SoapNet: Love it and Loathe it

I must admit SoapNet is one of the stations I TiVo the most, but it doesn't mean that I think it serves the soap viewing audience. I've had the channel over eight years, so I've seen it evolve from a station many replays of current episodes and a huge amount of 80s and early 90s dramas to one with less replays, reality shows and some prime time series from the last ten years.

SOW 20th Anniversary GL Cover Voting

As a procrastinator, I never got around to voting for my favorite Guiding Light cover. Soap Opera Weekly posted twenty different covers and asked us to choose our favorite. According to their website there would be an additional round of voting, which is why I visited the site to see if I could do that, but no such luck. Looking at the covers, caused a mental stroll down memory lane, which I decided to post for the June 30th anniversary. I'm mainly going to discuss the issues that came out prior to 2000.

OLTL: Langston and Markko Make Love

On prom night, Langston Wilde and Markko Rivera spent the night together and made love. This was the first time for both, and unlike many couples they didn't just jump into it. They weighed their options and dated two years before moving their relationship to the next level. This was surprising considering how teen couples tend to be written for in daytime.

AMC: Stuart Chandler's Murder

Woah...Woah... What was All My Children thinking? As someone who was not exactly overjoyed with the decision to kill off Stuart the funeral touched my heart.

Thoughts on the 2009 Emmy Nominations

This isn't going to be about who should have been nominated, but my thoughts on those who were chosen. Granted some performers I know little or nothing about, and I'll cop to that when I get to them as I don't watch anything on CBS daytime regularly except for GL. What is kind of sad is that only one episode (two if it is B&B as it is a 30 minute show) is all that was used to judge any performance. Just about any actor on any show with a dash of talent can eke out at least one good episode a year. And like last year there was only one round of voting, which stinks as people who didn't choose one of the five people nominated in a particular category really had no vote.

OLTL: That was a wedding?!

While soaps don't have the budget they once did, Natalie and Jared's wedding was unbelievable -- two seconds with barely a vow. When the best part of it was the priest being Another World's John Hudson (David Forsyth), there is a serious problem.

Product Placement -- Ads within a Show

For those of us who record programs or flip around the stations while watching live, viewing numerous shows at a time, product placement is a way to advertise without commercials. This has been going on since the early days of television and even earlier on the radio. Sometimes it is subtle and sometimes its not. Increasing revenue and subverting the time shifters seems to be the main reason for these ads.