all think is going on, she had no part of it, and is one of the main reasons the writing is hanging on.  

[Contessa Donatella]

Yes, thanks so much Les Moonves for recommending two people who knew nothing about writing for soaps and where ever they may be now, they still do not! Moonves also offended Tina Sloan, who I do not believe is an easily flappable person. He basically told her she should be grateful he'd given the show a couple of extra years. Given! When CBS had them jumping through hoops daily. 

What a lovely story about Jilly!! Thanks for sharing it. I have to live with the facts. Jill Farren Phelps got her the job & MADD helped her keep it. Even evil people can do good. Swajeski wrote some really incredible Otalia but Hurst & Wheeler read lines out loud every night to make sure the next day would work. So much effort, attention & devotion went into the writing at the end. 

[P.J.]

Most of y'all make me feel so old.

CBS soaps were always on when I was a kid. So I have vague memories of Love of Life, Search for Tomorrow, Young and the Restless (pre-Victor, I swear I remember Philip Chancellor Sr and Katherine and the crash that killed him), ATWT (Bob and John constantly battling for the Chief of Staff position and Kim/Dan/Susan though the only Dan I remember is John Reilly.) and Guiding Light (Rita and her sister Evie, Martin Hulswit's Ed and Mike).

But the stories that I really got me hooked were Morgan/Kelly/Nola on Guiding Light and Steve/Betsy/Craig on ATWT. I think it was the combination of adolescence/good actors in the right roles/writing. 

[Soapsuds]

Same

I vaguely remember my mother and I watching Steve/Betsy/Craig story and I was a big fan of Barbara and Gunnar.

[FrenchFan]

Y&R is really my show as it was one of very few Soaps that aired in France. My mother must have watched with 1987 episodes and I remember as a kid being so intrigued with the Cassandra Rawlins mystery.

[P.J.]

Me too! Gunnar was so dashing! At least to my tween self! 

[Fevuh]

I’ll never forget Tina on the morning show.  One of them said to her - speaking of all the years coming and going from the studio (and I was screaming at the TV — uhmmm y’all don’t even know WHAT STUDIOS she’s been coming and going from - number of studios and taping locations long before this one before you were ever even EMPLOYEDDDDD) and they said to her - “You’re really going to miss this place and CBS” it was almost cruel. Tina - such class - said “and you’ll miss us”.  And you know what? They may not (but we do) because none of that morning team I believe is even there, and a wife of someone had to step down from working (but gifted with work because of sleezy husband).  No one will ever remember who even made such a stupid comment but we remember Guiding Light and the people. 

[Contessa Donatella]

April 19, 2009

In 1941, in the midst of World World II, the Citizen Kane premiere and Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak, Guiding Light was canceled for the first time. Around 75,000 angry letters convinced Procter & Gamble, the show's sponsor, to return the serial to the airways. Decades later, GL became broadcast history's longest running drama, enjoying a 72-year run that produced over 15,000 episodes and launched the careers of acting luminaries such as Cicely Tyson, Kevin Bacon and Allison Janney. On April 1, 2009, Guiding Light endured its second and final cancellation, one that cannot be overturned by viewer outrage. When the show airs its final episode in September, a vital and integral part of American history will cease. It's easy to dismiss that claim as grandiose. After all, it's only a television show, or worse it's only a soap opera. Yet it is its very identity as a soap opera that makes its loss so acute. America can embrace very few inventions as her own. While baseball and jazz are sources of pride, soap operas, a genre created in the 1930s by former school teacher Irna Phillips, are stigmatized in the United States. Given this ostracism, many people miss what soaps actually are: a treasure trove of our culture's shifting attitudes and ideas, desires and ambitions. Soap operas offer an ongoing record of our collective memory where no single person or group can claim authorship. On the rare occasion that a U.S. daytime soap leaves the airways, talk focuses on the missteps made by the show themselves. Guiding Light is not simply a casualty of its own mistakes but is emblematic of a moribund television industry. Television thrived in eras when daytime earned windfall profits for networks and production companies; primetime banked on the occasional blockbuster and syndication deals. That model has been dead for years yet networks operate as if that paradigm can be revived. They convince themselves that the Internet, cable channels and fickle viewers are simply blocking their pathways to success. The thing is, networks don't really know who watches television, how they watch and incorporate the programming (or not) into their daily lives and why people watch in the first place. Answers to these questions would not matter as much if big decisions and big money didn't ride on them. The ratings are broken and Guiding Light is one victim. At this stage people talk about the inevitable. Of course, Guiding Light would be canceled. Soaps are dying, after all. What is not said is that soaps are dying, not out of disinterest, but neglect. A genre that has nurtured countless innovations can only survive so long when our culture treats them as back alley laboratories. It was not inevitable that Guiding Light stay on the air for 72 years, just as it was not inevitable that the show leave now. Since it will depart, let us take a moment to acknowledge that these decades of narratives have stretched over and connected generations. Let us acknowledge that anyone who sits down to enjoy *any* television show owes a debt to Guiding Light. - Melissa Scardaville (Melissa was previously the "Guiding Light" Editor at "Soap Opera Digest". She had the pleasure of working with colleagues at Digest especially including Jen Lenhart who was the Editor for "As the World Turns" since those two PGP soaps worked closely together and actors & press & leadership, etc. Nothing pleased her as much any Wednesday --when the magazine went to bed -- but to hear that the tear sheet of an interview she'd done or that week's 'Editor's Choice' was up on the bulletin board at the studio -- like the one she wrote that had a headline 'The King Is Back!' ---Yes, when Grant was back at the show!)