News Brief

CBS eyed as Daytime Emmy favorite
The Daytime Emmy Awards air Friday at 8 on ABC, co-hosted by ALL MY CHILDREN's Cameron Mathison (Ryan) and THE VIEW'S Sherri Shepherd.

The winners were decided differently this year, with blue-ribbon panels judging the DVDs in their category at home. The top five vote-getters got nominations, with the top one the winner. There was no secondary judging panel this year, which means that National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has known the winners since April.

Because the acting nods were so heavily skewed toward CBS, chances are the winners will be, too.

Will Michelle Stafford walk away with an Emmy?
The voting procedures for the awards show were different this year, requiring the judging panel to watch a lot more tapes than in years past, which is something Stafford kept in mind when making her submission.

"You might be in a group of 28 (candidates), and you might be No. 26," she explains. It used to be 'end with your best stuff.' Now it is 'start with your best stuff, or they might push the FF (fast forward) on you.'"

VIDEO: A Daytime Emmy Nom Decides on a Dress!
With just a few hours until the Daytime Emmy Awards air on ABC, ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT is with THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS star and nominee Michelle Stafford as she takes on the daunting task of picking a dress for the glamorous ceremony. This is the seventh nomination for the actress, who plays the campy Phyllis on the hit soap opera.

SAG spars with AFTRA over deal
With negligible progress at the Screen Actors Guild negotiations, the majors are moving toward making the guild a last, best and final offer.

The "final offer" move -- a tactic never used during the WGA strike -- could come as early as next week, unless SAG changes course and backs away from an array of demands that are nonstarters for the companies, including an increase in DVD residuals and sweeter terms for new-media residuals than those achieved earlier this year by the DGA, WGA and AFTRA.

Talks, which hit their 34th day on Thursday, are said to have been highly unproductive during the past few weeks, with the exasperation level rising for both sides.

Writer and mom Dena Higley talks about DAYS' Autism story
"...we’re not going to get into causality, at least as far as we’ve written. I haven’t even really revved up the story as much as I want to. There’s so much to say and do.

So to get into vaccines or other environmental issues or clusters, or DNA, or any of that - the brain scanning, any of that, we’re really - as far as my eye can see the story going, that’s really not on the landscape at this point.

He probably will be higher functioning. As I am going out and as I’m getting to know this population again -- the new generation because my son is 19 now -- I do see that the predominant kids are higher functioning.

So yes because it is dramatically more interesting. We had already established that this character had some language. So we couldn’t go back and have him not talk anymore.

That was before we had decided to do the autism storyline. So we recast the part and sort of tried to work within the framework of what we had. So he does have some language. That in itself makes him high-end functioning."