As The World Turns
April 29, 2009
- I love this picture of Irna Phillips. It looks like she’s talking about something good, maybe a story, maybe a deal to get another one of her shows on television. Whatever it is, she’s got something going on, you can tell. I also love the fact in this picture she looks so ordinary. That might sound odd, but it’s not when you think that this is the woman who created the soap opera genre, ...
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April 27, 2009
- This Friday, 1 May, will mark a month since CBS announced it was canceling Guiding Light (and, for what it’s worth, Friday also marks the first anniversary of my first post here at Red Room). When Jennifer Gibbons asked me to be a part of RR’s Guiding Light Project, I wasn’t sure where I would begin. I was in diapers when GL premiered (on television:). And while it was my mother’s show ...
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April 21, 2009
- to bring you... It's only April, and so far 2009's been a rough year for viewers in the New York metropolitan area who watch Guiding Light on WCBS. Last week, it was live coverage of the installation of a new archbishop that enraged GL fans in general, Otalia fans in particular. Actually, I think it was the press conference preceding the ceremony - doesn't matter. Earlier, Phillip Spaulding's ...
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April 1, 2009
- If you're reading this, you've probably already heard the bad news. and, no, sad to say, it's not an April Fool's Day joke; but neither is the good news: NBC and DIRECTV announced a two-year pick-up for Friday Night Lights.This is particularly good news for me: the pick-up of FNL and cancellation of Guiding Light, rather than As the World Turns, means I won't have to rewrite my chapter for the ...
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March 30, 2009
- Really, you do. In a 1972 New Yorker piece titled, "Afternoon Television: Unhappiness Enough and Time," Renata Adler noted that Guiding Light had been "one of the most watched programs in daytime television. No more. The Doctors was just a better-written, better-acted epic of despair." She didn't explain why. And while I was watching both shows back then, Lord knows, I don't ...
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March 23, 2009
- while it would be so very nice if every soap opera episode could be as great as one life to live was last wednesday, i could live with what i got today. each of the three shows i watch regularly -- oltl, guiding light, as the world turns -- had some nice, relatively quiet (which is to say not too over the top) moments between characters that gave voice to the inherent ambuity that is life. i've ...
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March 9, 2009
- Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking about a conversation I had with the late Benjamin Hendrickson many years ago. He was telling me about his early days playing Hal Munson on As the World Turns. Since he came on the show for what was supposed to be a one-day gig, there wasn’t much for his character to do other than hang around the police station with fellow cop, Margo Hughes. So he ...
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February 16, 2009
- I keep looking for the logic. How is it that Guiding Light ended up with a new production model and As the World Turns with a new narrative structure? Did TPTB figure that GL was so far down the shit chute that as long as Executive Producer, Ellen Wheeler, stayed within her paltry allowance they would stay out of her way? And because everyone knows that audiences complain about stories that drag ...
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February 15, 2009
- If you asked me a month ago - hell, a week ago - which of the two P&G soaps, As the World Turns or Guiding Light, had the better chance of survival, I, and astute soap observers going back more than ten years, would have said without hesitation, ATWT. GL has never fully recovered from the capricious decision to squander the show's history by killing off tent pole character, Maureen Bauer, in ...
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February 8, 2009
- I was going to circulate this little rant among a few friends, but once it's out there, it's out there... So, what the hell.I logged on to We Love Soaps Sunday morning - before I had my first cup of tea - and what do I see but the following headline: "ATWT Wins WGA Award." That was enough to make me wonder if the judges had been on drugs. But reading on, I come to find out that As the ...
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