general hospital
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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July 12, 2008
- As many of you know, I used to love soap operas. Yep, I loved my stories. I don’t so much anymore, for many reasons I’ve written about. However, I do keep track of the soap news, and here’s the big news for the week: Genie Francis, who became famous when she portrayed the role of Laura Vinning Baldwin Spencer, is coming back to General Hospital. As many of you know, I ...
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June 4, 2008
- In 1981, daytime soaps began a transformation that over the past twenty-five years has profoundly changed the genre. At first glance, the process was set in motion by the wedding of General Hospital’s Luke and Laura. But the real story began back in 1978 when General Hospital was on the verge of cancellation.The numbers back then tell only part of the story. As the World Turns was at the ...
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May 1, 2008
- I don't know why 1981 proved to be such a pivotal year for television. But the premiere of Hill Street Blues in January 1981 and the wedding of Luke and Laura on General Hospital that November marked the beginning of a profound shift for television programming, day and night. For primetime, the trajectory was up; In Glued to the Set, Steven Stark describes Hill Street as "pav(ing) the way ...
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May 1, 2008
- In her essay, The Siren Call of the Super Couple: Soap Operas’ Destructive Slide Toward Closure, ( published in Contemporary Soap Opera Criticism, ed. Suzanne Frentz, 1992), Diana Reef talks about how the super couple phenomenon, beginning with General Hospital's Luke and Laura in the late 1970s, “create(s) serious storyline problems for producers and writers.” According to Reef, the love ...
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