Evening News

Soap Watch: SOAPnet's new leading hunk
Don't recognize the ripped, shirtless guy pictured here? Give it a couple of days. Soon he, his abs, and his knickers will be plastered on ads all over the country, including a billboard in Times Square. His name is Dillon Casey and he plays a rookie hockey player on SOAPnet's racy new drama MVP, which premieres at 11 p.m. on June 19 and reairs on ABC at 10 p.m. on June 20, following the Daytime Emmys.

"My friends see that [the underwear ad his character shoots in the second episode] and they rip on me pretty hard for it. You know what, it's not like I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I'm okay with it. It's part of the show, it's part of the character."

Lehigh Valley feels like home to Josh Duhamel
For the last few days, helicopters have been whizzing through the sky and grand explosions have been lighting up the city of Bethlehem, normally a pretty quaint place. Movie stars and crewmembers have been filming the opening fight scene for the upcoming Transformers 2 movie, set for a June 2009 release. Former ALL MY CHILDREN star Josh Duhamel, from North Dakota, said Bethlehem reminded him of home. "I've had a great time in this town, I wish we could stay another week or two, I really do," Duhamel said. "It's a fun little place. It reminds me of where I grew up."

Mathison on AMC's new headwriters
"I think All My Children is in a really good place right now. I think it was really tough timing for Jim [Harmon Brown] and Barbara [Esensten] to come in when they did. Now, momentum is changing. Chuck [Pratt Jr.] has a lot of amazing things behind him that he has worked on."

Liveblogging ATWT: Storyline Overboard!
AfterElton's Brian Juergens provides funny commentary on Thursday's episode of AS THE WORLD TURNS.

"Back on Law & Order: Special Gays Unit, Noah turns on Luke for getting the police involved. He thinks that he had everything under control and that Luke's getting pistol-whipped and spending three days in the same clothes isn't suitable sacrifice. Luke tells him that he 'went through hell' and Noah says 'you don't know what hell is!' Um ... have you met his family?"

LATE NIGHT HOLLYOAKS for E4
Another late-night version of Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks is to air on E4. The new series, currently entitled LATE NIGHT HOLLYOAKS, will see the return of Guy Burnet as Craig Dean to save his sister in a dramatic cliff-top rescue.

The bank of five 60-minute episodes will also see various characters travel to Belfast with unexpected results; an extremely unlikely marriage; the Dirty Diegos fighting first night nerves as they prepare to play their debut gig; and the students of Hollyoaks Community College spicing things up and getting more than they bargain for.

Tony Wood, creative director at Lime Pictures said: "HOLLYOAKS is performing well on all fronts. It's viewed by 16 million people across the week and is up 24% on E4. Therefore, it is fitting that the programme should expand across that channel where its audience is growing fastest. This new hour-long format will give far greater scope to explore our characters and I'm delighted to be giving our fans an opportunity to enjoy HOLLYOAKS even more."

The special episodes will begin filming in September and transmit in November.

BLOG UPDATE: Tom Casiello
"Writing for a soap, (if you do it well), means you have to live up to the legacy that's been created by writers long before you, crossing decades. Creating a show from scratch, that pressure isn't there. You have the ability to explore, to let the characters grow and evolve and come into their own. When we first started brainstorming this idea, it quickly became apparent that we were not going to write it. It was going to write itself. Everything started to take on a life of its own, and all I can do now is have faith that we'll pass through to the next level, and the one after that. And then, of course, there's writing, and casting, and staffing and more notes meetings, and shooting... wait, hold on. I think my heart just stopped beating."

INTERVIEW: Johnathan Young (Executive Producer, THE BILL)
On celebrating the show's upcoming 25th anniversary: "We've got some fantastic plans for a strong two-part storyline that we'll be airing in November, but it's far too early to reveal anything too much at the moment! It's quite a departure for us, though, and is something we haven't tried before. In fact, from a production point of view, I think it might be a TV first."

Daytime Nielsen Ratings for the week of May 26-30, 2008
From the ABC Daytime ratings release:
* ABC captured its third straight win as Daytime's No. 1 network in Women 18-49 (1.4 rating/932,000 - tied in rating).

* Tallying its largest Women 18-34 (331,000/1.0 rating - tied on rating) and Women 18-49 (978,000/1.5 rating - tied on rating) audiences of the 2007/08 season (since week of 9/24/07), "One Life to Live" tied for No. 2 this week in Daytime, based on rating, in the target Women demos.

* "All My Children" delivered its largest Total Viewer audience in four months (2.71 million - since week of 2/4/08), and hit a 14-week high in Women 18-49 (887,000 - since week of 2/18/08).

* In Women 18-49, ABC owned 4 of Daytime's Top 5 programs, marking the 8th straight week the net has aired at least 3 of the Top 5: "General Hospital" (No. 2T, 1.5 rating/1.00 million), "One Life to Live" (No. 2T, 1.5 rating/978,000) and "All My Children" (No. 5T, 1.3 rating/887,000) and "The View" (No. 5T, 1.3 rating/862,000).

* In Women 18-34, ABC delivered 3 of Daytime's Top 5 programs for the 8th consecutive week: "General Hospital" (No. 2, 1.0 rating/345,000), "One Life to Live" (No. 2T, 1.0 rating/331,000) and "The View" (No. 2T, 1.0 rating/327,000).

* Once again, "General Hospital" towered over CBS' "Guiding Light," surpassing the time period competitor by a robust 148% in Women 18-34 (345,000 vs. 139,000), by 62% in Women 18-49 (978,000 vs. 617,000) and by 21% in Total Viewers (2.78 million vs. 2.29 million).

Following are the Daytime Lineup averages, plus Top 5 Programs Ranks - Week of May 26, 2008:

Daytime Rank:   Total Viewers       Women 18-49 (Rtg/000s)
No. 1 CBS       3.57 million        No. 1 ABC    1.4/932,000
No. 2 ABC       2.87 million        No. 1 NBC    1.4/909,000
No. 3 NBC       2.67 million        No. 3 CBS    1.2/781,000

Top 5 Daytime Programs in Women 18-49 (rank based on rating)

Program                    Net              Rtg/000s
The Young & the Restless   CBS              1.7/1.10 million
General Hospital           ABC              1.5/1.00 million
One Life to Live           ABC              1.5/978,000
Days of Our Lives          NBC              1.4/909,000
All My Children            CBS              1.3/887,000