Thursday, May 9, 2013

NEWS: Steve Burton, Eden Riegel, Martha Byrne, Riff Raff, Susan Lucci, Maura West, Connie Britton

Y&R's Steve Burton is among investors in The Beer Market, opening on Pittsburgh's North Shore
Opening "softly" this weekend near PNC Park is an interesting new concept: The Beer Market.

Burton explained that Beer Market customers can bring in food from wherever they want, even home. The menu also lists restaurants in the immediate vicinity that will deliver food. The beer market works with restaurants, even giving them maps of the tables.

Eateries in the shopping center around the Vernon Hills, Ill., Beer Market have reported big jumps in sales, Burton said. Two more Beer Markets are planned for Illinois and two are planned for Cleveland.

The Pittsburgh location also will have live music three to four days a week, mostly cover tunes, he said, and might include his band, Port Chuck, which includes other daytime drama actors. Mr. Burton, who works in Los Angeles but lives in Nashville, said he will be here for the grand opening near the end of June. He said he expected the Pittsburgh Beer Market would be open for the public Saturday.

Newsday: Soap operas ALL MY CHILDREN and ONE LIFE TO LIVE are dirtier online than on TV
"The shows feel pretty much the same. Great for those of us who know and love them. Not so hot, perhaps, for new viewers. (Internet soap "bibles" can help.) But even a million returning fans, which would be middling for a broadcast network, would make a nice aggregate for watch-anytime web host Hulu. (The soaps' returns led last week's Hulu stream counts.)"

SPIN: Riff Raff Trolls James Franco, Channels Brando, on Surreal Soap Opera ONE LIFE TO LIVE
"How did Riff Raff do? Of course, he's acting all of the time, anyway, so the performance was top-notch. How could it not be? More specifically, though, his performance is, like, 'late-Brando anti-presence': Surreally mugging and grinning through every line he delivers, Riff Raff paradoxically taps into something that's more alive and just plain real, precisely because he's totally acknowledging the absurdity of the situation and not even trying to sell it all. Plus, every line Riff Raff utters is incredibly Riff Raff-ian. Here are a few, out of context: "I came to get my moneys...I need my fettuccines"; 'I'm not some petty gangster, I'm an art dealer'; 'I'd rather have your phone number...not the brush-off.' Don't forget to imagine them in Riff Raff's ambiguously fancy, kind of sassy 'gurllll stop' drawl."

SheWired: Eden Riegel's Back as Pine Valley's Not-So Suburban Lesbian Mom
On Bianca and Reese: "We got annulled by text message less than 48 hours after we've been married. It was all very messy. It was very upsetting. At that point I just didn’t feel listened to. There are so many regimes in these soap operas because people get burned out. It’s grueling work. That particular writer who was involved -- I think he just thought my input wasn't really, you know, welcomed. I understand. If I were a writer I’m sure I wouldn’t really want an actor talking off my ear about what they feel their character should be doing. Actors, for the most part, maybe don’t understand the more broad perspective. But, it was tough for me to watch my character going through that when I thought we were telling another story."

Martha Byrne on the evolution of shows airing on the web
"Interestingly enough, with the return of ONE LIFE TO LIVE and ALL MY CHILDREN coming back online, the majority of the press has been mainstream for both shows. The reason the mainstream is taking notice, is because of the business model those shows are following. Three years ago when I did the web series for GOTHAM, the internet was considered the wild west. The advertisers didn't know how to monetize the web. The world has since changed and with shows like HOUSE OF CARDS and others, the web market has exploded. All of the above will help GOTHAM as it comes to television because of our roots. Our existing fans will follow us and the new eyeballs might start to watch out of curiosity and then we’ll hook them in with the story."

Susan Lucci will meet with Prospect Park about appearing on ALL MY CHILDREN
"We are going to be meeting in the next couple of weeks, all in the same room to put our books on the table and see what we can come up with."

Maura West grateful for new role as Ava Jerome on GENERAL HOSPITAL
"She's mysterious and strong and just has all of the characteristics of a great character," enthuses West, who says to her fans, "I am so grateful for their support and I am also grateful to GENERAL HOSPITAL for trusting me with this character and story and I will not let anybody down."

Nielsen’s New Digital Test Has Big TV Chasing Elusive Viewers
Nielsen and a coterie of TV networks – A+E, ABC, AOL, CBS, The CW, Discovery Communications, FOX, NBC and Univision – have agreed to take part in a pilot for what Nielsen calls its digital program ratings that will tabulate overnight data for unique audience, stream counts and reach by age and gender for TV programming viewed online.

The test does not take into account people who watch TV via mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets – meaning that no matter how successful the idea is, it will not capture a viewer behavior that is on the rise and growing.

Nielsen already has a means for measuring online viewership, but its technology requires the TV program being viewed to have the exact same “load” of advertising as the program when it was broadcast on the traditional living-room TV. With that mandate built in, Nielsen can then determine how many people watched the commercials within three days’ of the show airing, the bedrock of the current means of determining “commercial ratings” that determine how sponsors pay TV nets.

Connie Britton Kisses and Tells on 'Micromanaged' Rayna-Deacon Sex Scene, Breaks 'News' About FNL Film
Last week’s long-awaited romantic ‘collision’ between star-crossed lovers Rayna and Deacon on NASHVILLE was not nearly as intimate an experience off screen as it was on.

“That might have been one of the most micromanaged [moments] in television history,” the drama’s luminous leading lady, Connie Britton, tells me in the following video Q&A. “There were a lot of conference calls, a lot of conversations about how that scene needed to go [and] how it was all going to come together.”

1 comment:

  1. In other news, I notice that "Hollyoaks," "Texas" and "Dodger" are trending in the UK! It's #TexasWedding night ....!

    http://youtu.be/-pWr06mx8y8

    ReplyDelete