NEWS: Soaps Doing Well Outside U.S., Hershey, Brian Kirkendall

CNN: Soaps are hot, just not in the U.S.
Craving for a storyline is still there and Peter Tinoco, president and chief executive officer of Venevision Productions, said telenovela audiences enjoy that weaving of a tale.

"There is a difference between our telenovela and the soap operas in the United States," he said. "The soap operas in the United States are ongoing while our telenovelas are like if you were reading a book which has a beginning and an ending and through it people try to live the life of the protagonist. I think the success is in having a beginning and an ending because people don't get tired of watching something."

Tinoco's company is the producer of the telenovela, EVA LUNA, which is the highest-rated domestically produced telenovela. The show recently presented its grand finale on the Univision network which drew more than 9.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen data.

Soap opera fans hope the Hershey Co. will help them restore AMC and OLTL
Wednesday fans targeted the Hershey Co., calling, e-mailing and writing on its Facebook page, asking the Derry Twp. company to stop advertising on ABC.

Advertisers must plan for soap opera’s second act
Advertisers would do better to forget such stunts (Hoover) and start thinking about whether they can help create a more viable economic model for the soap opera in the digital media era.

Just as soap stars have been shot, burnt alive and pulverized in airplane crashes and still reappeared years later, there is nothing outlandish about scripting a second act for the soap opera itself.

The intellectual property such brands have built up over decades still has value, and some of the 2.5m-plus viewers each show on ABC’s death row pulls in every day would follow them to a new home.

Local Hoover Exec Pulls Ads From ABC Over Soap Opera Cancellations
"...we still have a sneaking suspicion that what appears to be Brian Kirkendall is actually his evil twin brother, and that the real Brian Kirkendall is tied up in a basement, and he would never do this. You'll have to stay tuned to see if he escapes before Friday and remedies this mess..."


Digital and Very Social: America Women and Technology Adoption
With many tech products, females—especially younger women—are just as likely to upgrade their consumer electronics as males. A Nielsen survey on high-definition television (HDTV) purchase intent, for example, showed U.S. women aged 18-34 are just as likely to purchase the advanced TVs as men aged 35 and over.